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this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2026
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We really need something like https://forgefed.org/ !
Running all our own forgejo instance is well and good but this the strengh of github is not in it's feature but rather it's because it offer the largest platform. Using a federation protocol would allow users to contribute without needing one account per instances.
To be honest, I'm starting to drink the Sourcehut coolaid here. We have a distributed method of interacting with repositories: Email.
Don't get me wrong, the current user experience of email-based patches and discussion isn't great because it's too easy to send a badly formatted patch. But if we invested time in making email patches easier to use (e.g. sending them through a web ui for people who prefer github style PRs) then we could skip all the architectural pains of solutions like forgefed.
I don't know if email is a good solution. Having contributed to the linux kernel ( in 2010ish ) may have distorted my perception of the gitmail workflow but it doesn't seems very accesible and i can't possibly see a change allowing this to be usable by semi-technical users.
The change would be using Gitmail as the plumbing, and normalising the creation of user-friendly porcelain on top.
E.g. suppose there is a repo foo/bar hosted by a forgejo instance at myinstance.org/foo/bar. Sending an email to foo.bar@myinstance.org (or similar) could automatically create a PR and, conversely, opening a PR could send a patch series to the foo/bar mailing list.
one of my things with the federation is I would like a login to be able to be used with different things. log into peertube with lemmy credentials and such.
This is already somewhat possible if your instance support an OIDC solution, you could create one account and use it as login everywhere as long as it's host by the same people.
For example I use authentik to create accounts and with OIDC my users can login to jellyfin, nextcloud, vaultwarden, forgejo, ...
But that would mean putting all your eggs in one instance.
the egg basket thing is not much of an issue for me. I think having to remake an account is something that is just going to be reality with the federation. Backing up settings is the biggest thing to me to make that a bit less painful.
Maybe something like radicle?
Yep yep yep. I have forgejo accounts on so many instances (including on my own, 2-person instance which hosts all my personal shit). I'd love to be able to jump into discussions and open PRs on other people's forges without needing a new account.
Forgejo in particular is just a fantastic forge. It's surprisingly feature-rich, and so, so fast compared to GitHub, even on very lowspecced hardware. I honestly think that if federation is properly implemented, then in the long run, GitHub will become obsolete for FOSS projects.
Sadly github will continue to exist due to being where contributors are and being easy to find. I hope projects mirrors to forgejo as much as possible noneless.
That's what I'm not so sure about though. Forgejo/codeberg/... projects are already not hard to find through search engines. Add a federated in-forgejo search and you'd be set there.
And currently the problem indeed is that a forgejo project is on instance X, and you, as a developer only have accounts on Y and Z. But through federation, that would stop mattering, so I don't get the "it's where contributors are": as long as contributors have a single forgejo account anywhere, we'd be good.