Forgefed.org is archived pending approval from all ForgeFed maintainers

Today I received a private email from one of the current ForgeFed maitnainers in which they unambiguously expressed their disapproval for proceeding with new maintainers. This was discussed in the forgefriends chatroom and it was decided to archive everything for now and revisit the situation in a month.

The hope is that the maintainer will see this gesture as a sign of good faith and approve of the initiative.

To be continued.

My enthusiasm for the renewed activity at https://forgefed.org took one of the current ForgeFed maintainers by surprise and I deeply apologize for proceeding without their explicit approval, which they needed to remind me in a private email where they sounded very upset. I incorrectly assumed @fr33domlover pat on the back was all that was needed to move forward. As a sign of respect for their continued leadership of the @forgefed project, the new repositories and website will be shutdown.

i have no idea why the the forge-fed effort has halted - i have been quite curious about it myself - there has been little activity in the peers group for about 6 months; but i do not know why - the future of any project can be dubious, if people do not communicate well

i watched the closing of the FENEAS forum, with no acknowledgement from fr33domlover; but i can not explain it - IIRC, fr33domlover setup the activity-pub forum; so it did not seem very urgent at the time - apparently, fr33domlover has found other interests and is no longer working on forge-fed - i learned this only today by digging around mastodon posts - that was from a post in Aug 2021; but i can not remember that intention being communicated to peers - until today, it has been a mystery

my mastodon post yesterday was only pointing out that the project already has a website, a domain name, and a git repo - i dont see any compelling reason to change or replace any of those - doing so is usually a compromise, as last resort when maintenance is otherwise impossible, with the heavy cost of broken links all over the web; but that is totally possible, of course, if necessary - all of those specific tools were chosen, only to satisfy the workflows of the people who were doing the work - if the people who are doing the work change, then the tools can also change

only the website domain is relatively important to keep stable - the specific tools, hosts, and maintainers are irrelevant and interchangeable - as far as i know the web hosting is a stable situation; but if the website must move to a new host, i would contact the person who registered the domain, to ask that it be pointed to the new host, and ideally to share the DNS credentials with a few other maintainers - only if that person does not respond, would i consider the situation dire enough to justify using another domain name; although keeping another ready is always wise, just in case - frankly, i admire the initiative here; but i think this effort could be revived less abruptly, with a bit of communication

it is unfortunate that the project is apparently in a state of disarray currently - but as far as i can tell, the only reason is a lack of communication - i have not seen a single word from fr33domlover or zplus since FENEAS’s shutdown announcement - there was already another backup forum setup on the activity-pub website; so i did not think much of it at the time - i assumed it was only a temporary lull in participation - if i had thought it would be long-lasting, i could have done something more to communicate the situation/transition better to the community at the time

the request yesterday to update the github notice made that clear - the web forum is given as the primary communication channel; but where is “the forge-fed forum” now? - the new activity-pub forum exists but has not been used; and i believe that fr33domlover is the only moderator - if fr33domlover is not watching the project anymore, then it would not be prudent to direct anyone to it - maybe this forum would be the best home for community interactions?

fr33domlover:

If there are any resources you wish to edit/maintain, such as website or forum, let me know. Or perhaps better, ask zPlus or bill-auger on the #peers channel on Libera Chat

dachary:

This an agreement for me to maintain forgefed

just to nit-pick, i would not characterize fr33domlover’s post from Apr 2022 as the “green light”, or an agreement, in exactly those terms as a “take-over” - it does not need to be so formal - forge-fed has always been a community effort, since years before it had a name - all the work is CC0-licensed; and absolutely everyone is invited to jump in and forward the progress, in any ways which are needed - a “take-over” would not need to be anything more significant than moderation privileges on the forum and push access to the repos, wherever those are hosted

it only needs to be agreed which tools and hosts will be the “official” ones, denoted on the website - clearly, at least one person should be watching/over-seeing the project - ideally several would - i did not realize that no one was - there are at least four people that i know of, with full access to the notabug repo - i could get updates to the website published, if need be - i think this is just a case of poor communication

the important bit of fr33domlover’s message, is the suggestion to contact peers on IRC - i am learning of this bottleneck only today; because no one did that - if no one sends me email or contacts me on IRC, i am only going to see activity on the notabug repo, the FENEAS forum (now defunct), or mastodon posts which ping me explicitly - only yesterday, i got a toot in my email asking about the github repo; so i dug around mastodon looking for information, and found this forum, it’s many discussions about forge-fed, and fr33domlover’s toot, effectively resigning from the project 9 months ago - if fr33domlover and zplus are no longer overseeing the effort, and you are willing to, then you should definitely do that - i would do it myself, if i knew that it was needed

i would characterize the forge-fed project much like the tenants of this website’s manifesto:

  • There is no hierarchy
  • There is no spokesperson

so … whatever needs to be done, just do it, please! - i will help in any way i can - IMHO, forge-fed could have (and should have) released a draft spec 3 years ago - it could be well into the adoption/implementation phase by now, if ambition people such as yourself had been on-boarded sooner - i can not believe that fr33domlover would reject the offer, while decidedly ignoring the project - that would be the classic BDFL problem; but forge-fed is not that sort of project - that is why the github repo is a permanent red herring now; because the people involved did not want a “leader” to be in control of the effort and infrastructure - by all means, lets get it moving again

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Thanks for taking the time to explain your point of view. I appreciate that it appears to be an abrupt move: time flies. As you noticed offers for help to revive forgefed go back 9 months ago, which felt like a very long time. It was indeed a bit of a stretch on my part to interpret fr33domloever message as an approval to go on. But since it was essentially the only message in a year and positive too… I got carried away :slight_smile:

It felt this way from a distance, indeed. However, the private email I received unambiguously claimed ownership of the project and rejected the initiative to revive forgefed under https://forgefed.org.

