GitLab acquires Gitorious [LWN.net]

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 3, 2015 19:45 UTC (Tue) by TMM (guest, #79398)
Parent article: GitLab acquires Gitorious

A couple of weeks ago we from peers started a project to run a free-software driven code collaboration site called notabug.org. We obviously didn't know about this development and we're not entirely done yet. In particular we don't have pull requests yet, but for people who want to have a free-software based code collaboration site we can offer you a start at least!

I hope it's OK for me to advertise our service in a comment, we don't run ads and we don't plan to.

to post comments

Differences?

Posted Mar 3, 2015 20:55 UTC (Tue) by david.a.wheeler (subscriber, #72896) [Link] (12 responses)

There are already other code-hosting sites that are themselves FLOSS: SourceForge (now on Apache Allura) and GitLab (MIT license). What's distinctive about your site (other than it's not quite running? :-) ).

Differences?

Posted Mar 3, 2015 21:01 UTC (Tue) by ejr (subscriber, #51652) [Link]

FYI, Gitlab's free hosting runs their proprietary edition, not free software. The pool of free-software-hosted sites is shrinking by one with Gitorious's exit.

Differences?

Posted Mar 3, 2015 21:15 UTC (Tue) by TMM (guest, #79398) [Link] (6 responses)

The main difference is that it's a free-software hosted hub-style. SF's model is different. As the other commenter pointed out, gitlab's public instance is not free software. It's the 'enterprise' edition which is non-free. Apart from that we have Bitbucket which is also non-free.

Differences?

Posted Mar 3, 2015 21:19 UTC (Tue) by ejr (subscriber, #51652) [Link] (5 responses)

And unlike many services, you don't host your own code... That's on github... *cough*

Differences?

Posted Mar 3, 2015 21:26 UTC (Tue) by TMM (guest, #79398) [Link] (4 responses)

We don't write gogs, we run a locally modified version of gogs. The version of gogs we run is hosted here on notabug.org itself. We don't have a lot of communication with gogs upstream yet but perhaps that will come. We do explain this on the main page :)

Differences?

Posted Mar 4, 2015 16:07 UTC (Wed) by dsommers (subscriber, #55274) [Link] (3 responses)

I have no issues that you have your own local modifications to a FLOSS project which you need to run your service.

But I would strongly encourage you to get involved in the upstream gogs community and try to get your modifications accepted there, if they are suitable for a larger audience. That is the true power of FLOSS; you have a possibility to take someone else's work and tinker with it to match your needs. But you must remember to always share back.

Without that co-operation, you can just as easily just end up with a large amount of forks which ends up with conflicting changes. And just forking does not help innovating and improving a FLOSS project. The innovation and improvements happens first when forks merges.

So please, get involved upstream; discuss your changes, submit patches. And there are two big pluses when your patches gets accepted: 1) Your changes requires less maintenance from you alone, and 2) more users can take advantage of your improvements.

Differences?

Posted Mar 4, 2015 17:08 UTC (Wed) by TMM (guest, #79398) [Link] (2 responses)

Upstream isn't particularly interested in collaboration it seems.

Differences?

Posted Mar 4, 2015 18:11 UTC (Wed) by dsommers (subscriber, #55274) [Link]

That's a pity! But don't give up, use their mailing lists, forums or whatever public facing services they use. Figure out why they don't want to co-operate. But also spend time letting them know you as well, what your skills are and give good reasons why they should consider your changes, be visible to the whole community. Getting accepted into a community doesn't happen instantly, you need to be persistent and patient.

Of course, if you're always rejected in an inappropriate fashion (esp. if it happens publicly), then it is a completely different issue. Then promoting your own fork instead of the upstream is fair enough. But please let that be the last resort.

Looks decently collaborative to me

Posted Mar 5, 2015 16:36 UTC (Thu) by einar (guest, #98134) [Link]

It is? If you look at the open and closed PRs for Gogs, you see that there is a good number of outside contributors.

Differences?

