📣 Opinions are welcome 📣

[gina@fosstodon.org]

📣 Opinions are welcome 📣

Imagine we set up a national codeplatform to replace GitHub. Aka a self-hosted platform where all Dutch gov workers can store, collaborate and build gov code, with as many features as possible (also on the admin side) and respecting digital sovereignty.

Would you want it to be... (comments are welcome!)

[apodoxus@mastodon.online]

@Gina Isn't this what Codeberg already is but for the whole EU?

[gina@fosstodon.org]

@apodoxus exactly, but we're looking at a sovereign self-hosted solution.

[jbouter@fosstodon.org]

@Gina Ooft - tough one! Every govt agency I've worked for has a lot of experience with their own, already self hosted GitLab instances. The GitLab runner configurations, and GitLab components (pipelines) are marvellous. Enterprise edition has great integration with SSO, allow you to configure rights and permissions based on group membership. Besides that I think there's the matter of support.

But, speaking from ideology and license perspective; Forgejo without a doubt.

[apodoxus@mastodon.online]

@Gina Well Gitlab took money from Y Combinator and other venture capitalists and Forgejo is part of Codeberg, so I think you have you answer there.

[gina@fosstodon.org]

@jbouter that's exactly our dilemma. From a functionality perspective, GitLab (enterprise edition) has more build and admin features. And lots of orgs already use it. But from a digital sovereignty and cost perspective, Forgejo is the clear winner.

[gina@fosstodon.org]

@apodoxus https://fosstodon.org/@Gina/115439657091826372

[geospacedman@mastodon.social]

@Gina Have been running a self-hosted gitlab for ten years with gitlab-ci recently and all upgrades have worked flawlessly with little downtime so I'd say use Forgejo because gitlab has had its day now.

[einalex@chaos.social]

@Gina @jbouter
It's probably easier to add the required features (especially with government funding) than change the ideology.

[gina@fosstodon.org]

@geospacedman are you saying GitLab works really well so you should go with Forgejo? 😅

[mario@eupolicy.social]

@Gina would registration be open to everyone?

[gina@fosstodon.org]

@mario nope would be tied to our gov sso (although guest access should be possible).

[mario@eupolicy.social]

@Gina but that would mean no public contributions possible :(

[gina@fosstodon.org]

@mario sorry that was too quickly answered. Long answer; we're still looking at how to give external users access. I'm hopeful that Forgejo/Codeberg will develop federation soon, that could be an answer.

[fedops@fosstodon.org]

@Gina I always suggest to do proper requirements management. List what you need and see which solution matches best.

I've been running a private Gitlab instance for several years and have no complaints. Depending on the license it can get expensive but chances are if you need that you may have to pay for getting similar features implemented in Forgejo as well.

[gina@fosstodon.org]

@fedops this. Although I'm more a fan of contributing to a project than just paying for a license.

[xiu@mastodon.spinningru.st]

@Gina GitLab being an American company, I guess that rules it out for digital sovereignty.

[erikjan@fosstodon.org]

@Gina I want exactly this for scientific code!! Maybe at eu level, with a nice url like code.science.eu

Don't want to rely so much on GitHub anymore

[gina@fosstodon.org]

@xiu that was my argument as well. The threat when self-hosting is no more updates.

(In case it isn't clear I'm strongly pro Forgejo, but as GitLab is already popular with our gov orgs it needs to be considered - which I'm aware also isn't the best argument)

[gina@fosstodon.org]

@erikjan yeah I could imagine an EU federation of code platforms at some point 🔥