Back in March 2022 Aravinth Manivannan and myself had the idea of creating a Gitea hosting provider that would be radically transparent, self-hostable, 100% Free Software, sustainable and clients can pay with a credit card. On top of that it would only host Free Software projects.
Sounds like git.coop doesn’t it? I can’t agree more But there are key differences:
it is based Gitea instead of Gitlab
it is not a shared hosting platform
it is open to the general public
We have since worked to bootstrap a new organization at https://hostea.org to implement this project and it opened a few weeks ago, early July 2022. It provides dedicated Gitea+Woodpecker hosting starting at 10€/month. It does not provide shared hosting like git.coop does. It is a new kind of cooperative organization, setup as a horizontal collective with a unique governance and shared revenue model.
It was heavily influenced by discussions and explorations of how meet.coop is setup and how it came to be. In particular the governance of Hostea is very light compared to meet.coop. It also accounts for the work done by everyone, even at the very early stages of the project, so that everyone is fairly compensated when there is an income. Nobody is expected to work for free at any point.
I think it would make sense for Webarchitects to become a member of Hostea and I’d be happy to discuss it in person.
What would be the benefice for Webarchitects? To get paid when and if Gitea related work or hosting shows up. It could be that Webarchitects client asks for Gitea managed hosting. Or that another Hostea member, Easter-Eggs for instance, requires Gitea related work that Webarchitects is able to do.
What would it entails? Nothing other than agreeing. Accounts are settled monthly based on the number of hours logged and the income is split evenly. Webarchitects could invoice Easter-Eggs for X hours of Gitea services if it turns out that Easter-Eggs was the Hostea member receiving the money.
Yes! Noted. I have prepared and rehearsed a two minutes pitch. The maturation process of this collective has been long but in the end I’m very happy about where it is. I hope to convey why in a way that will appeal to other Webarchitects members!
Thanks a lot for the opportunity to present Gna! Here it is for the record:
My main takeaways:
How to deal with spam? Answer: that’s a lot of work and must not be underestimated, tools need to be worked on, manual work is involved too.
How to deal with the inflation of content long term? Answer: there are limits per user, nothing is unlimited. And since Gna! is designed to stay small, there also is a limit to the number of registered accounts. These are the conditions to keep things from inflating uncontrollably over time.
What is the benefit for Gna! that Webarchitects joins? Answer: it makes Gna! more durable.
Proposed next action, should Webarchitects be willing to join Gna!
Identify a subject Webarchitects would like to do related to forge (most likely in the context of git.coop), it could be ansible playbooks to deploy federated forges.
Write a claim together to get to get tax returns working on that topic
Once the funding is secured Webarchitects do the work and gets paid for it
The result is published on git.coop and can be re-used by Gna!
But there are key differences: