[HN Gopher] An open letter to gitea
___________________________________________________________________
An open letter to gitea
Author : d4a
Score : 266 points
Date : 2022-10-28 15:18 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gitea-open-letter.coding.social)
(TXT) w3m dump (gitea-open-letter.coding.social)
| aliqot wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The word "just" is doing a lot of work here.
| dboreham wrote:
| The dispute here isn't about the code. It's about the domain
| name and trademark.
| aliqot wrote:
| patcon wrote:
| It might be helpful if you share information on where your
| perspective is coming from. Your comments here confuse me,
| as someone peering in from the outside.
|
| (disclaimer: I co-organize within an IRL 5000 member
| community revolving around civics, software and open
| culture. and through that, I chum around with folks
| involved in organizational transformation in general.)
|
| EDIT: or not. Just maybe ppl will care more to hear or
| understand the opinions you're broadcasting if you offer
| some context?
| aliqot wrote:
| > qualify yourself, you've contradicted me!
|
| No. It's friday. Go write some code. The essence of this
| thread is people feeling they're owed what they aren't.
| patcon wrote:
| You sound like the sort of tech peer who I don't get
| along with, nor want to work with, and so I'll take my
| leave
| aliqot wrote:
| reanimus wrote:
| A commit a minute? There's really no need to put on airs
| cowmix wrote:
| I use gitea and I do some proselytizing for it.
|
| I do care if many people who are "doing" for an OS project
| are not informed with or have a choice in regards to the
| "brand" of the project. Sure, we can all fork this project
| (which started out as a fork) but it would be nice of
| people played nice and so we can all stay with the current
| fork we love.
|
| Having said all this, I need to read up on this because
| this might be a nothing burger. My comments are, in
| general, my expectations of how OS projects should work.
| shkkmo wrote:
| The value of trademarks is far more than you are making
| out. That value doesn't come from "how clever the name is",
| but from name recognition and community reputation.
|
| The community can fork the project and rename it. However,
| this comes as costs of losing name recognition/reputation
| and creating additional drama in the community. If the
| issue can be resolved amicably, it is better to avoid the
| need for this.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Standard HN weirdo behavior getting angry at imaginary
| opponents and ranting about personal agency
|
| You're in a discussion section. Things will be discussed.
| Unless YOU are a top contributor to gitea, you're doing
| exactly what you're complaining everyone else here is
| doing: wasting time opining on the direction of a software
| you didn't write
| aliqot wrote:
| > Unless YOU are a top contributor to gitea
|
| And the top contributors seem to be exerting that choice
| aren't they? Now what?
| [deleted]
| solarkraft wrote:
| This is the step right before forking. If diplomacy fails,
| _then_ you fork. A silent fork is much less likely to gain
| traction. This letter raises awareness for the problem and is
| the reaction to it is a solid foundation for a fork.
| aliqot wrote:
| Your improvements to the code do not require 'traction'. The
| only thing that undoes a do-ocracy is another do-er, and that
| starts with a fork, like how Gitea started.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Way too much worship of this DoOcracy word on this story.
|
| It's not as end-all-questions as a lot of people seem to
| think. It's the kind of thing people say who just find
| caring about anyone else's concerns about bad behavior
| annoying and wish for a way to shut them up and and also
| green light their own bad dehavior.
|
| One problem with doocracy is it not only doesn't care who
| does something, it also doesn't care what the holy doer
| does.
|
| DoOcracy is no valid excuse for being a dick.
|
| "Why did you punch me in the face?"
|
| "Shut up, it was free."
| [deleted]
| dachary wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| rapnie wrote:
| > 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.
|
| There's a whole bunch of contributors to this project,
| who've never been informed. Even maintainers were caught by
| surprise as only some marginal bits of info were apparently
| spread.
|
| A project creating CONTRIBUTING guidelines, then Owners not
| honoring them? Effectively just pretending to be a
| community-driven project. Probably legally the ones
| incorporating have done nothing wrong. And culture, norms
| don't count in business world. But they do in free software
| community.
|
| Yes, a fork may be in order. But technically this could
| still be mended and things be put right.
| kdumont wrote:
| What contributing guidelines were not honored?
| shkkmo wrote:
| Forking is inherent to open source methodology, however
| many open source projects depend on a community of
| contributors and users to maintain the project, fund it,
| and push it forward.
|
| While a simple personal fork of a repository/codebase is
| not very aggressive, forking a community (or attempting to)
| is a pretty significant step that will almost always create
| drama and bad feelings.
|
| Working to communicate and resolve issues before attempting
| a fork of the community is always a good idea since they
| should be avoided when possible.
