Forgejo makes a full break from Gitea
The world of open-source "forges" is becoming a little more fragmented. The Forgejo project is a software-development platform that started as a ""soft"" fork of Gitea in late 2022. On February 16, Forgejo announced its intent to become a ""hard fork"" of Gitea to continue its stated objectives of community-controlled development and to ""liberate software development from the shackles of proprietary tools"". In a world where proprietary tools cast a long shadow over open-source development those are welcome words—if the project can deliver.
Gitea was (and is) a popular open-source Git hosting and collaboration platform. Gitea itself is a fork of Gogs that started in December 2016 due to frustration with the ""single-maintainer management model of Gogs"" and opted for a ""more open and faster development model"". Originally the project's governance, spelled out in an earlier version of its CONTRIBUTING.md file, specified the project would have three "owners" responsible for keeping development ""healthy"". The actual responsibilities and rights of the owners were vague, but they were to be elected yearly by Gitea's maintainers ""who decide with a simple voting model which contributions get accepted and who will play the owner role"".