12 ms·

Open letter to Gitea

321 points by d4a 4y ago

yazzku 4y ago
Is this yet another case of a liberal license project gone proprietary after the contributions of many developers in the community? If so, this seems like a reminder of why the GPL and its variants are important.
aargh_aargh 4y ago
This is in response to: https://blog.gitea.io/2022/10/open-source-sustainment-and-the-future-of-gitea/ https://blog.gitea.io/2022/10/open-source-sustainment-and-th... as discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33339421 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33339421
- TAForObvReasons 4y ago
  A bit of context (why this matters) is useful: https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#owners https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#... > Since Gitea is a pure community organization without any company support, to keep the development healthy we will elect three owners every year. > When the new owners have been elected, the old owners will give up ownership to the newly elected owners According to CONTRIBUTING.md, this dates back to 2016. The new company represents a shift from the community model that attracted many developers and users. The issue is that ultimately Lunny holds the trademark and isn't legally bound to uphold whatever agreement is stated in the repo.
  - dachary 4y ago
    It may be the case that Lunny forgot he has a moral obligation to the Gitea community that elected him year after year. Even though there is no legally binding contract. What was done is morally unacceptable. But that can be easily fixed. Just give it all back!
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      It could be have been solved even more simply by making it a legal obligation. Drama like this is God's way of teaching hippies why we have contract law.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - mmu_man 4y ago
        I don't see why this wouldn't already be legally binding. He was elected, but he accepted the mandate which is described by this document.
        MRtecno98 4y ago
        AFAIK he did not sign anything so no actual contract was formed
        sangnoir 4y ago
        Just because a physical contract wasn't signed does nor mean there isn't a legally binding agreement, see promisory estoppel.
tinalumfoil 4y ago
What's been the general opinion of this change to the gitea contributors? It's difficult to match usernames to real names but I don't see overlap between the top contributors and signatories. https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/pulse https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/pulse
- dachary 4y ago
  A few of the top contributors are the one behind the company. It is fair to assume they are perfectly ok with stealing from the community as it directly benefits them...
  - tinalumfoil 4y ago
    I'm a user of gitea and sympathetic to this open letter but it doesn't mean much without significant contributors signing on, and being marked as such. I assume the Gogs developer isn't happy about this but I don't see his name either. Right now it's unclear the connection of the signees to the Gitea project.
    - dachary 4y ago
      Do I think it will persuade Gitea Ltd to give back the domains and the trademark? Honestly, I don't have high hopes. Even if each and every contributor to Gitea signed the letter, I'm unconvinced they will do right by the community. This open letter had to be published even if it has little chance to be effective. It would be horribly wrong for something like that to happen in a Free Software project without offering a simple and gentle way to do right. Ultimately it is quite possible the only solution will be a fork. And as the Gogs fork showed, it only takes a handful of motivated developers to succeed.
  - bberenberg 4y ago
    Copyright doesn't exist in a vacuum someone owns the copyright on the logo, it's up to them to determine who they want to transfer / license that to. Trademark will be up to the USPTO and other jurisdictional bodies to determine who has the right to use it to minimize confusion to consumers. The people doing all the work are "stealing" from the "community" that contributes much less? If someone wants to fork here, it seems like they would also need to step up the amount of contributions they're doing if the people currently doing the work are the ones organizing a way to make some money to pay for their time.
deleted 4y ago
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DandyDev 4y ago
Gitea was a fork of Gogs. I'm assuming we'll see a fork of Gitea now?
- mhd 4y ago
  I'm also reminded of Audacity, so maybe we'll see a half-way popular fork and then the "parent" amending their ways?
  - LegitShady 4y ago
    I never saw a follow up to the audacity kerfuffle. Is there any follow ups to whats going on there?
    - masklinn 4y ago
      There were two fork events AFAIK: - DarkAudacity, was mostly a fork by Audacity's own lead dev for experimenting on things which might be too disruptive or polarising for the main project, that ended up being largely reincorporated in Audacity - After acquiring the project, Muse Group drafted a proposal to add invasive telemetry and age restrictions, this led to a few forks and ultimately a reversal of course; soon after the privacy policy changed to add notes about personal data extraction to Russia and the USA, there was more outcry and this was reverted as well
      - LegitShady 4y ago
        there was also some bit about a third party developer using their API to build something and they threatened to have him deported to China when he was a vocal anti CCP activist, essentially threatening him with jail/death if he didn't take down his project.
      - Anunayj 4y ago
        I wonder, how does "acquiring" a open source project work? Does it mean the company acquires assets like Name, Trademark, Domain and such? Since the code itself is open source. (Sure you might be able to get rights to the owner's code) And even after that won't the company itself have to start putting telemetry and stuff themselves since prexisting maintainers definately won't do that. It feels pretty much like a Hostile takeover than acquiring. How do they even benefit from it
aliqot 4y ago
I get tired of community uprisings and activism that fundamentally misunderstand how open source works, fork it. If you're not the in the top producers in a DoOcracy then you neglected your right to exert influence in the direction of the project. I've led a few larger projects and the rate at which the least of us will have the biggest opinions about who is -owed- what is flabbergasting. DoOcracy's are great, but they often flame out with the top contributor finding one day they have a self-appointed board of directors for a passion-project that they just wanted to share with the world.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  The word "just" is doing a lot of work here.
- dachary 4y ago