|
| While the owners of an open source project absolutely have
| the legal rights to do as they wish, if those owners are
| interested in maintaining a community around their project,
| it behooves them to listen to that community, especially to
| those who have put their own time and effort into that
| project and community.
| patcon wrote:
| I feel you're missing the point. This person is saying that
| one should communicate first. If you perceive communication
| exclusively as "activism" or "apology" seeking (or
| cancellation?), then I understand why you might not choose
| that path.
|
| But others often choose open comms before heavy action, and
| many contributors would support that.
|
| And yes, "forking" is subjectively a heavier action to some
| ppl. It's subjective, for sure. To each their own, I guess
| :)
|
| Respectfully, I'm not one who would take or support your
| advice to act earlier (and such is my right)
| aliqot wrote:
| skrtskrt wrote:
| What an absurdly condescending and inaccurate comment,
| especially for someone saying just fork it instead of
| actually interacting with people to try to reach
| resolution of an issue. "Just fork it" is literally the
| opposite of working with others.
|
| Splintering an ecosystem can end up with a worse outcome
| for everyone. A fork that no one cares about, created
| because someone had a tantrum instead of reaching
| resolution is not a home run. It will eventually fall so
| far out of sync with the main project that it will no
| longer get any of the maintenance or other benefits of a
| large project.
| aliqot wrote:
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I'm having trouble understanding why you're so bothered
| by people having a quick round of communication or two
| before deciding forking is necessary, when it's possible
| _it may not be_.
|
| It's not "get[ting] mad about a ball game", it's basic
| communication. Right?
| [deleted]
| twawaaay wrote:
| Right to the source code is a completely separate issue from
| rights to the project name and domain name. You can guarantee
| decentralised access to the source code but you can't guarantee
| the same for the name and domain.
| kdumont wrote:
| 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#... 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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#...) 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...
|
| The other points you cite from the Open Letter are merely
| suggestions for future improvements (as stated in the letter),
| not demands.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Shades of Freenode.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| 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
| freemrkt8 wrote:
| 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.
| dpedu wrote:
| What was born in a fork will die in a fork.
| burnished wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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#...
| https://blog.gitea.io/2022/10/open-source-sustainment-and-th...
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I find it odd that gitea uses github.
| rapnie wrote:
| 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.
| DandyDev wrote:
| Gitea was a fork of Gogs. I'm assuming we'll see a fork of Gitea
| now?
| mhd wrote:
| I'm also reminded of Audacity, so maybe we'll see a half-way
| popular fork and then the "parent" amending their ways?
| LegitShady wrote:
| I never saw a follow up to the audacity kerfuffle. Is there
| any follow ups to whats going on there?
| masklinn wrote:
| 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
| Anunayj wrote:
| 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
| LegitShady wrote:
| 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.
| aliqot wrote:
| worked for iojs and nodejs
| masklinn wrote:
| There was also gcc (egcs).
|
| And to an extent Emacs (Xemacs), although the relationship
| there is more complicated.
| throw0101a wrote:
| GCC actually gave up and simply went with their fork, egcs:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Compiler_Collection#EGCS_
| f...
| dachary wrote:
| This is a possibility if diplomacy fails. But diplomacy and
| dialog should happen first. Going public and publishing this
| open letter is a sign that other forms of diplomacy did not
| work (including private messages).
|
| Although people secretly created the company month ago, the
| first public hint of its existence showed when someone
| inadvertently mentioned being bound by an NDA. Which raised
| questions that they could not answer... because they were bound
| by an NDA.
|
| That was in July 2022.
| [deleted]
| tinalumfoil wrote:
| 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
| dachary wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| Macha wrote:
| The example of Emby vs Jellyfin is illustrative here. Emby
| was "the open source Plex alternative", then they went
| commercial, then they went closed source. The community
| forked the last open release as Jellyfin, and despite most
| of the previous contributors being employed by Emby and the
| Jellyfin community being newer contributors, it's clear
| that Jellyfin has overtaken Emby these days, and has put
| more of a dent in Plex market share than Emby ever did.
|
| Or I mean even Gitea has been on the other side of this,
| while the Gitea contributors _were_ gogs contributors pre-
| fork, they were not the largest.
| tpxl wrote:
| What has been stolen from the community exactly? The
| trademarks were never theirs, and the copyright still is.
| Macha wrote:
| 1. The community governance structure that was promised by
| the Gitea developers
|
| 2. The reassurance that Gitea would be a stable platform to
| build on without having to compromise between the open
| source project and a commercial variant
| kdumont wrote:
| Gitea contributor ("maintainer") here [0] - we were blindsided
| by the original Gitea Ltd. announcement too, but if you look at
| any of answers in discord regarding clarification, it's pretty
| clear that this is a better situation than the gitea assets
| being owned by a single person, and the intention is NOT to
| syphon money from the project or start a shillcoin or something
| like that.
