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Unfortunately the software forge landscape leaves a lot to be desired right now. GitLab has leaned completely into becoming an enterprise DevSecOps platform at

Unfortunately the software forge landscape leaves a lot to be desired right now. GitLab has leaned completely into becoming an enterprise DevSecOps platform at the expense of open source. Their 2015 homepage [0] emphasized its own open source nature and their free offerings. Their current homepage [1] doesn't mention open source at all and only includes the word "free" in the phrase "free trial". The banner at the top of the page currently reads "GitLab 17 & the future of AI-driven development". They've come a long way from being the underdog champion of open source. Gitea is doing better for now, but the trademark was transferred to a for-profit (Gitea Ltd) and the main gitea.com domain is now being administered by a different for-profit (CommitGo, Inc), with very little transparency about what either of those for-profits are doing and how they'll use their ownership of these key resources. In light of recent license changes by major for-profit open-source companies and the recent behavior of GitLab, I'm not thrilled about Gitea's IP transfer to multiple opaque for-profit companies. Codeberg.org's fork of Gitea (Forgejo) has a governance structure that is more appealing in that it is not profit-oriented, but I'm nervous about overmoderation in the Forgejo community [2]. Constructive opposition to the election of moderators (based on their past abuse of authority) got edited away as "ad hominem attacks" and has since been completely deleted from the election thread. They're a nonprofit, but after watching the episode linked below unfold and then get swept away entirely I don't trust their governance process at all. There are other, smaller options that have fewer problems, but none with anything like the features that GitHub offers. [0] http://web.archive.org/web/20150316170559/https://about.gitlab.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20150316170559/https://about.gitl... [1] https://about.gitlab.com/ https://about.gitlab.com/ [2] See this HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39397269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39397269. The critical comments that had been edited at the time of that HN thread have now been eliminated entirely from the linked issue and the only Internet Archive hit that's left for that page is from after the comments were completely deleted. That's not a good look.