  Sometime people make mistakes, big ones. That happens and this open letter gives them the opportunity to make right by the community. A fork is a last resort option, when everything else failed. Patience and understanding is a good thing in Free Software communities. Even when facing what appears to be a malicious action.
- rapnie 4y ago
  It is a multi-step process. First you do the right thing and kindly ask to repair trust that has been breached. If that doesn't work, which is a likely outcome, discussion about forks are in order. "Just fork it" is easy to say, but with large projects require careful consideration. There's too many people saying "just fork it" all too casually, if you ask me.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    > First you do the right thing and kindly ask to repair trust that has been breached Gitea is a self-labeled "DoOcracy". nobody owes an apology. forking is inherent to open source methodology. ideological conflicts help nobody but those who lead them. the fact is that the work is done by few, and those few have decided to exercise their rights in open source to do what is their prerogative.
hrbf 4y ago
While communication may not have been handled perfectly, this is an annoyed, entitled, entirely unnecessary tract. Tellingly, it never appears to be the ones who do the actual work who throw such tantrums. And how about just extending the benefit of the doubt instead of immediately feeding the outrage machine?
- rapnie 4y ago
  > Tellingly, it never appears to be the ones who do the actual work who throw such tantrums. And how do you know that, if I may ask?
  - aliqot 4y ago
    - maxbond 4y ago
      This is just a feeling you have, which you're asserting as fact. It's a thought terminating cliche that's employed to dismiss a group of people without having to listen to them.
- wiseowise 4y ago
  > And how about just extending the benefit of the doubt instead of immediately feeding the outrage machine? You give them an inch, they’ll take a mile.
- maxbond 4y ago
  You can't slander them by saying they're throwing a tantrum, without even talking about what parts of the document you're referring to or why it is you feel that way, and then decry how they're not giving anyone the benefit of the doubt. That is pearl clutching. Writing them to resolve this issue in good faith, is giving them the benefit of the doubt.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    Talk about "feeding the outrage machine". The irony is thick in this thread wirh people who are outraged by "outrage culture", without being specific (trademarks and website, and the broken promise on community ownership of these assets). Even the current top comment complains in the abstract - people have become what they hate as they fight the culture wars.
dpedu 4y ago
What was born in a fork will die in a fork.
computronus 4y ago
Here's an explanation of DoOcracy, as linked from the open letter: https://communitywiki.org/wiki/DoOcracy https://communitywiki.org/wiki/DoOcracy (If you're like me and hadn't heard of the concept before.)
- burnished 4y ago
  That was very interesting, might make a good submission on its own. I really enjoyed what seemed like an attempt at a neutral description without proselytization.
- chungy 4y ago
  Sounds like a rebrand of meritocracy.
  - nequo 4y ago
    The link contrasts it with meritocracy as this: > In a meritocracy, the most qualified people for a job are selected for that job. In a do-ocracy, whoever does the job gets it, no matter how well they’re qualified.
  - maxbond 4y ago
    Addressed in the document: > Meritocracy: In a meritocracy, the most qualified people for a job are selected for that job. In a do-ocracy, whoever does the job gets it, no matter how well they’re qualified. I'd add that "merit" is a less useful concept to construct an organization around than "doing". Merit is impossible to measure, and every measure prone both to being gamed and to unfairly underestimating people and shutting them out, but is also the wrong thing to optimize for. The thing you want to optimize for is the work being, and for the overall effort to result in a high quality end product. Most parts of a given project aren't particularly critical and it doesn't matter who does them as long as they're done. If a particular part of the project is struggling, then the problem is that they needs support, not that they have "insufficient merit;" taking the unnecessary moral component out of it makes it easier to see what the problem is and to organize the resources to solve it. If some role is sensitive and requires special qualifications, that's an exception that can be dealt with as it arises (and if you're in a problem space where that's the rule and not the exception, fair enough, perhaps this isn't the approach for you). I've not been in an organization that labeled itself a "DoOcracy", but it sounds like it's potentially less political and more productive than meritocracy.
KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago
Am I right in assuming that though lots of work has happened in gitea since the fork, at least half of the code there was still written by the guy behind gogs? They're just going to form a for-profit based on his work and cut him out entirely?
- deleted 4y ago
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- twawaaay 4y ago
  The issue isn't about access to the code (which is not threatened at all). The issue is about community enjoying access to the project name and domain name.
- Liquix 4y ago
  It's MIT licensed, so anyone can incorporate based on the original author's work and turn a profit. He is not owed anything. This is an eventuality you are implicitly accepting when choosing MIT over GPL.
  - cmeacham98 4y ago
    I'm confused, this would also be true with the GPL, no (just with the added restriction they would have to redistribute their changes)? My understanding is the point of free software is that you can do (almost) anything you want with it, including sell it.
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    GPL or MIT doesn't really matter all that much here; the only difference is that with the GPL I'd have release all the source. There is nothing in the GPL stopping me from starting a Compiler Inc.™ SaaS based on gcc that "compiles code as a service".
  - KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago
    Of course they're legally allowed to do so, it's just a question of does it make sense vis-a-vis their stated values about community and rewarding the people who has worked on the project.
itzz_amar 4y ago
dec0dedab0de 4y ago
...domains and trademarks...are one of the most important assets any Free Software project has (if not the most important)... This rubs me the wrong way. Surely the discussion history, documentation, and the freaking code are more important than the name. I generally don't like open source becoming beholden to comercial interests, and I don't know enough about this story to know if that's really what is happening here. Reading that the name may be more important than the code is just very off-putting.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  On the other hand... OpenOffice vs. LibreOffice. Clearly the name was immensely valuable in that case.