|
| The general consensus from us maintainers on the "Open Letter"
| is that it's an overreaction. It's not supported by a vast
| majority of the maintainers of the project and spearheaded by
| folks who have contributed very little. A VAST majority of
| folks contributing to gitea are still onboard.
|
| We need answers. The communication was poorly handled.
|
| The original announcement was completely bereft of details and
| now we finally have a draft of updated clarifications that
| should be posted soon (thankfully, this time we're being
| consulted for feedback).
|
| I think the original intention was "we're seeing some revenue
| coming in and now we're workshopping ways to get those funds
| back to contributors and maintain the project in a sustainable
| way", but a lot of poorly-chosen words were used, and panic
| ensued.
|
| TL;DR: give us some time to set it all straight and if it
| really looks like incentives are misaligned, please provide
| some constructive criticism.
|
| ALSO, WE WOULD LOVE HELP & FEEDBACK FROM FOLKS WHO HAVE
| MAINTAINED SIMILAR PROJECTS SUCCESSFULLY
|
| [0] https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/graphs/contributors
| Beltalowda wrote:
| I have no desire to poo-poo your contributions, but with 30
| commits over a 2 year period and very sporadic engagement on
| the issue tracker, "contributor" seems completely fair but
| "maintainer" seems a bit much.
|
| Maintainers are the people who are involved reasonably
| consistently for the long term, and also do the un-sexy work
| of tracking down the (sometimes difficult) bugs people
| report, triage the (unclear) issues people report, deal with
| generic support requests, and all of that.
| kdumont wrote:
| True, there are definitely better and more consistent
| developers than me on the project. However, that's the term
| the gitea project uses. I should've linked to the
| maintainers list: https://github.com/go-
| gitea/gitea/blob/main/MAINTAINERS
| lovich wrote:
| 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
| mariusor wrote:
| > anything related to the open source world bubble up into the
| public I am only reminded of high school and college level
| social drama.
|
| That's because open source washes its dirty laundry in public.
| The same things happen behind closed doors in companies all the
| time, it's called office politics, and yes, it is exhausting.
| nequo wrote:
| Disputes are not unique to open source projects. But they
| usually have no hierarchies and no contracts. So disputes are
| settled this way.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Honestly put me off ever wanting to get involved.
| [deleted]
| capableweb wrote:
| 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]
| ensignavenger wrote:
| 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?
| munificent wrote:
| _> 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._
|
| This is entirely explained by survivorship bias. The matural
| social interactions which are the bread and butter of open
| source never bubble up to your purview because they aren't
| dramatic and interesting.
| TillE wrote:
| This is such a key insight into understanding the world in
| general. What you see vs what's actually going on overall are
| two completely different things.
| sjcoles wrote:
| > 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.
|
| This is engineering/technical communities in general. You get a
| lot of strong opinions and individuals who cannot take
| criticism. A few, often very loud, people make a ton of noise
| and take up the time of the individuals actually contributing
| real substance to the project.
|
| Don't like it? Fork it. Simple as that. Same with all the code
| of conduct nonsense that crops up a couple times a year.
|
| If your opinions are so popular forking and moving contributors
| to a new project should be easy right? Yeah, turns out your
| opinions aren't shared by most and only the loudest of the
| group, no one else really cares.
| hrbf wrote:
| 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?
| wiseowise wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| ianbutler wrote:
| Outsider opinion:
|
| So I think the entire doc as a first step in supposed good
| communication is in bad faith. Bringing this out into the
| public, and being on the front page of HN makes it seem like
| a stunt, and for pressure, not a good faith plea. I feel like
| a private conversation between the concerned parties should
| have happened first, and if it did that should have been
| mentioned. If that didn't work then maybe make it public for
| pressure, and then fork (and or consider legal action to get
| the trademarks if there's grounds idk not a lawyer).
|
| If people's idea of good first step communication is to
| create a public letter with accusatory undertones and get it
| plastered places, I don't want to work with those people.
| They went from 0mph to 120mph way too quickly.
| rapnie wrote:
| > I feel like a private conversation between the concerned
| parties should have happened first
|
| With a dispersed community that used to work in public,
| against the company owners who secretly prepared this since
| at least March this year (likely longer) and not even
| informed their own maintainers properly in the private
| channel they have for that.
| ianbutler wrote:
| So I think saying it's all of the community is a little
| generous, it's like 20 people who've signed, and yes even
| then. A private conversation should have happened. As an
| outsider, that's a hearsay situation to me so forgive me
| if I don't outright trust the intentions of the small
| group of people who put out this letter, I don't know
| anything about them.
