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Oh, fuck - I had a good run I guess: I love Gitea, but this seems like a change for the worse. I think there's an open source trap where successful projects se

Oh, fuck - I had a good run I guess: I love Gitea, but this seems like a change for the worse. I think there's an open source trap where successful projects see their adoption numbers, and billion-dollar companies using their projects and think "We're leaving money on the table" (which IMO is the whole point of libre software). Unfortunately, this is the path to weird software licenses, open-core / community-edition product splits and a whole host that makes the software less useful to me as an individual user and occasional contributor. Besides, Gitea won't be able to make much out of individuals like me, so their roadmap will likely favor paying customers. I can guarantee that it will be too bloated to run on a Raspberry Pi Zero like I have it today, which means I'd have to choose something else. I also suspect that switching to a for-profit company will decrease the number of volunteer contributions, after all following the same big idea that led to incorporation: who wants to work for free when someone else is making the money? The good news about F/OSS is I have started my countdown to a community fork. After all, Gitea itself is a fork -it is the circle of life. Edit: I forgot they are trying to pay contributors with some web3 scheme, perhaps to try and solve the inherent hypocrisy. But the cure may be worse than the disease because it further complicates the process of contributing to the project and reduces maintainer focus on actual product. Just give me pull-requests.

throwaccount12 4y ago
The DAO was mentioned only around transparent governance and giving back to the community, but the blog post mentions hiring maintainers presumably with cash.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  You seem extremely vested[1] in this, and have been very active in this thread - are you affiliated with the freshly-registered company? If so, I'd encourage you not to hide behind a throwaway because it gives the impression that you don't want to stand by your words. More on topic: does this mean occasional/casual contributors to the project will continue to work for free while maintainers & employees get paid? 1. You looked up the name of one commenter and the donations made in their name 3 years ago.
  - throwaccount12 4y ago
    Indeed I have been active. I am passionate about funding in open source, and saw someone link this on mastodon, and so I signed up to comment on things. I only know what has been said in the blog post. I have attempted to disclose all my leanings, and follow ddevault [0] and disclose especially around crypto things > Additionally, we’re planning on establishing a fund to be able to provide support to contributors who not only contribute features, but also bug fixes, performance enhancements, and important refactors. Sounds like occasional contributors can receive payment as well. Like you, I also agree that financial disclosures and citing sources are important, and so so that is why I took the 5 seconds to validate a claim someone made, and also found someone in this thread who very clearly is not disclosing a financial stake in the matter. Edit: I have seen a maintainer in this thread, perhaps he could share some more details as they come. [0]: https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disas...
techknowlogick 4y ago
Hi, I'm the author of the blog post. Thank you for your comment. In reference to your edit, we are investigating a DAO to empower the community, but aren't committed to it, only investigating it to see if it is viable. In terms of funding the community, we are committed to creating a fund with non-crypto money to be able to give back. In terms of "leaving money on the table" this is very much not that, open source is incredibly non-equitable and skews a lot to a certain way (a lot of people with who can afford to give up time to open source, not everyone but a large amount). This prevents many who have a desire to work on projects such as Gitea, but need to find a job or two to pay rent and get groceries. By establishing what we have, we are hopefully broadening the pool of people who are able to participate.
- hrbf 4y ago
  Please don’t introduce any element of cryptocurrency or blockchain to the project. Nothing it offers will solve any real problem that a simple database couldn’t do more efficiently. No matter how you turn the worm, ”crypto” is a grift. Enough incidences have shown that even small bugs or unintended omissions in the implementation can lead to hostile manipulation and theft. Mitigating the risk of catastrophic failure, once you remove the money from the process, it makes even less sense. What you need is humans in the decision-making process, not algorithms.

throwaccount12 4y ago

The DAO was mentioned only around transparent governance and giving back to the community, but the blog post mentions hiring maintainers presumably with cash.

sangnoir 4y ago
You seem extremely vested[1] in this, and have been very active in this thread - are you affiliated with the freshly-registered company? If so, I'd encourage you not to hide behind a throwaway because it gives the impression that you don't want to stand by your words. More on topic: does this mean occasional/casual contributors to the project will continue to work for free while maintainers & employees get paid? 1. You looked up the name of one commenter and the donations made in their name 3 years ago.
- throwaccount12 4y ago
  Indeed I have been active. I am passionate about funding in open source, and saw someone link this on mastodon, and so I signed up to comment on things. I only know what has been said in the blog post. I have attempted to disclose all my leanings, and follow ddevault [0] and disclose especially around crypto things > Additionally, we’re planning on establishing a fund to be able to provide support to contributors who not only contribute features, but also bug fixes, performance enhancements, and important refactors. Sounds like occasional contributors can receive payment as well. Like you, I also agree that financial disclosures and citing sources are important, and so so that is why I took the 5 seconds to validate a claim someone made, and also found someone in this thread who very clearly is not disclosing a financial stake in the matter. Edit: I have seen a maintainer in this thread, perhaps he could share some more details as they come. [0]: https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disas...

techknowlogick 4y ago

Hi, I'm the author of the blog post. Thank you for your comment. In reference to your edit, we are investigating a DAO to empower the community, but aren't committed to it, only investigating it to see if it is viable. In terms of funding the community, we are committed to creating a fund with non-crypto money to be able to give back. In terms of "leaving money on the table" this is very much not that, open source is incredibly non-equitable and skews a lot to a certain way (a lot of people with who can afford to give up time to open source, not everyone but a large amount). This prevents many who have a desire to work on projects such as Gitea, but need to find a job or two to pay rent and get groceries. By establishing what we have, we are hopefully broadening the pool of people who are able to participate.

hrbf 4y ago
Please don’t introduce any element of cryptocurrency or blockchain to the project. Nothing it offers will solve any real problem that a simple database couldn’t do more efficiently. No matter how you turn the worm, ”crypto” is a grift. Enough incidences have shown that even small bugs or unintended omissions in the implementation can lead to hostile manipulation and theft. Mitigating the risk of catastrophic failure, once you remove the money from the process, it makes even less sense. What you need is humans in the decision-making process, not algorithms.