  - coding123 4y ago
    Hudson and Jenkins too https://medium.com/swlh/hudson-is-retiring-the-end-of-a-jenkins-story-9cee866135ab https://medium.com/swlh/hudson-is-retiring-the-end-of-a-jenk...
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    The new name was the issue, it was too clever and close to the original. OfficeSuite or IceOffice or TerraOffice. Something about the word Libre makes it seem like the outdated copy.
  - red_trumpet 4y ago
    Sure it was immensely valuable. But imagine if the code disappeared overnight. Then LibreOffice wouldn't be were it is now.
    - afiori 4y ago
      If LibreOffice's code disappeared or was stolen overnight they could pretty quickly get it back from one of their many forks, if their trademark/domain/package names got stolen or lost it would cause lasting damage.
    - 4y ago
nonrandomstring 4y ago
I highly recommend Adam Curtis' documentary "The Mayfair Set" [1], especially Part 2, detailing the lives of Jim Slater, Tiny Rowland and James Goldsmith who pioneered the hostile takeover, and the effect of acquisitions and mergers on the overall global economy. Hard to imagine that only 50 years ago this wasn't a "done thing". Today I see these same patterns play out in development and artistic communities oblivious to 51 percent and Sybil attacks, unaware of who is holding what key assets, and then being surprised by takeovers and defectors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mayfair_Set https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mayfair_Set
- aasasd 4y ago
  > The release of Pandora's Box (1992) marked the introduction of Curtis's distinctive presentation that uses collage to explore aspects of sociology, psychology, philosophy and political history. His style has been described as involving, "whiplash digressions, menacing atmospherics and arpeggiated scores, and the near-psychedelic compilation of archival footage", narrated by Curtis himself with "patrician economy and assertion". Is this guy in fact the inventor of the annoying modern style of political documentary, where I have to listen to anxiety-inducing drones and the worst kind of movie-trailer voice, nonstop for an hour at least? The one used by shittiest propaganda tv channels? And for some inexplicable reason also borrowed by Youtube personalities that supposedly appeal to thinking, educated people in opposition to that propaganda tv.
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    > annoying modern style of political documentary, where I have to > listen to anxiety-inducing drones and the worst kind of > movie-trailer voice, nonstop for an hour least? Well you're in for a real treat with "Russia:Trauma Zone" then. Curtis listened to all the bleating criticisms and delivered six hours of absolutely bare footage, which juxtaposed and sequenced speaks for itself. The result is even more powerful than ever before - which shows that incorporating criticism, even when it's only about surface style, pays off. The only criticism I have is that the title is a bit bland. It should gave been called "Natasha's Boots". She is the star of the show. And in the ened she gets her boots. > that propaganda tv All TV and social media is propaganda. Even cat videos. It propagates. It carries a message. Even if the message is "Don't think".
lovich 4y ago
I’ve never participated in an open source community so this is the view of an ignorant third party. Everytime I see anything related to the open source world bubble up into the public I am only reminded of high school and college level social drama. It seems utterly exhausting to be involved
- nequo 4y ago
  Disputes are not unique to open source projects. But they usually have no hierarchies and no contracts. So disputes are settled this way.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
  Honestly put me off ever wanting to get involved.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- capableweb 4y ago
  Every larger community (or even medium sized ones) have friction around collaboration, as they are efforts to reach a common goal but not always is the way of achieving those goals agreed upon by everyone (or sometimes, not even the goal is common). The only difference between open source community and private ones is that the discussion ("the social drama") tends to be done out in the open for everyone to see in the open source ones, while in the private ones it happens behind closed doors or between individuals behind peoples back.
- deleted 4y ago
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- ensignavenger 4y ago
  Thats because disputes tend to get a lot more attention than things that work well. For example, it seems you never saw any of the news about how the Python community calmly and carefully discussed what they were going to do to move forward after Guido resigned as BDFL?
- 4y ago
didip 4y ago
The most distasteful part about Gitea incorporating is that the overwhelming majority of the code is written by Joe Chen (unknwon) the creator of Gogs (which is where Gitea is forked from). Is Joe part of the incorporated company? Folks who are not happy about this should just switch back to Gogs.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  my uninformed opinion is that the original effort was largely done inside the Great Firewall of China, but the code really was open so it went elsewhere over time. Famously Github itself (which was copied identically here) was purchased by an aggressive partisan, and inside China are numerous clones of Github (to the extent they could pull it off). As a WEIRD myself, I am heavily invested in the social concepts around F/OSS and GPL, and have super hard time with the vibe coming from PRC. Those implications are beyond the scope of this topic though, for the most part. better info welcome
  - KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago
    The original is https://github.com/gogs/gogs https://github.com/gogs/gogs, which is an active MIT project with 10k more stars than gitea, there's nothing inscrutable about it.
citizenpaul 4y ago
Sounds like some sort of hostile takeover was successfully implemented. Seems kind of silly writing something like this. Hey people that beat us over the head and took our stuff, can you be nice now and do A, B, and C? Time to walk away and let it burn if that is the case.
bastardoperator 4y ago
I find it odd that gitea uses github.
- rapnie 4y ago
  The project is quite large and cannot be easily migrated without loss of data, due to rate limits in Github's API's. The preparation has been long going, but they are nearing a point where they move the project to a gitea server. That's vendor lock-in, right there.
  - bastardoperator 4y ago
