530 lines
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<a class="nav__link" rel="noreferrer" href="/blog/">Blog</a>
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<a class="nav__link" rel="noreferrer" href="https://matrix.to/#/#gna:matrix.batsense.net">Chat</a>
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<a class="nav__link" rel="noreferrer" href="/gitea-clinic/">Clinic</a>
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<a class="nav__link" rel="noreferrer" href="https://hosteadashboard.gna.org/login/">Login</a>
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<div class="nav__link-container--action">
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<a class="nav__link" rel="noreferrer" href="https://hosteadashboard.gna.org/register/">Join</a>
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</div>
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</nav>
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</header>
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<!-- See ../sass/main.scss. Required for pushing footer to the very
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bottom of the page -->
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<div class="main__content-container">
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<main>
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<div class="page__container">
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<h1 class="page__group-title">Project plans for a hosted Gitea online service</h1>
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<p class="blog__post-meta">
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<a href="https://dachary.org" class="post__author">Loïc Dachary</a>
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· 18
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April
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,
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2022 · <b>11 min read</b>
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</p>
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<div class="blog__content">
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<p><em>This post was originally published on <a href="https://blog.dachary.org/2022/02/16/project-plans-for-a-hosted-gitea-online-service/">Loïc Dachary's
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blog</a>.</em></p>
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<hr />
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<p>When an organization asks me about Gitea, I would like to direct them to
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a provider where they can rent an instance and just use it, in the same
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way they can go to https://discourse.org for a forum, or
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https://nextcloud.com for storage. Instead of waiting for that to
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happen, <a href="https://batsense.net/about/">Aravinth</a> and
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<a href="https://dachary.org/">myself</a> decided to do something about it, in a
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way that is in line with our shared values: transparency and Free
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Software.</p>
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<p>After doing some research we found counter examples that showed the
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pitfalls to avoid. GitLab because its business model heavily relies on
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selling proprietary licenses. CiviCRM because setting it up is complex
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and requires training: users can't figure it out on their own. Gitea
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images provided by Digital Ocean because they do not include security
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upgrades. MySQL configured and run by AWS because of the vendor lock-in
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that makes it impossible to self-host.</p>
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<p>We concluded that an online service such as Gitea can be hosted in a
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sustainable way as long as:</p>
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<ul>
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<li>It is well maintained and upgrades itself</li>
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<li>It can be self-hosted</li>
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<li>The service can automatically be restored from backups when the
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underlying resources fail</li>
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</ul>
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<p>GitHub and GitLab make it look like there is a market around software
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forges. It is however impossible to figure out if this market exists
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only because it is based on proprietary software. How many of these
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customers would pay for a Free Software hosted Gitea instance?</p>
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<p>Even if these customers do exist, a new service provider would have to
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figure out how to convince them to subscribe. The technical development
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of the service can be done within weeks but building a sustainable
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business takes much longer. Again, there were examples of what can go
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wrong, for instance ElasticSearch. After years of work developing a
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successful online service and a customer base, AWS entered the
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competition and started to take it away from them.</p>
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<p>The sustainability of the Free Software ecosystem is a new and very
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difficult problem to solve. It is discussed more than it ever was in the
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wake of security breaches originating from widely used and yet abandoned
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library or disillusioned Free Software authors self-sabotaging their
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next release, and everyone has diverging opinions. It falls on each Free
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Software author to spend time to think about their own projects because
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there are no handbook or good examples to follow. That is what Aravinth
