Bonjour,
Depuis fin Octobre j’ai eu le privilège de partager l’aventure qui a mené à la naissance de https://forgejo.org, un fork doux de la forge Gitea, désormais appropriée par une société a but lucratif.
Le CHATONS https://gna.org a fait l’upgrade de Gitea vers Forgejo ce week-end et c’est une nouvelle page qui se tourne. Je ne sais pas bien ce qui va arriver mais je vais participer à ce projet parce qu’il sert l’intérêt général et que c’est le contexte dans lequel je crois que la fédération des forges pourra (enfin!) devenir utilisable au quotidien.
J’ai l’intuition qu’il y a des affinités fortes entre Forgejo et CHATONS mais sans arriver a vraiment mettre le doigt dessus. Alors j’ai fait la présentation de CHATONS et Framasoft à la communauté Forgejo, avec le texte qui suit. Et on verra bien ce qui en sort. En tout cas moi je continue a naviguer entre les deux projets 
A suivre!
Bonjour,
Framasoft is a non-profit that contributes « to a society of social justice where digital technology empowers people, against the backdrop of the imaginations of surveillance capitalism ». It is well known in France and has been around for over 20 years.
Among their many actions, one is relevant to Forgejo: the CHATONS collective created in 2016 and composed of about a hundred of organizations that « aims to bring together structures offering free, ethical and decentralised online services in order to allow users to quickly find alternatives that respect their data and privacy to the services offered by GAFAM ». The services CHATONS provide include forge hosting, most of them based on Gitea and GitLab. Some have free open public registration, others are subject to membership or fees but they all have one thing in common: they comply to the CHATONS charter.
There never was any kind of relationship between the CHATONS collective and software forges projects. But I believe it would be beneficial to both, in more than one way:
- CHATONS are run by system administrators best able to create quality bug reports that Forgejo can fix.
- When the users of a CHATONS running Forgejo provides feedback in their forum or issue tracker, it is precious material for User Research to improve the User eXperience.
- Forgejo contributors involved in improving accessibility, privacy, User Interface, releases etc. may be more inclined to assist CHATONS because they have common values.
- And probably others in the same spirit.
I’ve been involved with the CHATONS collective ever since Enough became a member, a few years ago, and more recently when the Gna! collective was accepted. My most notable contribution to CHATONS was to participate in the creation of the Well-Being and Moderation teams, during a crisis that took a few months to resolve. I feel very privileged to have worked with so many good people during this time and proud that it went down in a way that, even years later, I consider to be a shining example of what the enforcement of a Code of Conduct should be.
As a Forgejo contributor and a CHATONS member, I will keep being active in both contexts and hopefully help establish fruitful relationships. I’m not sure where that will lead, but I know one thing: it feels like the post-growth world I want to live in with like minded people. And maybe the Forgejo mascot will sit at the banquet next year, together with its Peertube and CHATONS siblings?
Images courtesy David Revoy