Yeah looks like they are selling support, which I have no problem with. I actually recently set up Gitea and Drone together and it is a match made in heaven. I don't have a problem if open source developers try to monetize their work. I will likely try to do the same with a few projects in the future, lol
I also don't have a problem if open source developers try to monetize their work. In fact I think it's great, if done right. But context is important here.
In Gitea's case, I think this could have been done right, with the community's knowledge and involvement. But that's not what happened. Two of the three "elected owners" of the project effectively undertook a hostile takeover, transferring the ownership of the domains and trademarks to a secretive private company, without telling anyone until after the fact.
I know people who were formerly active maintainers, and they were taken completely by surprise – even though it turns out that preparations for this had been ongoing behind closed doors for many months.
At first, I and many others thought it was perhaps a case of failures of communication, and were prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt. But after an open letter was signed by many community members, and the people behind Gitea Ltd had ample opportunity to improve the situation, they only dug their heels in and made things worse, and refused to answer questions beyond corporate-speak PR posts. It was at that point that the decision was taken to fork.
As a Gitea user and as someone who is excited about the forge ecosystem and the future of forge federation, I truly hope that Gitea as a community project continues to thrive, and that the company ultimately doesn't derail the community.
Unfortunately, I am also very pessimistic about that being the reality, and so I think this fork is a very positive development.
I don't have any problem with them selling support and hosting.
I do have a problem with "An enhanced enterprise version", because this often means arbitrarily locking features behind that enterprise version and working against the interests of the open source code base. What happens in reality is probably more down to the immediate maintainers... however with bad incentives it's just a matter of time.
jrop|3 years ago
Yeah looks like they are selling support, which I have no problem with. I actually recently set up Gitea and Drone together and it is a match made in heaven. I don't have a problem if open source developers try to monetize their work. I will likely try to do the same with a few projects in the future, lol
cmjs|3 years ago
In Gitea's case, I think this could have been done right, with the community's knowledge and involvement. But that's not what happened. Two of the three "elected owners" of the project effectively undertook a hostile takeover, transferring the ownership of the domains and trademarks to a secretive private company, without telling anyone until after the fact. I know people who were formerly active maintainers, and they were taken completely by surprise – even though it turns out that preparations for this had been ongoing behind closed doors for many months.
At first, I and many others thought it was perhaps a case of failures of communication, and were prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt. But after an open letter was signed by many community members, and the people behind Gitea Ltd had ample opportunity to improve the situation, they only dug their heels in and made things worse, and refused to answer questions beyond corporate-speak PR posts. It was at that point that the decision was taken to fork.
As a Gitea user and as someone who is excited about the forge ecosystem and the future of forge federation, I truly hope that Gitea as a community project continues to thrive, and that the company ultimately doesn't derail the community. Unfortunately, I am also very pessimistic about that being the reality, and so I think this fork is a very positive development.
tomxor|3 years ago
I do have a problem with "An enhanced enterprise version", because this often means arbitrarily locking features behind that enterprise version and working against the interests of the open source code base. What happens in reality is probably more down to the immediate maintainers... however with bad incentives it's just a matter of time.
tiagod|3 years ago
joencott|3 years ago