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and myself did to find a semblance of clarity and decide how to go about
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this hosted Gitea service idea.</p>
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<h1 id="sustaining-free-software-online-services">Sustaining Free Software online services<a class="zola-anchor" href="#sustaining-free-software-online-services" aria-label="Anchor link for: sustaining-free-software-online-services"
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><span class="anchor-icon">#</span></a
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>
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</h1>
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<h2 id="more-mature-online-services-mean-less-opportunities-to-sell-services">More mature online services mean less opportunities to sell services<a class="zola-anchor" href="#more-mature-online-services-mean-less-opportunities-to-sell-services" aria-label="Anchor link for: more-mature-online-services-mean-less-opportunities-to-sell-services"
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><span class="anchor-icon">#</span></a
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>
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</h2>
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<p>Ideally the software running an online service is rock solid and bugs
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are so rare that it can run unattended. This is true of
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https://wordpress.org and it is not uncommon for an instance to run for
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years while upgrading themselves to get security patches. The cost of
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maintaining such a service is negligible and hosting companies can offer
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it for free to their customers. They make their profit by renting the
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machines on which the service runs.</p>
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<p>When the software is not as mature, it is more expensive to run. Bugs
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need fixing, upgrades require manual intervention, users must be trained
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to overcome the complexity of the user experience, etc. Well known
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examples are Discourse or CiviCRM for which companies sell services to
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overcome these issues.</p>
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<p>But when an organization is both the author of the software and the
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provider of paid services to compensate for its lack of maturity, it
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creates a conflict of interest. Should they focus their effort on making
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the software more mature, they would harm a business model that is based
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on this very lack of maturity. For instance, if the author of a software
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also sells training courses, they are not motivated to solve user
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experience issues. If they did, it would lower the need for training
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courses and reduce their income.</p>
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<h2 id="free-software-online-services-in-the-wake-of-the-sustainability">Free Software online services in the wake of the sustainability<a class="zola-anchor" href="#free-software-online-services-in-the-wake-of-the-sustainability" aria-label="Anchor link for: free-software-online-services-in-the-wake-of-the-sustainability"
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><span class="anchor-icon">#</span></a
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>
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</h2>
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<p>crisis</p>
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<p>Nowadays all Free Software authors struggle to get enough resources to
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produce a steady stream of releases, even when the project is very
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popular. This sustainability problem is getting more and more attention
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as the number of Free Software projects in use world wide keeps growing.
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Even the simplest online service relies on thousands of Free Software
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projects, each of which needs work to keep going. Accidents caused by
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poorly maintained Free Software projects become more frequent.</p>
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<p>This Free Software sustainability crisis is barely emerging and very
|
||
|
|
much resembles ecological problems such as climate change. In both cases
|
||
|
|
it is very difficult to figure out how to properly care for the
|
||
|
|
resources that are consumed. After decades of advocacy, it is generally
|
||
|
|
accepted that fossil energy won't last forever but there still is a long
|
||
|
|
way to go. It will also take a long time for the Free Software community
|
||
|
|
to answer this simple question: how to sustain an ever growing library
|
||
|
|
of Free Software?</p>
|
||
|
|
<p>Luckily, it is relatively simpler to solve that problem for an online
|
||
|
|
service because it has users. They can be reminded that their assistance
|
||
|
|
is needed to keep the project afloat, for instance by a donation. A
|
||
|
|
proposition that would be much more difficult to make for the author of
|
||
|
|
a cryptographic library. Convincing users to pay for an online service
|
||
|
|
has the best chance of success when the author of the software is also
|
||
|
|
the service provider. This is the business model of Discourse and
|
||
|
|
Weblate, but it is relatively fragile because nothing stands in the way
|
||
|
|
of the competition.</p>
|
||
|
|
<p>A few years ago ElasticSearch successfully developed an online service
|
||
|
|
offering. But when AWS entered the competition and was better at
|
||
|
|
marketing it, ElasticSearch quickly realized they would likely go out of
|
||
|
|
business. They tried to fight back by <a href="https://www.elastic.co/blog/licensing-change">changing their
|
||
|
|
license</a>, which was the
|
||
|
|
wrong answer to a real problem. Discourse or Weblate are also likely to
|
||
|
|
face competition from hosting companies in the future and they may not
|
||
|
|
survive it.</p>
|
||
|
|
<p>In the end, the durable source of income for a Free Software online
|
||
|
|
service is to rent the resources (CPU/RAM/network/disk) it needs to run.
