There was an article about moving to Codeberg on the orange website yesterday, and out of interest to get an impression of what average programmers think of the idea of moving, I took at look at the comments.
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(This thread reflects only my own views and not those of the remainder of the Codeberg presidium, board – nor (most importantly) does it reflect the views of the members of Codeberg as a whole, who ultimately make the decisions.)
In general, I think Codeberg stands for a future in which people are a lot more suspicious of free goodies given to the FOSS community by for-profit companies.
But it also stands for a world in which self-hosting is not the only practical alternative to the present situation. We stand for community-run infrastructure, volunteering to provide a common good, and making decisions for the benefit of all.
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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In general, I think Codeberg stands for a future in which people are a lot more suspicious of free goodies given to the FOSS community by for-profit companies.
But it also stands for a world in which self-hosting is not the only practical alternative to the present situation. We stand for community-run infrastructure, volunteering to provide a common good, and making decisions for the benefit of all.
Some other people were concerned about our uptime in comparison to GitHub. Fortunately, GitHub has recently been taking care of that concern for us
My personal feeling, as a user, is that Codeberg’s uptime is acceptable for what the site provides. If you are seriously messed up by your forge maybe being down for an hour or two a week, don’t use Codeberg: self-host!
Fortunately, as a FOSS site, the chance of anything as important as a ‘profit margin’ depending on our uptime is very low
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Some other people were concerned about our uptime in comparison to GitHub. Fortunately, GitHub has recently been taking care of that concern for us
My personal feeling, as a user, is that Codeberg’s uptime is acceptable for what the site provides. If you are seriously messed up by your forge maybe being down for an hour or two a week, don’t use Codeberg: self-host!
Fortunately, as a FOSS site, the chance of anything as important as a ‘profit margin’ depending on our uptime is very low
(Also, I will at this point plead size. Our small infra team is frequently overworked to the point that I’m often concerned about the effect on their personal health. Again, please become a member and get involved)
(Furthermore, this thread reflects only my own views and not those of the remainder of the Codeberg presidium, board – nor (most importantly) does it reflect the views of the members of Codeberg as a whole, who ultimately make the decisions.)
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(Also, I will at this point plead size. Our small infra team is frequently overworked to the point that I’m often concerned about the effect on their personal health. Again, please become a member and get involved)
(Furthermore, this thread reflects only my own views and not those of the remainder of the Codeberg presidium, board – nor (most importantly) does it reflect the views of the members of Codeberg as a whole, who ultimately make the decisions.)
Something else I saw is that our messaging on what private repositories can be used for with us is not clear enough.
To take the opportunity to clarify here:
• Private repositories are absolutely allowed, but subject to rules, just like public repositories are subject to rules
• Using a private repository for a software project that you’re not yet ready to release publically is absolutely okay
• Using a private repository for personal software you wrote for your own use only is absolutely okay -
Something else I saw is that our messaging on what private repositories can be used for with us is not clear enough.
To take the opportunity to clarify here:
• Private repositories are absolutely allowed, but subject to rules, just like public repositories are subject to rules
• Using a private repository for a software project that you’re not yet ready to release publically is absolutely okay
• Using a private repository for personal software you wrote for your own use only is absolutely okayModeratorially speaking, we tend to regard accounts with *only* private repos as a red flag (and such people who have accounts like that are usually rejected as active/voting members if they apply). But they’re allowed as long as their size remains reasonable.
The rules are there because unfortunately, we do see blatant abuse of our resources (like people uploading their whole home directory to a private repo as a personal backup).
I think we should work on making our rules about this clearer!
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@dpk Oh wow, I did not know you could do this!
When federation does eventually come around, is it planned for forges that are set up like this to "migrate" painlessly?(Sorry if this is a dumb question. I am not sure how this stuff is set up.)
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Forge federation is something we’re actively pushing for because of this. Full federation support is still a few years ahead of us, probably, but you can already set up your own forge in a way that minimizes inconvenience to users by using Codeberg as a single sign-on provider for a self-hosted forge.
https://git.madhouse-project.org/, which hosts the Iocaine project, is a great example of this. If you set up Codeberg as SSO for your own site, almost all of our content rules are irrelevant to you.
@dpk yesss
my biggest problem with the present code forge situation is that you have an unfortunately very binary option of "have a totally centralised ecosystem" and "have 30000 different forgejo instances that clog up my password manager"
i have i think 6 code forge accounts. i do not want or need 6 code forge accounts.
federation or even just SSO would be such a boon for this
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There are a couple of options being explored here:
1. We *could* maybe offer some things like increased quotas to association members. That possibility has been mentioned before as a possibility but no action towards this has been taken yet afaik.
2. Some interested members of Codeberg have, in their private capacity, been investigating offering e.g. a hosted CI runner service that would have seamless integration with Codeberg.
Nothing solid on either front yet, though.
@dpk would the option that e.g. signal and mozzila take work, with a private enterprise managing the paid products fully owned by a nonprofit?
