Organic Maps migrates to Forgejo due to GitHub account blocked by Microsoft

3/30/2025 at 7:44:37 PM

I didn't know forgejo existed and I have been using gitlab ce which is getting more and more difficult to deal with for just home use. All of a sudden I see that I am no longer getting minor updates because my debian version isn't the latest and during my last update it broke the db again.

forgejo seems to have everything I need including CI pipeline and container registry so I am definitely going to give it a try before trying to update gitlab.

by sschueller

3/30/2025 at 9:01:45 PM

> including CI pipeline

You'll want to be cautious, because readme and promises are not software; they're attempting to squat on[1] nektos/act[2] which itself is the 20/80 of GitHub Actions

You'll almost certainly be happier using woodpecker[3] or some other "external" CI system so you don't have to hopes-and-prayers your CI system

1: https://code.forgejo.org/forgejo/act

2: https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/src/tag/v10.0.3/go.mod#... and https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/src/tag/v10.0.3/go.mod#...

3: https://github.com/woodpecker-ci/woodpecker (Apache 2)

by mdaniel

3/31/2025 at 5:49:05 AM

what do you mean by "squat on"?

by egometry

3/31/2025 at 2:39:24 PM

They didn't attempt to build a GitHub Action implementation, they took a known broken one and attempted to duct tape it, so now it's the worst of both worlds: maybe theirs is somehow better, but because everyone in the world knows how terrible act is, they have to say "oh, we built in top of act, but we added some things, fixed others, broke something else, and who knows[1] but good luck to you, our beta testers"

Had act been a known working project, maybe it would have been worth the risk of forking it, or hitching their wagon to it, but to take a weekender project and attempt to build the entire CI system on top of it is insanity. Well, it would have been insanity in a world before having software that sometimes works and sometimes gaslights you became VCs shoveling money. So don't listen to me, I obviously just haven't gotten on the "maybe it works" train

1: https://forgejo.org/docs/latest/user/actions/#:~:text=used%2...

by mdaniel

3/30/2025 at 8:20:26 PM

FYI it's a fork of gitea, and like gitea, only a single go binary. Super easy to upgrade. I have been running gitea first and now forgejo under docker. It's literally a 5 minute deal to install once you know how it works.

by dizhn

3/30/2025 at 9:54:41 PM

I did a bare metal to Docker container migration in about 30 minutes a couple of weeks ago. It’s not a very complicated setup, with few surprises, and this system admin appreciates that.

by doubled112

3/30/2025 at 8:20:07 PM

Switched from Gitlab to Forgejo at work and it is working fantastic for us. I am also using at home.

Using both container registry and self-hosted runners, etc.

I was personally very frustrated with ACL and generally inheritance rules in gitlab and it is much more sensible and easy in Forgejo.

by jalict

3/30/2025 at 8:18:38 PM

It's also way easier than Gitlab to selfhost. Been running it for some time on small office NAS and it's solid.

by omnimus

3/30/2025 at 8:38:47 PM

Organic Maps is great and I'm hoping the transition to Forgejo goes smoothly for the project.

I've recently started hiking and just generally going outside in my community more. When I relied on Google Maps I would get some random business highlighted when navigating around. Since I switched to Organic Maps I see trails, artwork, parks, scenic views, etc, etc that I never knew existed even in my own neighborhood. I also love the idea that if I find something not right on it I can just open up Open Street Map, make a simple edit, and improve the life of everyone else using the app that comes after me.

by fitblipper

3/31/2025 at 3:31:17 AM

I travel by foot or public transport 90% of the time and don't have a SIM card with data (only for emergency calls). Organic maps has been amazing - just download the map ahead of time and never get lost again

by acheong08

3/30/2025 at 10:28:12 PM

I love Organic Maps too. The UI could be a bit nicer, and sometimes it struggles to find where I want to go, but bicycles routes are far superior to those from Google.

by mcv

3/30/2025 at 8:56:39 PM

[dead]

by tisizi

3/30/2025 at 4:34:02 PM

Why blocked? > We have a temporary glitch with GitHub—probably some contributor was geolocated in a sanctioned region (no details yet). All required documents to unlock the account have been uploaded. Don't blame Microsoft/GitHub - it is just U.S. law. Please be patient. It should be unblocked soon.

https://mastodon.social/@organicmaps/114155428924741370

by mraniki

3/30/2025 at 8:01:01 PM

> Don't blame Microsoft/GitHub

I don't think this is a question of blame, rather than suitability. In the spirit of blameless postmortem, I'll state that GitHub was found unsuitable for hosting a FOSS project.