    The Gitea repo is actually not that big. The harder part is converting issue and pull request metadata from the GitHub archive which they reference here: https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/pull/18165 https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/pull/18165 The migration bundles all of that up so I assume the holdup is writing something that can covert that archive to something Gitea understands or can use.
    - rapnie 4y ago
      Yes, I was referring to the entirety of the project, including all issue discussions and PR metadata.
cp9 4y ago
it sounds like these community members are welcome to fork it and change the name.
kdumont 4y ago
As I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I'm a contributor to gitea and have no ownership in the new organization. I genuinely would like some clarification to the points in the letter, as I'm trying to advise the owners and understand my future with the project. It seems like the demands are: > Implementing an intuitive and fair election process. I think we do that now: https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#owners https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#... Anyone who has contributed to the gitea project more than 2x PRs is invited to be a maintainer. Every maintainer gets 3 votes. Maybe there are some suggestions for improving - please open a PR. > Describing the ways in which democratic decisions are to be made. Again, I'm just confused what's being requested. Moving on. > Providing accessible places where all relevant information can be found. This seems like the same request as above. Or maybe a request for better documentation. I agree. Open a PR, don't fork gitea. > Establishing a DoOcracy that works and continue to improve it. I agree with this and I suspect that was the intention with the original reference to DAOs, but needs to be clarified. > A non-profit organisation owned by the Gitea community is created. > The Gitea trademark and domains are transferred to the non-profit. > The name of the company is changed to avoid any confusion with the non-profit. Does anyone have experience with how this is typically handled? It seems like this is the only actionable request. What are some examples of non-profit open-source companies? Is that typical?
- thayne 4y ago
  > What are some examples of non-profit open-source companies? Is that typical? The Apache foundation? FSF? The Mozilla foundation (which is different but related to the for-profit Mozilla Corporation)? The rust foundation? CNCF? Probably many others. It would also probably be possible to find a suitable existing non-profit that could act as a steward of these resources.
- dachary 4y ago
  There only are three demands: > A non-profit organisation owned by the Gitea community is created. > The Gitea trademark and domains are transferred to the non-profit. > The name of the company is changed to avoid any confusion with the non-profit. A week ago the Gitea project was an informal community trusting elected individuals with essential assets such as the domains and the trademark. They had a clear moral bound (see https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#owners https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#...) to pass on the ownership of the project to their successor. But they thought it was ok to create a company and take the domains and trademark as if they were their property. Maybe the absence of a legal bound made them forget their promise, their moral obligation towards the Gitea community. Creating a non-profit will avoid that kind of problem in the future and give back the domains and the trademark to the Gitea community. If the president of a non-profit was to transfer the domain name to a for-profit company they exclusively control, the members of the non profit will be in a position to sue the president for embezzlement. If the for profit company refuses to give back the domains and trademark, that would be very damaging to the project. The post from Harald Welte on that topic in the Gitea forum is enlightening in that regard, see https://discourse.gitea.io/t/open-source-sustainment-and-the-future-of-gitea-blog/6136/5 https://discourse.gitea.io/t/open-source-sustainment-and-the... The other points you cite from the Open Letter are merely suggestions for future improvements (as stated in the letter), not demands.
freemrkt8 4y ago
Fork it and move on. Humanity has shown it’s all about control of ethno-bubbles. Our biology seeks power and influence. Rent seeking. Stop giving it to these ephemeral terms, logos, memes, and importing the gibberish of outsiders, giving them influence. Don’t give them anymore attention, fork the repo. The people behind these projects are just people. They’re not owed fealty and chance after chance given this behavior happens all the time and users complain all the time when they do. Stop feeding the identity of the sorts who do this. They’re figurative nobodies and random meat bags of billions. Treat them with the same lack of respect in return. There’s no making nice with this kind of agency. Flip it off and walk away.
burnished 4y ago
As an outsider this is not compelling. Claims aren't substantiated or given context (I would expect links to promises and explanations of how specific actors have violated them). There is also a lot of work being expected in the form of non profit companies and organizational structures and seemingly very little volunteering to do that work, which to my eye is immediately suspect. I guess I'd expect this document to better substantiate why being elected puts this duty on these people, and why that claim is more significant than if I elected the author of this letter as Viceroy of Bringing Me Lunch?
- Macha 4y ago
  Presumably the author of this letter didn't participate in a process of deciding the person in charge of bringing you lunch is an elected position, didn't put themselves forward to it and didn't agree to the process happening at all.
- dachary 4y ago
  The Gitea Open Letter has links to the two documents that have the facts you ask for, at the bottom of the page. And with links within the text. They are: https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#owners https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#... https://blog.gitea.io/2022/10/open-source-sustainment-and-the-future-of-gitea/ https://blog.gitea.io/2022/10/open-source-sustainment-and-th...
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throwaccount12 4y ago
I find it very interesting how the person who put together this open letter has a company they started to sell Gitea, and is not even a maintainer of Gitea. So he hasn't even voted. Seems like a very suspicious conflict of interest that should be taken into account, and is very likely acting in bad faith.
- rapnie 4y ago
  Citation needed. Update: Looking at your comment history, you seem to be a 'damage control' account, created at the announcement of Gitea Ltd. I call that bad faith pur sang.
lunnyxiao 4y ago