|
| And if the situation actually is as nefarious as you say
| it is, with communication having broken down, the letter
| should have called that out directly instead of being
| wishy washy. If people feel that strongly about it not
| being a mistake, time to use strong language and lay out
| all the facts.
| rapnie wrote:
| > So I think saying it's all of the community is a little
| generous
|
| Indeed, most of the community isn't easily reached. Hence
| the open letter and the ability to sign. I see the open
| letter as an invitation to have these conversations. But
| this time according to community processes and in the
| open.
| sangnoir wrote:
| 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.
| mariusor wrote:
| > Tellingly, it never appears to be the ones who do the actual
| work who throw such tantrums.
|
| I recognize at least 2 names in the top five as devs that I
| personally collaborated with in order to add features to Gitea.
| rapnie wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| maxbond wrote:
| 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.
| didip wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The original is https://github.com/gogs/gogs, which is an
| active MIT project with 10k more stars than gitea, there's
| nothing inscrutable about it.
| itzz_amar wrote:
| computronus wrote:
| Here's an explanation of DoOcracy, as linked from the open
| letter:
|
| https://communitywiki.org/wiki/DoOcracy
|
| (If you're like me and hadn't heard of the concept before.)
| chungy wrote:
| Sounds like a rebrand of meritocracy.
| nequo wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Problem with doocracy is it also doesn't care what the doer
| does.
|
| "Why did you punch me in the face?"
|
| "Shut up, it was free. I do all this work for free and you
| ungrateful parasite users just complain."
| hadlock wrote:
| In bicycle culture they do an unorganized event called critical
| mass; in the past I've seen these events hijacked by a
| "xerocracy" where someone shows up to the meeting point, starts
| handing out (xeroxed/photo copied) fliers with a map with a
| _different_ route and then take off in that direction and....
| most of the crowd follows them. Different kind of Do-ing but
| very effective in truly flat hierachies when executed well.
| aliqot wrote:
| This is more common than you think when you get into alleycat
| races where you're racing for money.
| burnished wrote:
| 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.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| 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]
| Liquix wrote:
| 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.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| 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.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.(tm)_ SaaS based on gcc that "compiles code
| as a service".
| twawaaay wrote:
| 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.
| yazzku wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| This is in response to:
|
| https://blog.gitea.io/2022/10/open-source-sustainment-and-th...
|
| as discussed here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33339421
| TAForObvReasons wrote:
| A bit of context (why this matters) is useful:
| 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 wrote:
| 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!
| thrown_22 wrote:
| 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.
| mmu_man wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| citizenpaul wrote:
| 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.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| _...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 wrote:
| On the other hand... OpenOffice vs. LibreOffice. Clearly the
| name was immensely valuable in that case.
| ipaddr wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Sure it was immensely valuable. But imagine if the code
| disappeared overnight. Then LibreOffice wouldn't be were it
| is now.
| afiori wrote:
| 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.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > _one of_ the most important assets
|
| Emphasis mine. I think that's a defensible statement about
| names/trademarks for any project that's gained meaningful
| traction, and Open- vs. Libre-Office is an apt illustration
| of that.
| coding123 wrote:
| Hudson and Jenkins too
|
| https://medium.com/swlh/hudson-is-retiring-the-end-of-a-
| jenk...
| notatoad wrote:
| i think the point is that the code isn't really an "asset" of
| an open-source project, because anybody who wants to take it
| can have it, regardless of their affiliation with the
| "project".
|
| gitea is a brand. whoever owns the domain and trademarks owns
| the brand.
| rapnie wrote:
| > I generally don't like open source becoming beholden to
| comercial interests
|
| Yes, but there's the crux. Gitea Ltd having the domains and
| trademark and then setting project direction means exactly
| that. While before it appeared or pretended to be a fully
| community-driven exercise. If you are not part of the company,
| how can you still considered to be a community-elected Owner
| that acts as the project's custodian?
| yazzku wrote:
| See for example: https://bonebaboon.tilde.site/rust-trademark-
| policy-issue/
|
| Trademarks can be a burden to FLOSS.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| No it's not, because none of that is unique to an open source
| project. Anyone can come in and use those assets. Heck, that's
| the whole point of open source.
|
| The only thing that is unique to an open source project is its
| reputation, and the reputation is most strongly tied with its
| name and trademarks.
| rileyphone wrote:
| Maybe this is close to the issue with Firefox on Debian, where
| it was rebranded as "Iceweasel" for 10 years due to trademark
| dispute.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_software_rebranded_by_...
| cp9 wrote:
| it sounds like these community members are welcome to fork it and
| change the name.
| [deleted]
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