Is Codeberg.org financially sustainable relying on member fees? Any precedents? | Hacker News Reader

Is Codeberg.org financially sustainable relying on member fees? Any precedents?

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25 pointslijunhao19 comments

Yes. I am a paying member and thus I get the member newsletter where finances are disclosed and discussed. It’s a low-cost operation and we have enough reserves in the bank.

Thank you for sharing this information. I am also applying for membership and am eager to see Codeberg succeed.

However, I am concerned about the long-term sustainability of Codeberg, especially if it plans to support CI (which is resource-intensive) and attract a significantly larger user base.

Similarweb statistics indicate a substantial difference in traffic between Codeberg and GitHub. While Codeberg has approximately 2 million page views (700.8K visits * 2.78 pages/visits) per month, GitHub boasts over 2.7 billion (462.4M visits * 6 pages/visits). This translates to Codeberg having roughly 0.1% of GitHub's traffic.

If Codeberg aims to reach even 10% of GitHub's traffic, the operational costs would likely increase by a factor of 100 or much more ( almost certain ). Has Codeberg internally addressed this scalability challenge and outlined strategies for managing such growth? What are Codeberg's long-term goals in terms of user base and features, and how do they plan to balance these aspirations with sustainability?

Thank you.

> However, I am concerned about the long-term sustainability of Codeberg

Why? If you want to support it, do so. If it collapses, change some git repository URLs in your READMEs.

For anyone wondering, e.V. stands for "eingetragener Verein",

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_association_(German...

Can Codeberg.org achieve long-term financial sustainability relying solely on member fees?

Are there any successful precedents for this model ?

Perhaps add an "Ask HN" in the title?

> solely on member fees

No, you can donate: https://docs.codeberg.org/improving-codeberg/donate/

Codeberg e.V. is a non-profit.

Oh it's much worse than that. They only accept member fees paid by SEPA transfers. As in Single Euro Payment Area. Don't live in a country that uses the Euro or is part of the EU? Your money isn't welcome here.

What a dumb policy.

This is just wrong: they support both SEPA and international bank transfers through IBAN.

Isn't IBAN just the account identifier SEPA uses?

(The other identifier necessary to make SEPA transfers being the BIC = bank id.)

IBAN is the international bank number.

(no, that’s the BIC (Bank Identifier Code AKA SWIFT).

IBAN is the International Bank Account Number.

For donations they also offer liberapay so you can use stripe and PayPal.

For membership fees you can also use direct bank transfer.

You can make SWIFT transactions to IBAN numbers. no problem whatsoever.

SEPA is essentially just a specific subset service set of a SWIFT international bank transfer. Or in other words, the interface of SEPA is a subset of parameters in SWIFT transfer. And it mandated IBAN numbers on stragglers in EU.

> What a dumb policy.

It would be, if it were true.

Just use a service like Wise?

Yes, sign up for a service I would never use otherwise to send money is a very convincing and straightforward way to support this project.

They support SEPA Direct Debit or a manual bank transfers over SWIFT.

The latter works everywhere you can make a normal international bank transfer. It's just manual, while SEPA Direct Debit is automatic payment.

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