|
||
|
|
In other words only hosting companies can make a profit when running
|
||
|
|
such an online service. And for that reason they also need to share part
|
||
|
|
of the profits to ensure the sustainability of the Free Software service
|
||
|
|
their customers need.</p>
|
||
|
|
<h1 id="online-services-vendor-lock-in-is-cured-by-free-software">Online services vendor lock-in is cured by Free Software<a class="zola-anchor" href="#online-services-vendor-lock-in-is-cured-by-free-software" aria-label="Anchor link for: online-services-vendor-lock-in-is-cured-by-free-software"
|
||
|
|
><span class="anchor-icon">#</span></a
|
||
|
|
>
|
||
|
|
</h1>
|
||
|
|
<p>When hosting companies offer online services they also provide upgrades
|
||
|
|
and transparent recovery when the hardware fails. But none of them allow
|
||
|
|
the service to be self-hosted. When their price policy change, or when
|
||
|
|
the term of services ban users from a given country, migrating the
|
||
|
|
service elsewhere it costly and difficult. For instance when AWS runs
|
||
|
|
MySQL for their customers, they allow to download the data but not the
|
||
|
|
software that runs the proprietary AWS interface used to configure and
|
||
|
|
control the server. Another example is GitHub where the content of the
|
||
|
|
git repository can be downloaded but the code that runs GitHub itself is
|
||
|
|
not Free Software.</p>
|
||
|
|
<p>If a customer cannot run the same software as their service provider,
|
||
|
|
they are locked-in, even if they can download their data. It is a common
|
||
|
|
misconception to think that there is no vendor lock-in as long as it is
|
||
|
|
possible to download the data in an standard format. Migrating the data
|
||
|
|
from one software to another is, more often than not, time consuming and
|
||
|
|
costly to a point that it is effectively a blocker. A GitHub salesperson
|
||
|
|
would argue that it is possible for people to run GitHub Enterprise on
|
||
|
|
their own hardware. But the vendor lock-in is still present via the
|
||
|
|
proprietary license contract. The user experience, maintenance and
|
||
|
|
upgrades are still exclusively controlled by GitHub.</p>
|
||
|
|
<p>To guarantee their independence, the customers of an online service need
|
||
|
|
to be able to:</p>
|
||
|
|
<ul>
|
||
|
|
<li>Download their data</li>
|
||
|
|
<li>Run the exact same Free Software as their service provider</li>
|
||
|
|
<li>Run the exact same Free Software infrastructure as code as their
|
||
|
|
service provider</li>
|
||
|
|
</ul>
|
||
|
|
<p>The requirement regarding Free Software infrastructure as code refers
|
||
|
|
to, for instance, the AWS control panel and all that is behind it when
|
||
|
|
creating a new MySQL service. It includes whatever a competitor would
|
||
|
|
need to run the same online service. An example would be
|
||
|
|
https://enough.community, an infrastructure as code dedicated to
|
||
|
|
creating the services needed by whistleblowers and human rights
|
||
|
|
defenders. It consumes resources rented by hosting providers, assembles
|
||
|
|
disks and machines, setup monitoring and intrusion detection, installs
|
||
|
|
various online services and upgrades them.</p>
|
||
|
|
<p>The availability of the software that creates the infrastructure is not
|
||
|
|
only useful to the competitors of a service provider. It also benefits a
|
||
|
|
non-profit that wants to provide (for instance) Wordpress instances to
|
||
|
|
its members. Without it they would need to create something from scratch
|
||
|
|
using building blocks such as CiviCRM. Even though such building blocks
|
||
|
|
exist, this is a significant undertaking and effectively a blocker.</p>
|
||
|
|
<h1 id="federated-online-services-and-durability">Federated online services and durability<a class="zola-anchor" href="#federated-online-services-and-durability" aria-label="Anchor link for: federated-online-services-and-durability"
|
||
|
|
><span class="anchor-icon">#</span></a
|
||
|
|
>
|
||
|
|
</h1>
|
||
|
|
<p>All self-hosted services are in danger of losing the data they contain.
