> As it continued to grow, I additionally trademarked the name “Gitea” in order to protect the project’s brand. (More on the trademark later.)<p>...<p>> I have also transferred both the domains and trademarked name to Gitea Ltd. so that they are no longer personally owned by me and will remain indefinitely with the Gitea project.<p>(no further mention of trademarks)<p>So, I think the take away here is as a response to the core demands of the 'open letter' being:<p>- A non-profit organisation owned by the Gitea community is created.<p>- The Gitea trademark and domains are transferred to the non-profit.<p>- The name of the company is changed to avoid any confusion with the non-profit.<p>The answer is bluntly; no.<p>With regard to the concerns raised about use use of a DAO, the response is (as previously):<p>> One of the options we have been considering includes a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). ... The DAO management model would also not mean the creation of a gitcoin or crypto token.<p>So, basically no acknowledgement that using a DAO is <i>fundamentally indistinguishable</i> from using crypto.<p>A pretty ho-hum response, in my personal opinion.<p>Well, it is what it is.
Context, last few days here:<p>Open Letter to Gitea:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33372471" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33372471</a><p>Open source sustainment and the future of Gitea<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33339421" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33339421</a>
It seems like they're being deliberately obtuse regarding the DAO.<p>If it really is decoupled from anything financial, then how do they decide who gets what voting weight? Presumably, by manually assigning weights to people (instead of it being weighted based on the size of their financial stake). If some central authority decides the voting weights, how is it still a DAO? (I think that would actually be a reasonable system, since it negates the need for any crypto bullshit, but it seems silly/misleading to call it a DAO at that point)<p>I can't really decipher their true motives here, but either it <i>will</i> be a financial instrument, or it will only provide the illusion of decentralised decision-making.
>Throughout the life of the project, I have always personally owned both domains. As it continued to grow, I additionally trademarked the name “Gitea” in order to protect the project’s brand. (More on the trademark later.)<p>The issue as I read it is that he communicated to the community that he isn't the BDFL (benevolent dictator for life) of the project but rather that there is democratic ownership.<p>><a href="https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#owners" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#...</a><p>Clearly that's not the case. Communities can be mostly fine with a BDFL system if it's made clear however they tend to be less fine with feeling like they've been lied to.
I will work with signatories of the Gitea Open Letter to start a fork and update the progress daily at <a href="https://gitea-open-letter.coding.social/updates/" rel="nofollow">https://gitea-open-letter.coding.social/updates/</a>
Reading between the lines, I don’t see anything in this message that implies this is a hostile takeover. It seems like Lunny envisions the Gitea Ltd as an additional assets of the Gitea community. That is, there’s no mention of what is happening to the voting system. It’s possible the current democratic voting system will remain in place, and that if Lunny is voted out, he will voluntary transfer ownership of the LTD to the new owner. The comments are acting like that is not the case but I don’t see anything indicating that.<p>The communication around this issue is very poor. I’m choosing to apply Occam’s Razor here and assume that Lunny doesn’t understand how other open source projects are run or what the differences between a non-profit and an LTD are (or what a DOA is). Rather than assume that this is an attempt to turn Gitea into a corporate-owned, profit-generating, machine.
Something which hasn't been discussed much in this kerfuffle is the role that copyleft can play in protecting projects from this kind of problem. The MIT license is the "default" for many people but it's honestly pretty irresponsible to use it without thinking these cases through.<p>I represent a similar project (which I shall leave unnamed) and we use copyleft licenses <i>without</i> asking for a copyright assignment from contributors. The result is that the project's copyright is legally held by its contributors and each one licenses their work to everyone else under copyleft terms, requiring everyone involved to commit to keeping it free and open source. Even the project leadership, as it were, is not allowed to take the code and run off with it. Changing the license would involve getting each contributor to agree to a new license, or rewriting the contributions from anyone who does not agree.<p>As the saying goes: show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome. Design your incentives with care to achieve the desired outcomes. If you make something valuable without considering this, someone <i>will</i> eventually try to take advantage of that value without you.
Where exactly is the kerfuffle here? Is the crux of the issue that the community thought it owned the trademark when in fact it was owned by the initial creator?<p>Whether contributors fork or not, the code is MIT licensed, anyone can start a consulting organization around a piece of MIT code.<p>What is Lunny absconding with here?
idk if he bought the domains and trademarks with his own name and also is the creator of Gitea, what’s the open source community is bitching about? It’s time we stop expecting things for free, devs need to get paid
I'm not that pessimist regarding the announcement, even though it makeup me a little bit suspicious. Still looking forward to the federation/ActivityPub support.
> we began creating a more formalized operating model so that Gitea could earn funding through public donations, selling Gitea merchandise, and receiving paid commercial contributions.<p>This sounds in light of recent events like he’s saying “we faked having a community driven operating model despite myself retaining full control, so we could live up to requirements by diners and commercial supporters”.<p>It seems resonable that he surrender trademark and domain despite him having acquired it personally as it should rightfully belong to the community that the diners and companies sponsored. They where not giving him personally money and they where not giving money under the assumption that it would go towards him starting a company that would take control of everything.