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Comment by djha-skin | Hacker News Reader

It's a soft fork though, so the Forgejo folks are still relying on the Gitea team for features like this.

The Forgejo folks seem to object to Gitea on the basis that a company took the project over. I think it was that an American company took it over, not that a company took it over. They didn't AGPL forego, they just soft forked and backed the fork with a European organization instead of an American one, Codeberg[1]. Yes, the org is non-profit, but it still smacks as hypocritical.

I'll be sticking with Gitea for the foreseeable future.

1: https://codeberg.org/

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> I think it was that an American company took it over,

No, Gitea Ltd is a new _Hong Kong_ for-profit company. No American companies are involved in any of this whatsoever.

The Gitea head honcho claims to be in Shanghai, China: https://gitea.com/lunny

> not that a company took it over.

No, the Forgejo folks were angry that the previously community-run project was taken into ownership of a for-profit company, without any notice, and against previous promises: https://gitea-open-letter.coding.social

> They didn't AGPL forego

Uh, they CAN'T relicense it to AGPL or anything else. The Gitea authors and contributors still hold the copyright on the code, which is MIT-licensed.

Forgejo did relicense, there was a democratic vote and the it was agreed to finally relicense to a license that respects user's freedoms

Very cool if true, but it appears they haven't done it yet: https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/src/branch/forgejo/LICE...

Could someone post a link to the decision?

https://codeberg.org/forgejo/meta/issues/183

I think, this seems to be the discussion everyone is talking about

You can license your fork under a different compatible license (which is most other licenses, in the case of MIT). They can't prevent people from using the versions that were already released under MIT though (and continue being released under MIT by Gitea).

I think the concern was of corporate exploitation in the name of profits, in which case I don't think forking and having a non-profit at the helm hypocritical. It's actually a very defensive position to prevent corporate interests from snatching up the project once more.

> I think it was that an American company took it over, not that a company took it over. They didn't AGPL forego, they just soft forked and backed the fork with a European organization instead of an American one, Codeberg[1]. Yes, the org is non-profit, but it still smacks as hypocritical.

Straining to assume good faith here but this seems very likely to be wilful misinfo - particularly given the emphasis. The reasons for the fork are very clearly stated in the lettter linked in the comment you're replying to: it's about community decision-making procedures (which have been removed during the incorporation). It's also about profit: the US corp is for-profit.

Secondly, not only are Codeberg a non-profit, they also adopted the project after the fork. That wasn't a part of the original letter nor discussion. They don't control the project (see aforementioned objections on the basis of democratic input) - they're a host & benefactor.

> it's about community decision-making procedures (which have been removed during the incorporation)

A quick clarification here, the new TOC is comprised of three company members and three community members, with community members having a slight advantage should there be a split vote on anything.

> I think it was that an American company took it over, not that a company took it over.

A small clarification, Gitea Ltd. which owns the trademark and domain is (apparently) based in China.

https://forum.forgefriends.org/t/gitea-ltd-company/917/5

Forgejo is AGPL, there was just a vote and the community came out strongly to say they disagree with commercial usage of Forgejo! I am so happy they did that!

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