I never was against this, so once again, I’m happy to see onepict getting funded within the Gitea grant for the community work.
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Very happy to see @onepict in the forge federation space. I was only briefly present in the previous and the last forge friend meeting, but I distinctly remember how she made organizing the community side of things very straight forward. We could definitely use more of that 
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well I’m just suprised that this is an issue at all …
ack for having her in
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I agree with what everyone else said.
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Just catching up here. Not in the MoU but would love to see @onepict being funded as intended and part of our nice forge federation collective as before. Really enjoyed her participation and activity.
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Sent to NLnet today
Subject: Intake & link to payment request website
Dear NLnet,
As progress is made towards forge federation we would like to know how to proceed for sending request for payments. Maybe that was part of the intake document but, unless we missed something, we don’t think we received it.
Would you be so kind as to send it?
Thanks in advance for your help
Loïc, Anthony, Gusted, Aravinth & 6543
Reply from NLnet received the same day
Re: Intake & link to payment request website
Dear Loïc,
please find the information on how to get donations for this project. A recap for the others that might not be aware: it doesn’t involve much more than asking, once one or more (sub)task from the project plan are completed. Your “Request for Payment” (aka RfP) can be made through this web form:
[redacted]
[redacted] You can use the same link to check the status of your request. Of course it makes sense to combine multiple tasks in a single RfP, this saves everybody time.
The system will only allow to make requests for payment to people or organisations that are already part of the MoU, so if you engage new people to the project we at NLnet need to create an amendment before you can request payment. In such a case, people can send an email to [redacted].
To be safe, expect payments to take up to three calendar weeks, we do our best to make it quicker. If you expect to require payments during holiday periods, please factor in some potential additional delay or notify us well upfront as we may be running on skeleton staff.
I hope this is clear. If there are any questions, do not hesitate to ask. And have a great weekend!
Kind regards,
Reply sent the same day to NLnet
Thanks for the quick reply!
@Gusted @Dodecahedron @6543 @realaravinth entrust2022@forgefriends.org is going to be migrated to a self-hosted mail provider. It is on Gandi but they decided a few month ago to charge 4€ per month for each mailbox. That was previously part of the package when renting a domain name but no longer. Please reach out to me for the url/user/password of the new hosting.
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It has been almost a year and since the workplan is not complete yet, I propose to kindly ask for an extension of another year. The initial MoU is valid one year but it was made clear since the beginning that the beneficiaries were not obliged to complete any task within that delay. There is a hard deadline in 2025 though and the extension is a one time thing.
As promised in 2022, I propose to take of informing NLnet that an extension is requested by sending the following mail. If there is no objection within two weeks, it will be sent:
Dear [redacted],
The implementation of the workplan was delayed and we kindly request an extension of one year to allow us to work to its completion.
The work done for moderation has been used in production for about six months (estimated a few hundred deployments and probably over 100,000 users) and is essential to enable federation. It is however much less that we would have liked to accomplish and the " State of the Forge Federation: 2023 edition" published in June 2023 further explain why our work was delayed.
We are determined to move forward in a better context and complete the workplan.
Thank you for your understanding
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+1 requesting extension,
I’m currently responsible for testing. I’ve made some progress in this area with ftest and I expect to achieve 80% of the goal by the end of the current grant period (December 20, 2023).
So if there’s work available, I request additional responsibility.
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The tasks are not assigned to anyone. As long as people who already expressed an interest in doing something do not object to you implementing tasks, there is no formal process requested.
One thing would be really good: implementing outbox in Forgejo (with tests in ftest) and/or expose the Forgejo followers as ActivityPub followers. Low hanging fruits.
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The mail was sent today and a copy can be found in the shared inbox under “2022-08-067 request for a one year extension”.
The delay extension was granted and the hard deadline is now 1 December 2024. There will be no more extension.
TL;DR:
- If there no progress by 31 July 2024 ask NLnet for advice because the deadline won’t be met
- Be prepared to cancel the grant so that NLnet has enough time to redistribute the funds to other projects
There are five more months to the deadline, which is enough time to complete the tasks. However, since there was no progress in the past six months, it is worth considering the possibility that there will not be progress in the next five months either.
When that grant was submitted I proposed to help with administrative aspects of managing the grant, which is what I have done so far. And what motivates this message.
I propose that, if no significant progress is made by the end of July 2024, a message is sent to NLnet asking them for advice on how to proceed. Letting them know that although every task is still relevant today, it turned out that nobody was available to work on them in the past 18 months. It should also be mentioned that other people were invited to participate but declined.
It would not be fair to NLnet to wait until 1 December, knowing that the chance of completing the tasks are close to non-existent. There is a time limit to the funding they can distribute because it originates from the EU. That happened with the previous grant, for the same tasks and NLnet found themselves with an unexpected excess of fund and forced to deal with it at the very last minute. This is not how this grant should be completed and not fair to NLnet.
Canceling the grant is not the outcome any of us would have hoped for, I’m sure of that. But life is not just about good news and success, it is also about facing the potential for bad news and failure instead of burying our head in the sad. And in this case planning in advance could allow everyone to properly prepare and wrap up. NLnet could reuse the money to extend funding to other projects with more momentum and allow them to move further. And the beneficiaries could reset and do better the next time around.
Giving back the funds (almost all of it, 47,500€ out of 50,000€) with enough time so that NLnet can redistribute is probably something that never happens. I bet beneficiaries either wait it out until their receive notice that it is all canceled. Or they make a one time effort to match the deliverable and abandon the project shortly after, there are plenty examples of that on the net. But there was no such behavior from the beneficiaries of this grant and the 2,500€ that were awarded funded a feature that is key to federation and has been used, maintained and shipped in every Forgejo release published in the past year, user blocking.
While I think all beneficiaries should prepare for this unpleasant outcome, NLnet may have advice to give them a third chance in case the 1 December 2024 deadline is not met. But the time for negotiations is in the past and following their advice will be the right thing to do in any case.
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Hi, I had initially expressed my support for this motion in our private conversation, but I request you to kindly extend the deadline to the end of August, if you haven’t reached out NLnet on this matter already.
My ForgeFlux task list is very similar to the Forgejo task list, so I would like to try my hand at porting to Go and Forgejo 
Of course, I understand if you’ve already contacted NLnet to forgo the grant.
I did not send any message to NLnet.
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Hi, I thought I might drop a few cents to this conversation as well
I’m part of the team at meissa.de which currently works on furthering the federation effort for forgejo. A few weeks ago the federated-star feature was merged (Link to PR). We’re currently planning work for the un-star feature.
I also read the agreement on the fund and found some overlap between finishing the federated-star feature and the work plan. Maybe we could have a chat and work out if we can fit some of our effort into that plan.
In case it is not clear already, because this thread is quite long and extends over an extended period of time, my role in this grant is purely on an administrative matter. I’m the clerk doing the paperwork in accordance to what the beneficiaries agree on, within the frame of the current Memorandum of Understanding.
There currently is one ongoing task being implemented and for which payment can be claimed when it is completed:
If anyone is aware of another work, either already completed or in progress that matches a task defined in the MoU, please say so, with a URL. If you are unsure just ask.