Why it's unsuitable is truly a secondary question, but it shouldn't prevent us, Free Software maintainers, from drawing necessary conclusions.

by throw_a_grenade

3/30/2025 at 7:37:49 PM

> the account have been uploaded. Don't blame Microsoft/GitHub - it is just U.S. law.

"I was just following orders" is an invalid defense.

by tomrod

3/31/2025 at 9:30:48 AM

It's not a defense, it's information about the correct place to complain.

by GoblinSlayer

3/30/2025 at 10:14:06 PM

So a corporation should be in contempt with US law just to uphold a moral high ground for a some random user?

by FirmwareBurner

3/30/2025 at 11:50:14 PM

It's a tired argument, but what if we replace "US" in your sentence with "Chinese", "Russian" or "Iranian"?

Considering how the government of "the shining beacon of democracy" is currently running more like one of the above countries, I think it's a good comparison. But I'm guessing plenty here MAGA disagree.

by netsharc

3/30/2025 at 10:26:21 PM

Sounds like another reason not to repy on US-based services.

by mcv

3/31/2025 at 9:32:21 AM

Until Forgejo does the same.

---

What is ‘Codeberg e.V.’?

Codeberg is a non-profit association registered in Berlin, Germany. The abbreviation e.V. stands for eingetragener Verein, which translates as ‘registered association’.

As defined by its Bylaws, its goal is to “guarantee the openness and continued availability of free software”.

Forgejo has to abide by Codeberg’s goals. We believe that this arrangement reinforces the longevity of Forgejo, as far as the project’s stability and financial security is concerned.

Codeberg e.V. owns Forgejo’s domains, provides resources and cooperates closely with Forgejo.

by GoblinSlayer

3/31/2025 at 8:28:25 PM

The website codeberg.org is technically similar to GitHub in that they host your code. The repo for OrganicMaps on codeberg.org is here:

https://codeberg.org/organicmaps/organicmaps

However, as you can see, this is only a mirror of the official, original repository, which is hosted here:

https://git.omaps.dev/organicmaps/organicmaps

And while this is using ForgeJo - the software Codeberg develops - it is hosted by OrganicMaps themselves. Thereby, it is very unlikely that somebody else takes this down for whatever reason.

by mbirth

3/30/2025 at 7:39:37 PM

i mean ok but no one is being killed or tortured or even kidnapped here.

by throwawaymaths

3/30/2025 at 8:08:22 PM

I think it's not bad to remember people from time to time that "just following orders" oder "Just doing my job" isn't an universal excuse and that we hanged people rightfully for "just" doing that. If that's your only excuse for what you're doing you may should at least deeply think again if what you're doing is excusable.

They only want to protect MS in this case, I guess to increase their chance to resolve it positively.

But I just recently thought about this. If you develop exploits for say NSO und a journalist gets tortured to death. Should you be put on trial? I'm not sure why not tbh.

by bauruine

3/30/2025 at 9:39:06 PM

> no one is being killed or tortured or even kidnapped here.

Maybe not but the vibe feels more like open source being gunpoint.

"Upload documents or else"

by doublerabbit

3/30/2025 at 7:54:17 PM

[dead]

by boredpeter

3/30/2025 at 8:24:50 PM

Sounds like a reasonable reason to dump a service that will just block you.

Nothing you put there sounds like a reason not to move, in fact it sounds like all the more reason to do it.

by happymellon

3/30/2025 at 10:15:06 PM

>Sounds like a reasonable reason to dump a service that will just block you.

ANY and I mean absolutely ANY service can just block you if they think you're violating ToS, including Google/Android and Apple.

by FirmwareBurner

3/31/2025 at 1:32:20 AM

And when you self-host, worst case scenario is running a disaster recovery exercise on a different cloud provider. (Except for DNS, where you're at the mercy of the registrar; you might need to communicate a new domain name to your users.)

