from Hacker News

Open letter to Gitea

by d4a on 10/28/22, 3:18 PM with 134 comments

  • by nonrandomstring on 10/28/22, 4:34 PM

    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

  • by aargh_aargh on 10/28/22, 3:28 PM

  • by kdumont on 10/28/22, 5:26 PM

    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?

  • by dec0dedab0de on 10/28/22, 4:31 PM

    ...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.

  • by tinalumfoil on 10/28/22, 3:35 PM

    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

  • by computronus on 10/28/22, 4:26 PM

    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.)

  • by didip on 10/28/22, 4:43 PM

    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.

  • by DandyDev on 10/28/22, 3:49 PM

    Gitea was a fork of Gogs. I'm assuming we'll see a fork of Gitea now?

  • by KaoruAoiShiho on 10/28/22, 4:26 PM

    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?

  • by burnished on 10/28/22, 5:28 PM

    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?

  • by yazzku on 10/28/22, 7:02 PM

    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.

  • by dpedu on 10/28/22, 4:18 PM

    What was born in a fork will die in a fork.

  • by bastardoperator on 10/28/22, 5:10 PM

    I find it odd that gitea uses github.

  • by throwaccount12 on 10/29/22, 1:12 AM

    I find it very interesting how the person who put together this open letter has a company they started to sell Gitea, and is not even a maintainer of Gitea. So he hasn't even voted. Seems like a very suspicious conflict of interest that should be taken into account, and is very likely acting in bad faith.

  • by citizenpaul on 10/28/22, 5:04 PM

    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.

  • by cp9 on 10/28/22, 5:25 PM

    it sounds like these community members are welcome to fork it and change the name.

  • by aliqot on 10/28/22, 4:01 PM

    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.

  • by lovich on 10/28/22, 4:39 PM

    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

  • by freemrkt8 on 10/28/22, 5:28 PM

    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.

  • by hrbf on 10/28/22, 4:07 PM

    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?