feat: add Loïc's blog post
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title = "Project plans for a hosted Gitea online service"
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date = "2022-02-16"
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description = "When an organization asks me about Gitea, I would like to direct them to a provider where they can rent an instance and just use it"
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[taxonomies]
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tags = ['hostea', 'gitea', 'free-software', 'free-software-sustainability']
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[extra]
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author = 'dachary'
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_This post was originally published on [Loïc Dachary's
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blog](https://blog.dachary.org/2022/02/16/project-plans-for-a-hosted-gitea-online-service/)._
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---
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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, [Aravinth](https://batsense.net/about/) and
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[myself](https://dachary.org/) 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.
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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.
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We concluded that an online service such as Gitea can be hosted in a
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sustainable way as long as:
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- It is well maintained and upgrades itself
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- It can be self-hosted
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- The service can automatically be restored from backups when the
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underlying resources fail
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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?
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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.
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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.
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# Sustaining Free Software online services
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## More mature online services mean less opportunities to sell services
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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.
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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.
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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.
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## Free Software online services in the wake of the sustainability
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crisis
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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.
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This Free Software sustainability crisis is barely emerging and very
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much resembles ecological problems such as climate change. In both cases
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it is very difficult to figure out how to properly care for the
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resources that are consumed. After decades of advocacy, it is generally
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accepted that fossil energy won't last forever but there still is a long
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way to go. It will also take a long time for the Free Software community
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to answer this simple question: how to sustain an ever growing library
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of Free Software?
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Luckily, it is relatively simpler to solve that problem for an online
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service because it has users. They can be reminded that their assistance
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is needed to keep the project afloat, for instance by a donation. A
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proposition that would be much more difficult to make for the author of
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a cryptographic library. Convincing users to pay for an online service
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has the best chance of success when the author of the software is also
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the service provider. This is the business model of Discourse and
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Weblate, but it is relatively fragile because nothing stands in the way
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of the competition.
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A few years ago ElasticSearch successfully developed an online service
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offering. But when AWS entered the competition and was better at
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marketing it, ElasticSearch quickly realized they would likely go out of
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business. They tried to fight back by [changing their
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license](https://www.elastic.co/blog/licensing-change), which was the
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wrong answer to a real problem. Discourse or Weblate are also likely to
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face competition from hosting companies in the future and they may not
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survive it.
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In the end, the durable source of income for a Free Software online
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service is to rent the resources (CPU/RAM/network/disk) it needs to run.
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In other words only hosting companies can make a profit when running
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such an online service. And for that reason they also need to share part
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of the profits to ensure the sustainability of the Free Software service
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their customers need.
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# Online services vendor lock-in is cured by Free Software
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When hosting companies offer online services they also provide upgrades
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and transparent recovery when the hardware fails. But none of them allow
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the service to be self-hosted. When their price policy change, or when
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the term of services ban users from a given country, migrating the
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service elsewhere it costly and difficult. For instance when AWS runs
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MySQL for their customers, they allow to download the data but not the
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software that runs the proprietary AWS interface used to configure and
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control the server. Another example is GitHub where the content of the
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git repository can be downloaded but the code that runs GitHub itself is
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not Free Software.
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If a customer cannot run the same software as their service provider,
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they are locked-in, even if they can download their data. It is a common
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misconception to think that there is no vendor lock-in as long as it is
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possible to download the data in an standard format. Migrating the data
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from one software to another is, more often than not, time consuming and
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costly to a point that it is effectively a blocker. A GitHub salesperson
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would argue that it is possible for people to run GitHub Enterprise on
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their own hardware. But the vendor lock-in is still present via the
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proprietary license contract. The user experience, maintenance and
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upgrades are still exclusively controlled by GitHub.
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To guarantee their independence, the customers of an online service need
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to be able to:
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- Download their data
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- Run the exact same Free Software as their service provider
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- Run the exact same Free Software infrastructure as code as their
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service provider
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The requirement regarding Free Software infrastructure as code refers
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to, for instance, the AWS control panel and all that is behind it when
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creating a new MySQL service. It includes whatever a competitor would
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need to run the same online service. An example would be
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https://enough.community, an infrastructure as code dedicated to
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creating the services needed by whistleblowers and human rights
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defenders. It consumes resources rented by hosting providers, assembles
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disks and machines, setup monitoring and intrusion detection, installs
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various online services and upgrades them.
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The availability of the software that creates the infrastructure is not
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only useful to the competitors of a service provider. It also benefits a
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non-profit that wants to provide (for instance) Wordpress instances to
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its members. Without it they would need to create something from scratch
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using building blocks such as CiviCRM. Even though such building blocks
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exist, this is a significant undertaking and effectively a blocker.
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# Federated online services and durability
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All self-hosted services are in danger of loosing the data they contain.
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When a Wordpress service is hosted in a home and the machine dies, it
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must be restored from backups... when there are backups. Hosting
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companies ensure the durability of the data with their own backup
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system. It creates a dilemma for people who are looking into self
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hosting: independence is desirable, but is it worth taking the risk of
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data loss?
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Federated online services do not suffer from this problem, because they
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can mirror each other. A Gitea instance that is federated with another
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will mirror copies of software projects found on its peers. Should one
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instance be destroyed, mirrored projects can be resurrected from the
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federated instance. Not only is it a practical way to ensure the (rare)
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failure of an entire datacenter, it also helps with the (more frequent)
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destruction of self-hosted machines. Contrary to backups that require
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special attention, the replication involved in federated online service
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is built in and works continuously. There is no need for an extra backup
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service that is very rarely used and therefore likely to fail when
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needed.
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Federated services are not yet mainstream and Gitea is one of the rare
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services that started to implement the concept. In the interim,
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customers of an online hosting service will need to worry about backups
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to ensure the durability of their data. But the ultimate solution for
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them won't be the emergence of an ideal backup infrastructure, it will
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be replication (via federated services) that will continuously ensure
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the durability of their data.
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# Paths forward
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The Gitea project itself, following the footsteps of Discourse or
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Weblate, could provide a hosting service. Part of its current user base
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may become customers and there does not seem to be any blocker to make
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that happen. As with most successful Free Software project, people
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working on Gitea daily are already very busy and cannot engage in such a
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long term project. But Aravinth and myself can, if they will have us.
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Another path forward would be to wrap Gitea into a bundle that existing
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hosting companies could easily use to provide such a service to their
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customers. The biggest hosting companies are unlikely to be interested:
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if Digital Ocean was to provide upgrades on top of their existing Gitea
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image, they are more likely to rely on their internal staff to implement
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that from scratch, as proprietary software integrated into their
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existing infrastructure. But smaller hosting companies such as
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https://Octopuce.fr or https://Easter-Eggs.com, who already deploy Gitea
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instances for their customers, would use it if, for instance, it helped
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with the upgrades. They would then kindly be reminded to give back a
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share of their profits in order to sustain the development of the
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service they deploy.
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Finally it would also be possible to follow the example of GitLab in the
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early days (before it turned to proprietary software) or Codeberg and
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offer a free shared forge hosting service to build a user base. After a
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few years, a percentage of the user base would convert to being paid
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customers or donors to sustain the activity and part of the income would
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be used to sustain the development of the service.
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+++
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title = "Posts"
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sort_by = "date"
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template = "blog/index.html"
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page_template = "blog/post.html"
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generate_feed = true
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insert_anchor_links = "right"
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+++
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