Now… forgefed is ultimately the project of its founders and it is not my place to decide if it should continue or how. I’d be happy to contribute if given the chance, if and when they decide my help is welcome.

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i sense that my message was misunderstood - it seems to me, the problem you are facing does not exist - you seem to be under the false presumption that only fr33domlover and zplus have the authority to do on-board new contributors, or otherwise have some claim to the project - that is probably because fr33domlover and zplus were the most active last year; but they are not the “owners” of the project

so to be clear, i was not sharing my “point of view” - i was telling you that i can make this happen for you now - you do not need to wait for any else’s approval - if you had contacted me or vaeringar 9 month ago, we could have on-boarded you then

you do not need approval from fr33domlover to take over the project - the very notion is misplaced anyways - terms like “take-over” make it sound like the intention is for an entirely new team, excluding the current maintainers, and that you would become the “owner” of the project - maybe that is what fr33domlover is objecting to - i would object to that also - it does not need to be so dramatic

the project has no “founders”; because in reality, the project never was “founded” - it sort of “emerged” or “coalesced”, quite organically through the interest of many people with varied objectives - many people worked on this since before it was focused enough to be a distinct project, deserving of a name - no one person can claim any part of it, nor to represent it as a whole - it was entirely a community effort from the beginning - even the name was chosen by votes from over a dozen people - but if anyone deserves the title of “a founder”, surely i would qualify - i wrote the original requirements document for a federated forge network in 2016, and have invested as much time as anyone into forge-fed over the years

i am very glad to see people interested in it - i am very displeased to see that it is currently bogged down in petty disputes of management, ownership, leadership or whatever - that concern is misplaced - no one owns forge-fed and it has no leaders - owners and leaders are not needed - it only needs “do-ers”

that is exactly why the github repo was never used - the person who created it, never gave anyone else permissions to it; and everyone (including fr33domlover) disagreed with that sort of management structure - as soon as that became evident, the effort moved to notabug, without that person, specifically so that multiple people (anyone who is capable and interested) could maintain it, ensuring a healthy future, unfettered by management or authority disputes

i do not believe that fr33domlover would claim ownership of the project - fr33domlover was among the most emphatic proponents of the CC0 license - unless fr33domlover is a very different person now, it just does make sense - in fact, vaeringar is the only team member with significant authority; because vaeringar controls the website

originally, the maintainers (the de-facto “founders”) were myself, fr33domlover, zplus, and vaeringar - there was no sense of authority or entitlement about that though - no one claimed to be a founder or leader - we were simply the ones who were capable and interested for the long term - if you were as interested at the time, you would already be a “founder”, maintainer, or whatever you wanted to do at the time, simply because you were capable and interested - likewise today, the only important factor, is “who is interested today?”

from what i read, fr33domlover is no longer interested today - if fr33domlover has objections about new maintainers, fr33domlover should make that known to the rest of us - until then, you have my endorsement - if that is not enough for you, then i guess forge-fed shall never be completed, unless i do it

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This is heartwarming and news to me (and probably others): thanks a lot for clarifying.

It was never the intention. The word “takeover” is indeed negatively connoted and should not have been used. It would have been more accurate to say that the proposal was to move the new project to another forge for the sole purpose of onboarding new and existing maintainers. When that was done fr33domlover, who already had an account on that forge, also has ownership permissions.

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You are also very welcome to join, of course.

This is all very encouraging and it gives me hope that something can be worked out to continue under the same name. :pray: I’m sure you can appreciate the chilling effect of the private message I received and my hesitation to move forward because of it. I’m a passive and creative person, easily impressed when someone tells me I did something wrong :blush:

Maybe you could comment on the notabug issue and sort this out?

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This would have been announced/organized at notabug, most probably. But it was has been down since May 27th.

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notabug.org is back online :tada:

Since there appears to be a renewed activity in Forgefed from the current maintainers, I’m happy to stay in my role as a contributor and look forward to working with them.

@realaravinth I proposed that forgefed.org ownership is transfered to the current maintainers. You paid for the registration and I’d be happy to share that cost with you, as a donation to the forgefed.org project, if you’d like.

Thanks for the offer, I’ll pay this year’s rent, and we could share it the next time. I would like to set up a separate account and move forgefed.org to it before sharing it with the other maintainers. I will complete the whole process by Sunday.

I was proposing to transfer the domain to the maintainers, not to share permissions with them. They should initiate a transfer request from their registrar handle and one of us could then approve it, that’s all we need to do. There is no action required from us at this point.

Since they are back and there is no need for me to be a maintainer, I have no reason to be the maintainer of forgefed.org either. I don’t mind the burden or the cost, of course. But if I was in the position of the current maintainers, I would feel more comfortable with all resources under the same roof.

Does that make sense?

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That makes perfect sense. I am still travelling(my plans are delayed due to some urgent, personal reasons). Feel free to approve the request.

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