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Forgejo makes a full break from Gitea (lwn.net)
70 points by jwilk on Feb 27, 2024 | hide | past | favorite | 39 comments


It's a tangent, but I think it's interesting that Gitea started trying to self host in Feb 2017 (https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/1029) and hasn't got there yet (based on how active the github issues/PR page are).

https://about.gitea.com/ offers me a "free cloud trial" and otherwise sounds very like other web front ends to git. So like github, except they don't trust it themselves.

In contract forgejo has "Self-hosted alternative to GitHub" written in big letters on the landing page. https://codeberg.org/forgejo is indeed self hosted.


But then right below that on the Gitea page you linked they list their docker pulls statistics, which is primarily the self hosted community. Mixed messages indeed


Read some details in the issue and you will get an idea why they haven't migrated yet The size of the issues in their repo is huge! Especially when including media like photos and videos.

Also funding hosting for such a thing is challenging, AFAIK they found a Chinese sponsor, but some of the community weren't so pleased with them.


You don't have to archive every last media and binary file. The size will only increase as time goes on, and so too will the expense of maintaining the archive. Better to start chewing now rather than wait for Microsoft to finish off GitLab and look for other competitors to demolish. I think they will be quick to realize they have one playing around in their front yard.


(I'm not part of the Gitea community, just a casual user of gitea since the gogs days, so please take this for what it's worth -) I don't understand why Forges (and what feels like a large part of the free software community) is against corporate sponsorship.

The stated goal of '"ensuring the long term success of the project" by allowing companies "unable to contribute back to open source via sponsorship or code contribution" to support Gitea in the form of paying Gitea Ltd directly ' seems extremely reasonable to a passerby and didn't seem to come with any strings attached, so why the knee jerk reaction of forking the project?


From the article:

> Originally the project's governance, spelled out in an earlier version of its CONTRIBUTING.md file, specified the project would have three "owners" responsible for keeping development ""healthy"". The actual responsibilities and rights of the owners were vague, but they were to be elected yearly by Gitea's maintainers ""who decide with a simple voting model which contributions get accepted and who will play the owner role"".

> That community of maintainers did not get a vote when Gitea's domain and trademarks were quietly transferred by two of Gitea's "owners" (Lunny Xiao and Matti Ranta) to a for-profit business called Gitea Ltd. The announcement said this was to meet the goal of ""ensuring the long term success of the project"" by allowing companies ""unable to contribute back to open source via sponsorship or code contribution"" to support Gitea in the form of paying Gitea Ltd directly.


You might want to take a look at this thread. It's particularly spicy. Seems like the Forgejo founder is being disingenuous (though the Gitea founders are not much better either). Everybody is just in it for the money.

https://lwn.net/Articles/963608/


Unpronounceable and uber-niche software project breaks from slightly less niche software project


Calling it niche is a bit misleading. It has a clear and useful purpose, which is essentially the same as Github and Gitlab. But it's free! I'm not using it now but the couple of times I have, it seemed good.


For previous discussion, see also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39393794


So GitLab, Gitea, Fossil, ForgeJo, OneDev... the field is so balkanized, and so many of them are almost kinda sorta compatible with each other but not quite. The choices are intimidating because there's always the fear that you'll invest in a platform created by a small team and then be left orphaned if it fails.

...

So, how do you pronounce Forgejo? Forge-Joe? Forjei-ho? Forjei-o?


| Forgejo (pronounced /forˈd͡ʒe.jo/) is inspired by forĝejo, the Esperanto word for forge.

https://forgejo.org/faq/

They also have a recording posted: https://forgejo.org/static/forgejo.mp4


If you need a recording of the pronunciation I think you've failed basic branding and marketing.

Also the pronunciation recording does not match how I would expect it to be spelled. Fordgeo is what I'm hearing


Oh, just like Linux? https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/SillySounds...

I have a feeling that's not the best metric, but go off.


Who cares about marketing.

Nobody knows how to pronounce gitea either. Half of people pronounce it "gi-te-ah".


And let's not get started about the spelling vs pronunciation of LaTeX, NGINX, and Kubernetes.


Clarify? All of those have straightforward pronunciations and spellings, with maybe nginx's spelling the exception, but it's also very popular.


Wikipedia lists two pronunciations for LaTeX: "/ˈlɑːtɛk/ LAH-tek or /ˈleɪtɛk/ LAY-tek".

On top of those, I've also heard the k at the end be replaced with h, which would also be correct, as per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi_(letter)

The common pronunciation of latex /ˈleɪˌtɛks/ would be incorrect.

For Kubernetes, Wikipedia lists eight different pronunciations: /ˌk(j)uːbərˈnɛtɪs, -ˈneɪtɪs, -ˈneɪtiːz, -ˈnɛtiːz/, with the j after k being optional.

NGINX feels like the most straightforward out of these, even though it is rarely pronounced correctly.

As for myself, I like to call it NG Inks, as in next-gen tattoos, at least whenever I hear it pronounced wrong :)


Yeah, using an Esperanto word, and in particular one where the letters have very different pronounciation from English (the J is pronounced like Y and the E is not silent) seems like a bad move given that realistically the software world is in English.


> different pronounciation from English

Just like .gif, yeah.


It's a niche product targeting nerds. Ideally nerds that have heard of Esperanto, and maybe even dabbled with it.


> If you need a recording of the pronunciation I think you've failed basic branding and marketing.

Their landing page has this to say:

> Forgejo is a self-hosted lightweight software forge.

This tells me basically nothing, at least nothing useful in terms of what they are offering.


>> Forgejo is a self-hosted lightweight software forge.

>This tells me basically nothing, at least nothing useful in terms of what they are offering.

What else could they add to be clearer?

* Software forge

* Self hosted

* Lightweight

I find these terms to be clear.


People who are not already using one of the non-Github forges have no clue what a "software forge" is. It's a very niche bit of jargon, and these days most developers are not even familiar with sourceforge.


What is a lightweight software forge?


What is a "software forge"?


I really had no idea that it was not a very clear term.

I was wrong.

Golly, I learnt something!


Sounded like "for jail" to me.


So, non-silent E and the J is pronounced as a Y.

....

Yeah, everybody's gonna call it Forge Joe.


> So GitLab, Gitea, Fossil, ForgeJo, OneDev... the field is so balkanized

Which ones are compatible with GitHub actions? To me that is the most important aspect. So much is done with those and I really don't want to relearn.


You can use Woodpecker and not be tied to Github


Gitea and forgejo don't have CI/CD at all.


> Gitea ... don't have CI/CD at all.

That seems to be no longer the case?

>> Starting with Gitea 1.19, Gitea Actions are available as a built-in CI/CD solution. ... It is similar and compatible to GitHub Actions, and its name is inspired by it too.

https://docs.gitea.com/next/usage/actions/overview

Which seems to have been released almost a year ago

https://blog.gitea.com/release-of-1.19.0/


Ah I did not look at gitea for about 2 years. That's cool!


Forgejo has experimental CI/CD

https://forgejo.org/2023-02-27-forgejo-actions/

They make no guarantee of compatibility with Github Actions but they seem to be aiming for it based on the syntax.


https://forgejo.org/docs/v1.20/user/actions/

https://docs.gitea.com/usage/actions/overview

Both have “Actions” that are act based and very similar to GitHub Actions and offers some compatibility.


Ohhh then I'm out of date.


Maybe like "forgo"?


What's balkanized here? Theres GitHub, theres GitLab, the other ones don't exist.




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