neilv 2y ago
Thanks for the info! Just a random thought, but would some kind of partnership or merger between Mozilla and Codeberg... be good for both, and for the Internet?
- lolinder 2y ago
  I don't know. Mozilla's leadership has been bad for a while now, and while I currently use Forgejo for my personal stuff, what I saw of Forgejo's leadership in that issue makes me nervous about the parent organization as well. Since they've deleted the criticism from the issue and removed it from the Internet Archive, I feel some level of obligation to get down my memory of that conversation before it fades, and here seems as good a place as any: This person, crystal, applied to become an "enforcer" after previously having lost a lot of trust in the community. That bit you can still see, including the acknowledgement that this abuse of authority did occur. Someone posted saying basically that they still didn't trust crystal after whatever happened previously (they gave details of the story, but I don't remember them) and that they were opposed to their appointment to any position of authority, regardless of promises that they wouldn't do it again. After a bit of back and forth, someone (I'm assuming Earl Warren) went in and edited all of this critic's comments with a note saying that the comments had been removed by the moderation team for "ad hominem attacks". That was disturbing to me at the time—the critic's criticisms were not non sequiturs, when someone is applying to be an "enforcer" their past abuse of authority is absolutely relevant! And of course, now that I find that they have now memory-holed that discussion entirely I'm even more perturbed. That's not the behavior of an organization that deserves any of our trust, and I don't know how much of the bad behavior that I saw there applies to Codeberg as a whole.
  - neilv 2y ago
    Understood entirely. Thank you. It used to be a lot easier to think of do-gooder organizations in tech that seemed trustworthy, and easy decisions to back. I don't know how much it is change of the orgs, and how much it is that we have more information about them. My next random idea would be the Internet Archive, taking up ensuring an open Git forge is available to society. There's arguably some overlap of mission, in preserving information, and they do big infrastructure already. But my wild first guess is that this probably isn't enough overlap for them to justify the investment it would require. I don't think the FSF would be able to execute on anything viable, though there's mission overlap, and their heart is in the right place.
hardwaresofton 2y ago
I could understand if the reasoning to go with GitHub vs GitLab was more about number of developers on platform, but it is hard to accept the reasoning. You’re chastising GitLab for becoming a platform and chasing enterprise users… The alternative is Microsoft, and supporting a monopoly power. It seems to me like choosing GitLab would foster a more equal ecosystem of forge choices, kind of like me supporting Mozilla encourages a more equal ecosystem of browsers. GitLab is still open source and GitHub has never been.
- lolinder 2y ago
  I'm not chastising them: they're making the move that is most rational given their publicly-traded status. That's their prerogative. What you're probably picking up on is that I do miss the old GitLab. My emotions there aren't anger or frustration, it's more nostalgia and a faint sense of sadness. They were the good guys, and while they're still open core the open source spirit that they once had seems to have faded. > It seems to me like choosing GitLab would foster a more equal ecosystem of forge choices, kind of like me supporting Mozilla encourages a more equal ecosystem of browsers. This is actually a very good comparison. I'm writing this from Firefox, which I use on principle to avoid supporting Google, but I also deeply distrust Mozilla and have a long list of things I wish they would do differently. They're not good, they're just better than Google. I also use a local Forgejo instance for my personal projects, even though I trust Forgejo's governance even less than Mozilla's. I only use them because I trust them better than I do Microsoft, GitLab, or Gitea. I didn't write the above to try to dissuade anyone from choosing a FOSS software forge, merely to acknowledge that there is no obvious good choice that any given FOSS project should choose. All three of the forges that can claim to compete with GitHub have pretty substantial red flags for their long-term viability, and I can sympathize with any project deciding that they'd rather go with the simplest option.
  - hardwaresofton 2y ago
    I appreciate the thoughtful response! > I didn't write the above to try to dissuade anyone from choosing a FOSS software forge, merely to acknowledge that there is no obvious good choice that any given FOSS project should choose. All three of the forges that can claim to compete with GitHub have pretty substantial red flags for their long-term viability, and I can sympathize with any project deciding that they'd rather go with the simplest option. I posted mostly to discourage this particular opinion. IMHO there is a clear choice — at the very least between GitLab and GitHub in this conversation, especially in with the F/OSS consideration. Maybe it’s better to flip the question — what makes you trust Microsoft more than GitLab in this situation?
Larrikin 2y ago
As someone who just setup Gitea on a personal server, that will strictly be used by me and maybe a couple friend's or family members in the future, is there any down side to just continuing to use it? If its fully self hosted on my server, no connection to any business work, and only used for personal stuff, should I care at all about their governance structure, possible changes to the license, etc? Seems like any kind of shady data sucking changes in an update would have a huge stink made about it.
- lolinder 2y ago
  I'm not aware of any problems with Gitea yet. I'm just nervous because of the lack of clarity surrounding their future plans.

neilv 2y ago

Thanks for the info! Just a random thought, but would some kind of partnership or merger between Mozilla and Codeberg... be good for both, and for the Internet?