321 points by d4a 4y ago

Is this yet another case of a liberal license project gone proprietary after the contributions of many developers in the community? If so, this seems like a reminder of why the GPL and its variants are important.

aargh_aargh 4y ago

This is in response to: https://blog.gitea.io/2022/10/open-source-sustainment-and-the-future-of-gitea/ https://blog.gitea.io/2022/10/open-source-sustainment-and-th... as discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33339421 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33339421

TAForObvReasons 4y ago
A bit of context (why this matters) is useful: https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#owners https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#... > Since Gitea is a pure community organization without any company support, to keep the development healthy we will elect three owners every year. > When the new owners have been elected, the old owners will give up ownership to the newly elected owners According to CONTRIBUTING.md, this dates back to 2016. The new company represents a shift from the community model that attracted many developers and users. The issue is that ultimately Lunny holds the trademark and isn't legally bound to uphold whatever agreement is stated in the repo.
- dachary 4y ago
  It may be the case that Lunny forgot he has a moral obligation to the Gitea community that elected him year after year. Even though there is no legally binding contract. What was done is morally unacceptable. But that can be easily fixed. Just give it all back!
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    It could be have been solved even more simply by making it a legal obligation. Drama like this is God's way of teaching hippies why we have contract law.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - mmu_man 4y ago
      I don't see why this wouldn't already be legally binding. He was elected, but he accepted the mandate which is described by this document.
      - MRtecno98 4y ago
        AFAIK he did not sign anything so no actual contract was formed
        sangnoir 4y ago
        Just because a physical contract wasn't signed does nor mean there isn't a legally binding agreement, see promisory estoppel.

tinalumfoil 4y ago

What's been the general opinion of this change to the gitea contributors? It's difficult to match usernames to real names but I don't see overlap between the top contributors and signatories. https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/pulse https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/pulse

dachary 4y ago
A few of the top contributors are the one behind the company. It is fair to assume they are perfectly ok with stealing from the community as it directly benefits them...
- tinalumfoil 4y ago
  I'm a user of gitea and sympathetic to this open letter but it doesn't mean much without significant contributors signing on, and being marked as such. I assume the Gogs developer isn't happy about this but I don't see his name either. Right now it's unclear the connection of the signees to the Gitea project.
  - dachary 4y ago
    Do I think it will persuade Gitea Ltd to give back the domains and the trademark? Honestly, I don't have high hopes. Even if each and every contributor to Gitea signed the letter, I'm unconvinced they will do right by the community. This open letter had to be published even if it has little chance to be effective. It would be horribly wrong for something like that to happen in a Free Software project without offering a simple and gentle way to do right. Ultimately it is quite possible the only solution will be a fork. And as the Gogs fork showed, it only takes a handful of motivated developers to succeed.
- bberenberg 4y ago
  Copyright doesn't exist in a vacuum someone owns the copyright on the logo, it's up to them to determine who they want to transfer / license that to. Trademark will be up to the USPTO and other jurisdictional bodies to determine who has the right to use it to minimize confusion to consumers. The people doing all the work are "stealing" from the "community" that contributes much less? If someone wants to fork here, it seems like they would also need to step up the amount of contributions they're doing if the people currently doing the work are the ones organizing a way to make some money to pay for their time.

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DandyDev 4y ago

Gitea was a fork of Gogs. I'm assuming we'll see a fork of Gitea now?

mhd 4y ago
I'm also reminded of Audacity, so maybe we'll see a half-way popular fork and then the "parent" amending their ways?
- LegitShady 4y ago
  I never saw a follow up to the audacity kerfuffle. Is there any follow ups to whats going on there?
  - masklinn 4y ago
    There were two fork events AFAIK: - DarkAudacity, was mostly a fork by Audacity's own lead dev for experimenting on things which might be too disruptive or polarising for the main project, that ended up being largely reincorporated in Audacity - After acquiring the project, Muse Group drafted a proposal to add invasive telemetry and age restrictions, this led to a few forks and ultimately a reversal of course; soon after the privacy policy changed to add notes about personal data extraction to Russia and the USA, there was more outcry and this was reverted as well
    - LegitShady 4y ago
      there was also some bit about a third party developer using their API to build something and they threatened to have him deported to China when he was a vocal anti CCP activist, essentially threatening him with jail/death if he didn't take down his project.
    - Anunayj 4y ago
      I wonder, how does "acquiring" a open source project work? Does it mean the company acquires assets like Name, Trademark, Domain and such? Since the code itself is open source. (Sure you might be able to get rights to the owner's code) And even after that won't the company itself have to start putting telemetry and stuff themselves since prexisting maintainers definately won't do that. It feels pretty much like a Hostile takeover than acquiring. How do they even benefit from it

aliqot 4y ago

I get tired of community uprisings and activism that fundamentally misunderstand how open source works, fork it. If you're not the in the top producers in a DoOcracy then you neglected your right to exert influence in the direction of the project. I've led a few larger projects and the rate at which the least of us will have the biggest opinions about who is -owed- what is flabbergasting. DoOcracy's are great, but they often flame out with the top contributor finding one day they have a self-appointed board of directors for a passion-project that they just wanted to share with the world.