It's just time to leave Microsoft. Don't make excuses for rich corporations.

by yencabulator

3/31/2025 at 6:37:45 AM

One of the contributors might be from a sanctioned country, and therefore it's reasonable to block everyone?

That absolutely does not sound reasonable to everyone else.

by happymellon

3/31/2025 at 9:41:10 AM

Sanctions were transitive for awhile.

by GoblinSlayer

3/31/2025 at 3:32:15 PM

Are you trying to say that it *is* reasonable for an Open Source project to expect this?

by happymellon

3/30/2025 at 8:29:46 PM

> it is just <country> law

Ah, a chief among the causes of brain drain.

by zamalek

3/31/2025 at 6:22:33 AM

Just following orders is evil.

It's good that Organic Maps is leaving Microsoft behind.

by buyucu

3/30/2025 at 6:08:45 PM

[flagged]

by greatgib

3/30/2025 at 6:29:56 PM

What’s a good country to operate from?

by banqjls

3/30/2025 at 7:14:59 PM

I think this is the wrong question when scoping to this problem, as governance and politics are not static. A favorable country to operate out of today is perhaps not favorable tomorrow. I think the better question is: "How do you operate an open source project with global contributors in a way that makes you censorship resistant?"

You should have no single point of failure, folks should be signing their commits (cryptographic integrity), build the merkle tree, make it broadly consumable, etc. If a POP gets nuked, you bring up a replacement and keep on chuggin', just like if you were The Pirate Bay, Archive.today, Libgen, Z-Library, etc. Some similarities to how the AT Protocol is structured (Commits->PDS->Firehose->AppView) [1]. Commits go in, views of the project are available globally, the data corpus is stored in a durable, distributed fashion.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT_Protocol#/media/File:Bluesk...

by toomuchtodo

3/30/2025 at 6:59:03 PM

Which country protected Assange? Oops, also not recommended. So none.

by rurban

3/30/2025 at 7:01:18 PM

[flagged]

by anonym29

3/30/2025 at 7:00:04 PM

Iceland ?

by BaudouinVH

3/30/2025 at 8:38:10 PM

Greenland?

by dp-hackernews

3/30/2025 at 6:56:17 PM

Glad to see more and more organizations moving to rights-respecting platforms, away from the intelligence community's surveillance + social control dragnets of choice.

by anonym29

3/30/2025 at 7:45:39 PM

What’s the latest in Forgejo vs. Gitea?

by wvbdmp

3/30/2025 at 8:22:49 PM

Sometime in 2024 Forgejo became hard fork no longer merging Gitea code so both projects slowly diverge. But i think momentum is on Forgejo side. Codeberg is popular and development seems to be stable and solid.

by omnimus

4/2/2025 at 7:04:31 PM

I'm on the Gitea TOC. The fork does still merge from upstream. The Gitea project has 4x'd the number of monthly PRs we handle (~400) and have increased the maintainers teams, and the number of contributors. I'd say we have a lot of momentum.

by techknowlogick

3/31/2025 at 1:35:45 AM

They jumped the shark to become cryptobros in 2022 and are Open Core now, why would you still want to use Gitea? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33339421

by yencabulator

4/2/2025 at 7:03:24 PM

Hi, I'm on the TOC of Gitea, and I can definitively say that there is no cryptocurrency in Gitea or related to Gitea. As well, the project is not open-core, and you can verify that yourself by going to the project and seeing that all the code is MIT licensed: https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea

by techknowlogick

4/2/2025 at 8:02:31 PM

So you're saying the press release promising a DAO and "an enhanced enterprise version" was not truthful?

by yencabulator

3/30/2025 at 11:20:11 PM

I checked the IP. Another Hetzner server. I wonder how much they're making off of the distrust of the US Government and the companies helping their censorship.

by DoctorOW

3/31/2025 at 6:21:31 AM

organic maps is a treasure. It's great. Microsoft messed up here.

by buyucu

3/30/2025 at 11:54:58 PM

Another great reason to derisk from US-based products

by budududuroiu