lolinder 2y ago
I don't know. Mozilla's leadership has been bad for a while now, and while I currently use Forgejo for my personal stuff, what I saw of Forgejo's leadership in that issue makes me nervous about the parent organization as well. Since they've deleted the criticism from the issue and removed it from the Internet Archive, I feel some level of obligation to get down my memory of that conversation before it fades, and here seems as good a place as any: This person, crystal, applied to become an "enforcer" after previously having lost a lot of trust in the community. That bit you can still see, including the acknowledgement that this abuse of authority did occur. Someone posted saying basically that they still didn't trust crystal after whatever happened previously (they gave details of the story, but I don't remember them) and that they were opposed to their appointment to any position of authority, regardless of promises that they wouldn't do it again. After a bit of back and forth, someone (I'm assuming Earl Warren) went in and edited all of this critic's comments with a note saying that the comments had been removed by the moderation team for "ad hominem attacks". That was disturbing to me at the time—the critic's criticisms were not non sequiturs, when someone is applying to be an "enforcer" their past abuse of authority is absolutely relevant! And of course, now that I find that they have now memory-holed that discussion entirely I'm even more perturbed. That's not the behavior of an organization that deserves any of our trust, and I don't know how much of the bad behavior that I saw there applies to Codeberg as a whole.
- neilv 2y ago
  Understood entirely. Thank you. It used to be a lot easier to think of do-gooder organizations in tech that seemed trustworthy, and easy decisions to back. I don't know how much it is change of the orgs, and how much it is that we have more information about them. My next random idea would be the Internet Archive, taking up ensuring an open Git forge is available to society. There's arguably some overlap of mission, in preserving information, and they do big infrastructure already. But my wild first guess is that this probably isn't enough overlap for them to justify the investment it would require. I don't think the FSF would be able to execute on anything viable, though there's mission overlap, and their heart is in the right place.

hardwaresofton 2y ago

I could understand if the reasoning to go with GitHub vs GitLab was more about number of developers on platform, but it is hard to accept the reasoning. You’re chastising GitLab for becoming a platform and chasing enterprise users… The alternative is Microsoft, and supporting a monopoly power. It seems to me like choosing GitLab would foster a more equal ecosystem of forge choices, kind of like me supporting Mozilla encourages a more equal ecosystem of browsers. GitLab is still open source and GitHub has never been.

lolinder 2y ago
I'm not chastising them: they're making the move that is most rational given their publicly-traded status. That's their prerogative. What you're probably picking up on is that I do miss the old GitLab. My emotions there aren't anger or frustration, it's more nostalgia and a faint sense of sadness. They were the good guys, and while they're still open core the open source spirit that they once had seems to have faded. > It seems to me like choosing GitLab would foster a more equal ecosystem of forge choices, kind of like me supporting Mozilla encourages a more equal ecosystem of browsers. This is actually a very good comparison. I'm writing this from Firefox, which I use on principle to avoid supporting Google, but I also deeply distrust Mozilla and have a long list of things I wish they would do differently. They're not good, they're just better than Google. I also use a local Forgejo instance for my personal projects, even though I trust Forgejo's governance even less than Mozilla's. I only use them because I trust them better than I do Microsoft, GitLab, or Gitea. I didn't write the above to try to dissuade anyone from choosing a FOSS software forge, merely to acknowledge that there is no obvious good choice that any given FOSS project should choose. All three of the forges that can claim to compete with GitHub have pretty substantial red flags for their long-term viability, and I can sympathize with any project deciding that they'd rather go with the simplest option.
- hardwaresofton 2y ago
  I appreciate the thoughtful response! > I didn't write the above to try to dissuade anyone from choosing a FOSS software forge, merely to acknowledge that there is no obvious good choice that any given FOSS project should choose. All three of the forges that can claim to compete with GitHub have pretty substantial red flags for their long-term viability, and I can sympathize with any project deciding that they'd rather go with the simplest option. I posted mostly to discourage this particular opinion. IMHO there is a clear choice — at the very least between GitLab and GitHub in this conversation, especially in with the F/OSS consideration. Maybe it’s better to flip the question — what makes you trust Microsoft more than GitLab in this situation?

Larrikin 2y ago

As someone who just setup Gitea on a personal server, that will strictly be used by me and maybe a couple friend's or family members in the future, is there any down side to just continuing to use it? If its fully self hosted on my server, no connection to any business work, and only used for personal stuff, should I care at all about their governance structure, possible changes to the license, etc? Seems like any kind of shady data sucking changes in an update would have a huge stink made about it.

lolinder 2y ago
I'm not aware of any problems with Gitea yet. I'm just nervous because of the lack of clarity surrounding their future plans.