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Forge federation is something we’re actively pushing for because of this. Full federation support is still a few years ahead of us, probably, but you can already set up your own forge in a way that minimizes inconvenience to users by using Codeberg as a single sign-on provider for a self-hosted forge.
https://git.madhouse-project.org/, which hosts the Iocaine project, is a great example of this. If you set up Codeberg as SSO for your own site, almost all of our content rules are irrelevant to you.
@dpk
One thing that would IMHO help for federation without full support would be to allow creating pull requests from any public Git repo.
I *think* it shouldn't be super hard?
Might require an "Update" button to pull in new changes (vs the local ones where pushed changes update the PR automatically), but otherwise I think it could work quite well and, together with the SSO you mentioned, be a very good start until full federation support is done -
Forge federation is something we’re actively pushing for because of this. Full federation support is still a few years ahead of us, probably, but you can already set up your own forge in a way that minimizes inconvenience to users by using Codeberg as a single sign-on provider for a self-hosted forge.
https://git.madhouse-project.org/, which hosts the Iocaine project, is a great example of this. If you set up Codeberg as SSO for your own site, almost all of our content rules are irrelevant to you.
@dpk This is something I've been dreaming of, I'm glad to see you're thinking about it already.
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There was an article about moving to Codeberg on the orange website yesterday, and out of interest to get an impression of what average programmers think of the idea of moving, I took at look at the comments. (Yeah, I know …)
I’m going to write here my thoughts on a general impression of the comment thread as a whole. (Rather than respond to individuals.)
@dpk Haven't used #GitHub other than for accessing other source code for months now, and the current event gave me the push to delete both the @interpeer org and my personal profile.
They need you more than you need them.
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Forge federation is something we’re actively pushing for because of this. Full federation support is still a few years ahead of us, probably, but you can already set up your own forge in a way that minimizes inconvenience to users by using Codeberg as a single sign-on provider for a self-hosted forge.
https://git.madhouse-project.org/, which hosts the Iocaine project, is a great example of this. If you set up Codeberg as SSO for your own site, almost all of our content rules are irrelevant to you.
@dpk
For me, full federation would be the killer feature: A couple of years ago all research institutions started hosting their GitLab server. Yet we see bigger software collaborations mainly hosted on GitHub. Simply because working across sites is virtually impossible (accounts and all that). There are other aspects, of course. Still, I consider this a major technical one. Plus CI compatibility. -
Apart from that, many people listed things that GitHub provides for free which Codeberg doesn’t provide or requires self-hosting for. The biggest one was CI, but there were other things too.
And I think the only way I can respond to that is by talking about the fundamentally different organizational models that GitHub and Codeberg have – not to plead on our smaller size, but to plead on principles.
@dpk
CI is definitely a big reason for GH.
Especially (free) builds on/for macOS are something I couldn't setup myself (at reasonable cost).Another problem is that even third-party CI hosters like CircleCI or CirrusCI or Travis AFAIK don't work with Codeberg (or Forgejo in general). Obviously that's not Codebergs/Forgejos fault, but it's something that so far has kept me at Github
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@dpk
One thing that would IMHO help for federation without full support would be to allow creating pull requests from any public Git repo.
I *think* it shouldn't be super hard?
Might require an "Update" button to pull in new changes (vs the local ones where pushed changes update the PR automatically), but otherwise I think it could work quite well and, together with the SSO you mentioned, be a very good start until full federation support is done@dpk
(To be clear, I don't assume that "just adding a button" is all that needs to be done to make this work, it's just the user-facing thing that would be different vs existing PRs - in addition to specifying git URL + branch name instead of selecting it from a list. When talking about this potential feature people always pointed out that it can't work because Forgejo doesn't know when you push on the remote server and.. yes, but that's not a big issue, just let users update with a button) -
Moderatorially speaking, we tend to regard accounts with *only* private repos as a red flag (and such people who have accounts like that are usually rejected as active/voting members if they apply). But they’re allowed as long as their size remains reasonable.
The rules are there because unfortunately, we do see blatant abuse of our resources (like people uploading their whole home directory to a private repo as a personal backup).
I think we should work on making our rules about this clearer!
@dpk Thank you for sharing your thoughts here. I love the way how Codeberg is run and as a user I am absolutely happy and grateful for this service. I would not be able time-wise to self-host my forge. Thank you again!
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(This thread reflects only my own views and not those of the remainder of the Codeberg presidium, board – nor (most importantly) does it reflect the views of the members of Codeberg as a whole, who ultimately make the decisions.)
@dpk thank you for the write up!
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@dpk
CI is definitely a big reason for GH.
Especially (free) builds on/for macOS are something I couldn't setup myself (at reasonable cost).Another problem is that even third-party CI hosters like CircleCI or CirrusCI or Travis AFAIK don't work with Codeberg (or Forgejo in general). Obviously that's not Codebergs/Forgejos fault, but it's something that so far has kept me at Github
@Doomed_Daniel @dpk Windows and MacOS builders are the reason why a single project of mine is staying at GitHub: In a sense, they pay for my project's presence with the capability of building binary wheels for all platforms.
Kind of an OK deal as long as they don't raise my pain level too far, especially as currently I don't know any platform to which I could go for that.
