Dear Gitea Owners,
In the name of the Gitea Community who elected you last year[^0], we welcome the creation of a for-profit company that allows you to make a living out of Gitea.
But there has been some confusion as to the ownership of the Gitea domains and trademarks, which are intricate part of the project. As a Community, we trusted you to care for them because they are one of the most important assets any Free Software project has (if not the most important).
We believed you when you promised to pass along the ownership of the Gitea project to your elected successors. That is an essential bond between you and the strong Community of volunteers.
With that in mind, you can understand our surprise when we learned on October 25th, 2022[^1] that both the domains and the trademark were transferred to a for-profit company without our knowledge or approval.
We want to believe this is an honest mistake and ask that:
- A non-profit organisation owned by the Gitea community is created.
- The Gitea trademark and domains are transferred to the non-profit.
- The name of the company is changed to avoid any confusion with the non-profit.
This is all we need to fix this problem and help restore the trust we, as a Community, have bestowed in the Gitea project.
Your forever enthusiastic and productive Gitea community of volunteers.
[^0] gitea/CONTRIBUTING.md at main · go-gitea/gitea · GitHub
[^1] Open source sustainment and the future of Gitea - Blog