In reaction to the surprise announcement of the creation of Gitea Ltd and the transfer of domains and trademark to this company, worried members of the Community have written an Open Letter to the elected Owners of the project.

The request is to return the assets and manage them by a community-led non-profit organization and furthermore improve the community organization, so that the Trust and Health of the project is restored.

The Open Letter can be signed by sending a PR to the Codeberg repository.

  • poVoq@slrpnk.net
    52·
    2 years ago

    Hmm, well I agree that a non-profit would have been the better move, but ultimately the trademarks and domain doesn’t mean that much. The code is open and it can be forked and renamed.

    What really matters are the main contributors (See OpenOffice -> Libreoffice move) and I am not sure what their stance on it is. But I suspect they might have been the driving force for creating the for-profit company?

    • smallcirclesOP
      5·
      2 years ago

      Yeah that might be a next step, though a fork needs dedicated people who want to commit to it. There’s a risk, and the split that happens in the early stages in the community is not nice either. Btw, there’s an interesting HN discussion going on about the letter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33372471

      • poVoq@slrpnk.net
        5·
        2 years ago

        What I mean is: if the core contributors are not behind the fork, it is pretty pointless to fork. Gitea is already a Gogs fork, where the more active contributors felt like the original creator was holding the project back.

        • smallcirclesOP
          4·
          2 years ago

          There are a couple of maintainers who signed the open letter, and also Otto Richter of Codeberg. When Gogs was forked, I believe initially the number of people involved in the fork was also very small. But I am fully behind an attempt to try to solve the issues without the need for a fork, and having a Gitea project that can be healthier than before. There is this opportunity for that, as now there’s a much more inclusive open discussion on community issues and project strategy / direction.

          • theoteno
            3·
            2 years ago

            Well, in the end: it became a (soft) fork. In the FAQ, an answer is that Forgejo being similar to LineageOS and Android’s connection towards each other. Or how QT Company & KDE Free QT Foundaion are releated to one another.

            For now, looks like Codeberg will be replacing Gitea with Forgejo codeberg/gitea from v1.18

            • smallcirclesOP
              2·
              2 years ago

              Yes indeed. I am involved in the project and planned launch is mid December. Anyone interested can learn more in the Matrix chatroom.