FFmpeg moves to Forgejo

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Move from Mailing Lists to a Forge

  • FFmpeg’s announcement cites “modernizing contributions”: continuous integration, merge requests, labeling, conflict resolution, OpenID/GitHub login, and integrated issue tracking.
  • Mailing lists had become high-friction: huge volume, poor patch tracking, Patchwork unreliability, and many patches slipping through or stalling without conclusion.
  • New contributors struggled with SMTP setup, git send-email, modern email security, and lack of a convenient review workflow.
  • Mailing lists will remain for higher-level discussions, but code contributions are encouraged to move to the forge.

Why Forgejo (and not GitHub/GitLab/Gitea)

  • Explicit motivation: avoid relying on GitHub/Microsoft while still getting a GitHub-like workflow.
  • Forgejo is a self-hostable fork of Gitea; some see it as correcting a “corporate/open core” turn in Gitea, others say that framing is exaggerated and Gitea itself remains fully FOSS.
  • Several commenters note Gitea has more features and faster development, with Forgejo pulling many patches from Gitea; others argue key Gitea devs moved to Forgejo and that both are adequate, feature-complete for many use cases.
  • GitLab is criticized as heavy, “maximalist,” and resource-hungry for small/self-hosted setups.

Mailing List vs Web Forge Workflows

  • Supporters of email-based workflows emphasize:
    • Powerful scripting and integration with editors, simpler personal workflows, and standards-based tooling.
    • Proven success in projects like the Linux kernel and Sourcehut’s model.
  • Critics argue:
    • The learning curve and setup complexity act as a de facto gatekeeping mechanism.
    • Browser-based PRs, unified accounts, and built-in CI are more accessible for occasional contributors.

GitHub Dominance and Contribution Quality

  • GitHub’s network effects and social/marketing lock-in are seen as stronger than technical lock-in; issues/PRs/workflows are hard to migrate cleanly.
  • Maintainers report spammy and trivial PRs (typos, whitespace, Hacktoberfest-style noise), sometimes now AI-assisted; opinions differ on whether this is a minor annoyance or a serious drain.

Anubis Anti‑Bot Protection and Anime Mascot

  • Many users struggle to access the new Forgejo instance due to Anubis (proof-of-work anti-bot middleware), reporting “invalid response,” missing CSS, or needing to relax browser protections.
  • Strong split:
    • Critics call it DRM-like, hostile to privacy tools and older/slow devices, and unprofessional due to the prominent anime mascot.
    • Defenders say it’s better and more transparent than Cloudflare/recaptcha, necessary against AI crawlers, and the mascot is harmless self-expression; an unbranded paid version exists, and the code is MIT-licensed so branding can be removed in forks.