Posted Mar 4, 2015 18:57 UTC (Wed) by andrewsh (subscriber, #71043) [Link] (3 responses)

I can't resist from mentioning Kallithea, which is GPL-3-free and is supported by Software Freedom Conservancy. And the main selling point of it for me personally is that it supports both Mercurial and Git.

Differences?

Posted Mar 5, 2015 1:07 UTC (Thu) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link] (2 responses)

GPLv3-ed, not GPLv3 free :-(

Differences?

Posted Mar 5, 2015 6:34 UTC (Thu) by andrewsh (subscriber, #71043) [Link] (1 responses)

Meaning? GPL-3 is free.

Differences?

Posted Mar 5, 2015 10:28 UTC (Thu) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

Presumably the intent was to communicate that the licensing is "free as in uses the GPLv3", but this was interpreted as "free from GPLv3 licensing".

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 4, 2015 14:53 UTC (Wed) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (9 responses)

What is your business model?

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 4, 2015 15:36 UTC (Wed) by TMM (guest, #79398) [Link] (8 responses)

We don't really have a business. We want to provide a service for people who value software freedom highly. The strategy is to run software with as small of a runtime footprint possible so that we can comfortably run thousands of users on a very small budget. We're expecting that by the time we need to scale out to the next several thousand users our community can sustain the bandwidth and server costs through donations. This only works if we can sustain many, many users on small budgets. Currently we can.

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 4, 2015 17:13 UTC (Wed) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link] (7 responses)

Sorry, but the money to pay for hardware, bandwidth, and people to make it all run and work reliably enough for somebody to trust their stuff to the site has to come from somewhere. That is what is being called "business model" here.

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 4, 2015 17:18 UTC (Wed) by TMM (guest, #79398) [Link] (6 responses)

We pay for it out of our own pockets. We have no desire to make money of off this project, although it'd be nice if eventfully it could at least be sustained through donations. Currently the monthly bill for the setup is easily within 'hobby' budget. If you don't feel comfortable using the service then feel free to not! :)

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 4, 2015 18:35 UTC (Wed) by riking (subscriber, #95706) [Link]

I hear Patreon is a good platform for collecting donations.

What you should do is you set up a "milestone" for "Covering Costs" and have the "pledge rewards" be "Feel good about yourself" stuff, maybe a star next to your name on the site or something, but nothing that requires shipping.
Basically, avoid making promises, because you don't know if you can keep them yet.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about: https://www.patreon.com/brucewillakers

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 5, 2015 21:35 UTC (Thu) by prokoudine (guest, #41788) [Link] (4 responses)

I hate to break it down to you, but while your intentions are respectable, your approach doesn't look sustainable. You'll run out of money before you know it.

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 9, 2015 11:53 UTC (Mon) by wookey (guest, #5501) [Link] (3 responses)

Why are we being down on people running a Free service? Since when did having a good business model become more important than running free software?

It seems to me that gitorious being killed by gitlab is not a good thing. I've used gitorious (and avoided gitlab) precicesly because one was free software and one wasn't. It's depressing how many free-software people don't care at all and just use github by default.

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 9, 2015 13:44 UTC (Mon) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link] (2 responses)

Since not having a clear view of how to fund said free service, it won't last. Yes, even "completely free" setups like the FSF or Debian have ways to get the monies to make ends meet.

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 10, 2015 14:23 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (1 responses)

What's wrong with letting these people have a go at what they enjoy, as a hobby? As long as they're up-front about the fact that there are no long-term guarantees I don't have a problem with what they're doing. (Incidentally, what about the stated long-term prospects of Gitorious when it was new? Didn't keep people from putting their stuff there.)

In any case, if their service really takes off and they don't want to call a moratorium on new users they can still look for additional funding. Not everything needs a “business model” from the very beginning. You may recall that the Linux kernel didn't have one at the start, either – and one could argue that it still doesn't have one today, just a dedicated fan base with reasonably deep pockets.

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 10, 2015 16:34 UTC (Tue) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link]

Who says I have anything against them, or them enjoying their hobby? My point is that I can't rely on their hobby, and that is a shame. I might want to, but can't.