nerdponx 4y ago
The word "just" is doing a lot of work here.
dachary 4y ago
Sometime people make mistakes, big ones. That happens and this open letter gives them the opportunity to make right by the community. A fork is a last resort option, when everything else failed. Patience and understanding is a good thing in Free Software communities. Even when facing what appears to be a malicious action.
rapnie 4y ago
It is a multi-step process. First you do the right thing and kindly ask to repair trust that has been breached. If that doesn't work, which is a likely outcome, discussion about forks are in order. "Just fork it" is easy to say, but with large projects require careful consideration. There's too many people saying "just fork it" all too casually, if you ask me.
- aliqot 4y ago
  > First you do the right thing and kindly ask to repair trust that has been breached Gitea is a self-labeled "DoOcracy". nobody owes an apology. forking is inherent to open source methodology. ideological conflicts help nobody but those who lead them. the fact is that the work is done by few, and those few have decided to exercise their rights in open source to do what is their prerogative.

hrbf 4y ago

While communication may not have been handled perfectly, this is an annoyed, entitled, entirely unnecessary tract. Tellingly, it never appears to be the ones who do the actual work who throw such tantrums. And how about just extending the benefit of the doubt instead of immediately feeding the outrage machine?

rapnie 4y ago
> Tellingly, it never appears to be the ones who do the actual work who throw such tantrums. And how do you know that, if I may ask?
- aliqot 4y ago
  - maxbond 4y ago
    This is just a feeling you have, which you're asserting as fact. It's a thought terminating cliche that's employed to dismiss a group of people without having to listen to them.
wiseowise 4y ago
> And how about just extending the benefit of the doubt instead of immediately feeding the outrage machine? You give them an inch, they’ll take a mile.
maxbond 4y ago
You can't slander them by saying they're throwing a tantrum, without even talking about what parts of the document you're referring to or why it is you feel that way, and then decry how they're not giving anyone the benefit of the doubt. That is pearl clutching. Writing them to resolve this issue in good faith, is giving them the benefit of the doubt.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  Talk about "feeding the outrage machine". The irony is thick in this thread wirh people who are outraged by "outrage culture", without being specific (trademarks and website, and the broken promise on community ownership of these assets). Even the current top comment complains in the abstract - people have become what they hate as they fight the culture wars.

dpedu 4y ago

What was born in a fork will die in a fork.

computronus 4y ago

Here's an explanation of DoOcracy, as linked from the open letter: https://communitywiki.org/wiki/DoOcracy https://communitywiki.org/wiki/DoOcracy (If you're like me and hadn't heard of the concept before.)

burnished 4y ago
That was very interesting, might make a good submission on its own. I really enjoyed what seemed like an attempt at a neutral description without proselytization.
chungy 4y ago
Sounds like a rebrand of meritocracy.
- nequo 4y ago
  The link contrasts it with meritocracy as this: > In a meritocracy, the most qualified people for a job are selected for that job. In a do-ocracy, whoever does the job gets it, no matter how well they’re qualified.
- maxbond 4y ago
  Addressed in the document: > Meritocracy: In a meritocracy, the most qualified people for a job are selected for that job. In a do-ocracy, whoever does the job gets it, no matter how well they’re qualified. I'd add that "merit" is a less useful concept to construct an organization around than "doing". Merit is impossible to measure, and every measure prone both to being gamed and to unfairly underestimating people and shutting them out, but is also the wrong thing to optimize for. The thing you want to optimize for is the work being, and for the overall effort to result in a high quality end product. Most parts of a given project aren't particularly critical and it doesn't matter who does them as long as they're done. If a particular part of the project is struggling, then the problem is that they needs support, not that they have "insufficient merit;" taking the unnecessary moral component out of it makes it easier to see what the problem is and to organize the resources to solve it. If some role is sensitive and requires special qualifications, that's an exception that can be dealt with as it arises (and if you're in a problem space where that's the rule and not the exception, fair enough, perhaps this isn't the approach for you). I've not been in an organization that labeled itself a "DoOcracy", but it sounds like it's potentially less political and more productive than meritocracy.

KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago

Am I right in assuming that though lots of work has happened in gitea since the fork, at least half of the code there was still written by the guy behind gogs? They're just going to form a for-profit based on his work and cut him out entirely?

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twawaaay 4y ago
The issue isn't about access to the code (which is not threatened at all). The issue is about community enjoying access to the project name and domain name.
Liquix 4y ago
It's MIT licensed, so anyone can incorporate based on the original author's work and turn a profit. He is not owed anything. This is an eventuality you are implicitly accepting when choosing MIT over GPL.
- cmeacham98 4y ago
  I'm confused, this would also be true with the GPL, no (just with the added restriction they would have to redistribute their changes)? My understanding is the point of free software is that you can do (almost) anything you want with it, including sell it.
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  GPL or MIT doesn't really matter all that much here; the only difference is that with the GPL I'd have release all the source. There is nothing in the GPL stopping me from starting a Compiler Inc.™ SaaS based on gcc that "compiles code as a service".
- KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago
  Of course they're legally allowed to do so, it's just a question of does it make sense vis-a-vis their stated values about community and rewarding the people who has worked on the project.

itzz_amar 4y ago

dec0dedab0de 4y ago

...domains and trademarks...are one of the most important assets any Free Software project has (if not the most important)... This rubs me the wrong way. Surely the discussion history, documentation, and the freaking code are more important than the name. I generally don't like open source becoming beholden to comercial interests, and I don't know enough about this story to know if that's really what is happening here. Reading that the name may be more important than the code is just very off-putting.