|
||
|
|
When a Wordpress service is hosted in a home and the machine dies, it
|
||
|
|
must be restored from backups... when there are backups. Hosting
|
||
|
|
companies ensure the durability of the data with their own backup
|
||
|
|
system. It creates a dilemma for people who are looking into self
|
||
|
|
hosting: independence is desirable, but is it worth taking the risk of
|
||
|
|
data loss?</p>
|
||
|
|
<p>Federated online services do not suffer from this problem, because they
|
||
|
|
can mirror each other. A Gitea instance that is federated with another
|
||
|
|
will mirror copies of software projects found on its peers. Should one
|
||
|
|
instance be destroyed, mirrored projects can be resurrected from the
|
||
|
|
federated instance. Not only is it a practical way to ensure the (rare)
|
||
|
|
failure of an entire datacenter, it also helps with the (more frequent)
|
||
|
|
destruction of self-hosted machines. Contrary to backups that require
|
||
|
|
special attention, the replication involved in federated online service
|
||
|
|
is built in and works continuously. There is no need for an extra backup
|
||
|
|
service that is very rarely used and therefore likely to fail when
|
||
|
|
needed.</p>
|
||
|
|
<p>Federated services are not yet mainstream and Gitea is one of the rare
|
||
|
|
services that started to implement the concept. In the interim,
|
||
|
|
customers of an online hosting service will need to worry about backups
|
||
|
|
to ensure the durability of their data. But the ultimate solution for
|
||
|
|
them won't be the emergence of an ideal backup infrastructure, it will
|
||
|
|
be replication (via federated services) that will continuously ensure
|
||
|
|
the durability of their data.</p>
|
||
|
|
<h1 id="paths-forward">Paths forward<a class="zola-anchor" href="#paths-forward" aria-label="Anchor link for: paths-forward"
|
||
|
|
><span class="anchor-icon">#</span></a
|
||
|
|
>
|
||
|
|
</h1>
|
||
|
|
<p>The Gitea project itself, following the footsteps of Discourse or
|
||
|
|
Weblate, could provide a hosting service. Part of its current user base
|
||
|
|
may become customers and there does not seem to be any blocker to make
|
||
|
|
that happen. As with most successful Free Software project, people
|
||
|
|
working on Gitea daily are already very busy and cannot engage in such a
|
||
|
|
long term project. But Aravinth and myself can, if they will have us.</p>
|
||
|
|
<p>Another path forward would be to wrap Gitea into a bundle that existing
|
||
|
|
hosting companies could easily use to provide such a service to their
|
||
|
|
customers. The biggest hosting companies are unlikely to be interested:
|
||
|
|
if Digital Ocean was to provide upgrades on top of their existing Gitea
|
||
|
|
image, they are more likely to rely on their internal staff to implement
|
||
|
|
that from scratch, as proprietary software integrated into their
|
||
|
|
existing infrastructure. But smaller hosting companies such as
|
||
|
|
https://Octopuce.fr or https://Easter-Eggs.com, who already deploy Gitea
|
||
|
|
instances for their customers, would use it if, for instance, it helped
|
||
|
|
with the upgrades. They would then kindly be reminded to give back a
|
||
|
|
share of their profits in order to sustain the development of the
|
||
|
|
service they deploy.</p>
|
||
|
|
<p>Finally it would also be possible to follow the example of GitLab in the
|
||
|
|
early days (before it turned to proprietary software) or Codeberg and
|
||
|
|
offer a free shared forge hosting service to build a user base. After a
|
||
|
|
few years, a percentage of the user base would convert to being paid
|
||
|
|
customers or donors to sustain the activity and part of the income would
|
||
|
|
be used to sustain the development of the service.</p>
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
</div>
|
||
|
|
<br>
|
||
|
|
<br>
|
||
|
|
<div class="blog__post-tag-container">
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
<a class="blog__post-tag" href="/tags/gna">#gna</a>
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
<a class="blog__post-tag" href="/tags/gitea">#gitea</a>
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
<a class="blog__post-tag" href="/tags/free-software">#free-software</a>
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
<a class="blog__post-tag" href="/tags/free-software-sustainability">#free-software-sustainability</a>
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
</div>
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
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|
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rel="noreferrer"
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href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
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target="_blank"
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> CC-BY-SA </a
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>
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& code
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|
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class="license__link"
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rel="noreferrer"
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href="https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html"
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target="_blank"
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class="license__link"
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rel="noreferrer"
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href="https://www.eff.org/issues/do-not-track/amp/"
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target="_blank"
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src="https://gna.org/icons/rss.svg?h=f6cd584bdbcd2eb4d1b8b84c9cf083ef45f772167c33fdcee754b35ae8ff4c7d"
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