Forgejo FAQ

Where does the name come from?

Forgejo (pronounced /forˈd͡ʒe.jo/) is inspired by forĝejo, the Esperanto word for forge.

Why was Forgejo created?

In October 2022 the domains and trademark of Gitea were transferred to a for-profit company without knowledge or approval of the community. Despite writing an open letter, the takeover was later confirmed. Forgejo was created as an alternative providing a software forge whose governance further the interest of the general public.

Forgejo was initially presented as a “soft-fork” of Gitea, similar to LineageOS, a community led distribution based on Android from Google. It is however better described as a product built on top of Gitea, Git and hundreds of other Free Software projects. Forgejo also has its own documentation, infrastructure, release pipeline, CI infrastructure, distribution channels etc.

Are migrations from Gitea to Forgejo possible?

Yes, because Forgejo includes all of Gitea. All commits made on Gitea are also present in Forgejo. Some additional modifications are made, to improve scaling, federation and privacy.

Using Free Software to develop Free Software

Forgejo development happens on Codeberg, which is itself running Forgejo and Woodpecker (for continuous integration). By “dogfooding” our code, we aim at being close to our users and serve them better.

Who owns the Forgejo domains and trademarks?

The Forgejo domains are in the custody of Codeberg e.V. a non-profit based in Germany and dedicated to hosting Free Software projects since 2019. It is ultimately in control of Forgejo and its bylaws guarantee it will keep further the interest of the general public. No trademark was registered at this point in time.

What is ‘Codeberg e.V.’?

Codeberg e.V. is an association registered in Berlin, Germany. The e.V. abbreviation is for eingetragener Verein, which translates as ‘registered association’. The link above is to the Impressum, which includes the required contact information, statements regarding non-profit status, and other helpful information. You may verify this information via the German Federal Registration portal; just type in Codeberg e.V. as the company, click the Find button, and select the SI link for an xml structured report.

Is Forgejo sustainable? How is it funded?

Sustaining Free Software projects developed in the interest of the general public is an ongoing challenge. Forgejo relies on a mixture of volunteer contributions, grants, donations and employee delegation to keep going. The details are documented transparently in a repository dedicated to sustainability.

Is there a roadmap for Forgejo?

There is just one item on the roadmap: forge federation. User research is ongoing to build a roadmap that reflects actual user needs. If you are interested to participate, please join the chat room.

Who is using Forgejo?

Codeberg.org has been using Forgejo starting with version 1.18.0 to host over 50,000 projects and 40,000 users. Various organizations and individuals will also upgrade from Gitea to Forgejo simply by changing the URL from which they download releases.

What is the governance of Forgejo?

Forgejo is a collective of individuals who define their own governance. Its evolution is discussed in a dedicated forum until an decision is made and documented. Codeberg e.V. does not run the day to day operations of Forgejo nor does it require the members of the project to follow its governance. It is solely responsible for ensuring the domains and trademarks are ultimately used to further the interest of the general public in accordance to its bylaws.

Does Forgejo have a Code of Conduct?

Yes. The Code of Conduct applies to all spaces that are under the responsibility of the Forgejo project. The moderation teams is available to resolve conflicts.

Is Forgejo licensed under AGPL?

No. The license of Forgejo is MIT. It was suggested to change the license to AGPL in order to prevent a takeover from a for-profit company. It was however decided that the best way to prevent such a takeover was to have the Forgejo domains and trademarks in the custody of the Codeberg e.V. non-profit.

How are security vulnerabilities handled?

Security issues are managed by a team sharing the effort between Codeberg and Forgejo. The security team is available at security@forgejo.org (GPG public key 1B638BDF10969D627926B8D9F585D0F99E1FB56F) and is tasked to identify, define, and respond to vulnerabilities.

Why are container images published with the 1.19 tag?

The 1.19 tag is set to be the latest patch release, starting with 1.19.0-2. 1.19 will then be equal to 1.19.1-0 when it is released and so on. It can conveniently be used for automated upgrades to the latest stable release.

Why is there no latest tag for container images?

Because upgrading from 1.X to 1.X+1 (for instance from 1.18 to 1.19) requires a manual operation and human verification. However it is possible to use the X.Y tag (for instance 1.19) to get the latest point release automatically.

Why must I keep the binary name gitea on upgrade?

Because the gitea binary file name is referenced by an existing Gitea installation and would need to be replaced if Forgejo was installed as forgejo instead. It is the case, for instance, within the git hooks.

Using a symbolic link from gitea to forgejo makes it simple and convenient to use both names while preserving backward compatibility.

What are the names of the built-in Forgejo themes?

Forgejo introduces two new themes: light version named forgejo-light and a dark version named forgejo-dark. They are the default for a new installation but will need to be set explicitly if the app.ini file already has a custom list of themes. For instance, if it looks like this:

[ui]
THEMES = auto,arc-green,gitea

the forgejo-auto, forgejo-light and forgejo-dark can be added as follows:

[ui]
THEMES = forgejo-auto,forgejo-light,forgejo-dark,auto,arc-green,gitea

Why are there no mentions of mssql in the documentation? Or Windows binaries?

Although the Forgejo codebase is known to be easy to built for Windows and reliably run with a mssql database, there currently is no expertise on either of those in the Forgejo community. Maintaining a distribution targetting a given database and Operating System requires someone to build and maintain the release pipeline, figure out the root cause of bugs and fix them.