yamtaddle 4y ago
On the other hand... OpenOffice vs. LibreOffice. Clearly the name was immensely valuable in that case.
- coding123 4y ago
  Hudson and Jenkins too https://medium.com/swlh/hudson-is-retiring-the-end-of-a-jenkins-story-9cee866135ab https://medium.com/swlh/hudson-is-retiring-the-end-of-a-jenk...
- ipaddr 4y ago
  The new name was the issue, it was too clever and close to the original. OfficeSuite or IceOffice or TerraOffice. Something about the word Libre makes it seem like the outdated copy.
- red_trumpet 4y ago
  Sure it was immensely valuable. But imagine if the code disappeared overnight. Then LibreOffice wouldn't be were it is now.
  - afiori 4y ago
    If LibreOffice's code disappeared or was stolen overnight they could pretty quickly get it back from one of their many forks, if their trademark/domain/package names got stolen or lost it would cause lasting damage.
  - 4y ago

nonrandomstring 4y ago

I highly recommend Adam Curtis' documentary "The Mayfair Set" [1], especially Part 2, detailing the lives of Jim Slater, Tiny Rowland and James Goldsmith who pioneered the hostile takeover, and the effect of acquisitions and mergers on the overall global economy. Hard to imagine that only 50 years ago this wasn't a "done thing". Today I see these same patterns play out in development and artistic communities oblivious to 51 percent and Sybil attacks, unaware of who is holding what key assets, and then being surprised by takeovers and defectors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mayfair_Set https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mayfair_Set

aasasd 4y ago
> The release of Pandora's Box (1992) marked the introduction of Curtis's distinctive presentation that uses collage to explore aspects of sociology, psychology, philosophy and political history. His style has been described as involving, "whiplash digressions, menacing atmospherics and arpeggiated scores, and the near-psychedelic compilation of archival footage", narrated by Curtis himself with "patrician economy and assertion". Is this guy in fact the inventor of the annoying modern style of political documentary, where I have to listen to anxiety-inducing drones and the worst kind of movie-trailer voice, nonstop for an hour at least? The one used by shittiest propaganda tv channels? And for some inexplicable reason also borrowed by Youtube personalities that supposedly appeal to thinking, educated people in opposition to that propaganda tv.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  > annoying modern style of political documentary, where I have to > listen to anxiety-inducing drones and the worst kind of > movie-trailer voice, nonstop for an hour least? Well you're in for a real treat with "Russia:Trauma Zone" then. Curtis listened to all the bleating criticisms and delivered six hours of absolutely bare footage, which juxtaposed and sequenced speaks for itself. The result is even more powerful than ever before - which shows that incorporating criticism, even when it's only about surface style, pays off. The only criticism I have is that the title is a bit bland. It should gave been called "Natasha's Boots". She is the star of the show. And in the ened she gets her boots. > that propaganda tv All TV and social media is propaganda. Even cat videos. It propagates. It carries a message. Even if the message is "Don't think".

lovich 4y ago

I’ve never participated in an open source community so this is the view of an ignorant third party. Everytime I see anything related to the open source world bubble up into the public I am only reminded of high school and college level social drama. It seems utterly exhausting to be involved

nequo 4y ago
Disputes are not unique to open source projects. But they usually have no hierarchies and no contracts. So disputes are settled this way.
MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
Honestly put me off ever wanting to get involved.
deleted 4y ago
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capableweb 4y ago
Every larger community (or even medium sized ones) have friction around collaboration, as they are efforts to reach a common goal but not always is the way of achieving those goals agreed upon by everyone (or sometimes, not even the goal is common). The only difference between open source community and private ones is that the discussion ("the social drama") tends to be done out in the open for everyone to see in the open source ones, while in the private ones it happens behind closed doors or between individuals behind peoples back.
deleted 4y ago
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ensignavenger 4y ago
Thats because disputes tend to get a lot more attention than things that work well. For example, it seems you never saw any of the news about how the Python community calmly and carefully discussed what they were going to do to move forward after Guido resigned as BDFL?
4y ago

didip 4y ago

The most distasteful part about Gitea incorporating is that the overwhelming majority of the code is written by Joe Chen (unknwon) the creator of Gogs (which is where Gitea is forked from). Is Joe part of the incorporated company? Folks who are not happy about this should just switch back to Gogs.

mistrial9 4y ago
my uninformed opinion is that the original effort was largely done inside the Great Firewall of China, but the code really was open so it went elsewhere over time. Famously Github itself (which was copied identically here) was purchased by an aggressive partisan, and inside China are numerous clones of Github (to the extent they could pull it off). As a WEIRD myself, I am heavily invested in the social concepts around F/OSS and GPL, and have super hard time with the vibe coming from PRC. Those implications are beyond the scope of this topic though, for the most part. better info welcome
- KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago
  The original is https://github.com/gogs/gogs https://github.com/gogs/gogs, which is an active MIT project with 10k more stars than gitea, there's nothing inscrutable about it.

citizenpaul 4y ago

Sounds like some sort of hostile takeover was successfully implemented. Seems kind of silly writing something like this. Hey people that beat us over the head and took our stuff, can you be nice now and do A, B, and C? Time to walk away and let it burn if that is the case.

bastardoperator 4y ago

I find it odd that gitea uses github.

rapnie 4y ago
The project is quite large and cannot be easily migrated without loss of data, due to rate limits in Github's API's. The preparation has been long going, but they are nearing a point where they move the project to a gitea server. That's vendor lock-in, right there.
- bastardoperator 4y ago
  The Gitea repo is actually not that big. The harder part is converting issue and pull request metadata from the GitHub archive which they reference here: https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/pull/18165 https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/pull/18165 The migration bundles all of that up so I assume the holdup is writing something that can covert that archive to something Gitea understands or can use.
  - rapnie 4y ago
    Yes, I was referring to the entirety of the project, including all issue discussions and PR metadata.

cp9 4y ago

it sounds like these community members are welcome to fork it and change the name.

kdumont 4y ago

As I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I'm a contributor to gitea and have no ownership in the new organization. I genuinely would like some clarification to the points in the letter, as I'm trying to advise the owners and understand my future with the project. It seems like the demands are: > Implementing an intuitive and fair election process. I think we do that now: https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#owners https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#... Anyone who has contributed to the gitea project more than 2x PRs is invited to be a maintainer. Every maintainer gets 3 votes. Maybe there are some suggestions for improving - please open a PR. > Describing the ways in which democratic decisions are to be made. Again, I'm just confused what's being requested. Moving on. > Providing accessible places where all relevant information can be found. This seems like the same request as above. Or maybe a request for better documentation. I agree. Open a PR, don't fork gitea. > Establishing a DoOcracy that works and continue to improve it. I agree with this and I suspect that was the intention with the original reference to DAOs, but needs to be clarified. > A non-profit organisation owned by the Gitea community is created. > The Gitea trademark and domains are transferred to the non-profit. > The name of the company is changed to avoid any confusion with the non-profit. Does anyone have experience with how this is typically handled? It seems like this is the only actionable request. What are some examples of non-profit open-source companies? Is that typical?

thayne 4y ago
> What are some examples of non-profit open-source companies? Is that typical? The Apache foundation? FSF? The Mozilla foundation (which is different but related to the for-profit Mozilla Corporation)? The rust foundation? CNCF? Probably many others. It would also probably be possible to find a suitable existing non-profit that could act as a steward of these resources.
dachary 4y ago
There only are three demands: > A non-profit organisation owned by the Gitea community is created. > The Gitea trademark and domains are transferred to the non-profit. > The name of the company is changed to avoid any confusion with the non-profit. A week ago the Gitea project was an informal community trusting elected individuals with essential assets such as the domains and the trademark. They had a clear moral bound (see https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#owners https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#...) to pass on the ownership of the project to their successor. But they thought it was ok to create a company and take the domains and trademark as if they were their property. Maybe the absence of a legal bound made them forget their promise, their moral obligation towards the Gitea community. Creating a non-profit will avoid that kind of problem in the future and give back the domains and the trademark to the Gitea community. If the president of a non-profit was to transfer the domain name to a for-profit company they exclusively control, the members of the non profit will be in a position to sue the president for embezzlement. If the for profit company refuses to give back the domains and trademark, that would be very damaging to the project. The post from Harald Welte on that topic in the Gitea forum is enlightening in that regard, see https://discourse.gitea.io/t/open-source-sustainment-and-the-future-of-gitea-blog/6136/5 https://discourse.gitea.io/t/open-source-sustainment-and-the... The other points you cite from the Open Letter are merely suggestions for future improvements (as stated in the letter), not demands.

freemrkt8 4y ago

Fork it and move on. Humanity has shown it’s all about control of ethno-bubbles. Our biology seeks power and influence. Rent seeking. Stop giving it to these ephemeral terms, logos, memes, and importing the gibberish of outsiders, giving them influence. Don’t give them anymore attention, fork the repo. The people behind these projects are just people. They’re not owed fealty and chance after chance given this behavior happens all the time and users complain all the time when they do. Stop feeding the identity of the sorts who do this. They’re figurative nobodies and random meat bags of billions. Treat them with the same lack of respect in return. There’s no making nice with this kind of agency. Flip it off and walk away.

burnished 4y ago

As an outsider this is not compelling. Claims aren't substantiated or given context (I would expect links to promises and explanations of how specific actors have violated them). There is also a lot of work being expected in the form of non profit companies and organizational structures and seemingly very little volunteering to do that work, which to my eye is immediately suspect. I guess I'd expect this document to better substantiate why being elected puts this duty on these people, and why that claim is more significant than if I elected the author of this letter as Viceroy of Bringing Me Lunch?

Macha 4y ago
Presumably the author of this letter didn't participate in a process of deciding the person in charge of bringing you lunch is an elected position, didn't put themselves forward to it and didn't agree to the process happening at all.
dachary 4y ago
The Gitea Open Letter has links to the two documents that have the facts you ask for, at the bottom of the page. And with links within the text. They are: https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#owners https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#... https://blog.gitea.io/2022/10/open-source-sustainment-and-the-future-of-gitea/ https://blog.gitea.io/2022/10/open-source-sustainment-and-th...

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throwaccount12 4y ago

I find it very interesting how the person who put together this open letter has a company they started to sell Gitea, and is not even a maintainer of Gitea. So he hasn't even voted. Seems like a very suspicious conflict of interest that should be taken into account, and is very likely acting in bad faith.

rapnie 4y ago
Citation needed. Update: Looking at your comment history, you seem to be a 'damage control' account, created at the announcement of Gitea Ltd. I call that bad faith pur sang.

lunnyxiao 4y ago