Stealth for-profit transfer of Gitea trademarks. Codeberg (300k+ repos) migrated. Hard fork since 2024.
Gitea (and Forgejo) is a lightweight, self-hosted Git forge written in Go, providing repository hosting, issue tracking, code review, CI/CD, and package registries. It's designed as a lighter alternative to GitLab, requiring minimal resources to run. Forgejo runs on Codeberg (one of the largest GitHub alternatives) and is adopted by organizations prioritizing digital sovereignty.
Gitea started as a community fork of Gogs, positioning itself as the lightweight, self-hosted alternative to GitHub. It built a loyal following among self-hosting enthusiasts and organizations that wanted Git hosting without the Microsoft-owned GitHub baggage. Then, in October 2022, the community discovered something unsettling: the Gitea domains and trademarks had been quietly transferred to a for-profit company controlled by lead maintainer Lunny Xiao, without community knowledge or approval.
The stealth corporate takeover was particularly galling because Gitea had explicitly presented itself as a community project. Contributors had invested time and effort based on that understanding. When the transfer became public, contributors signed an open letter asking for the trademarks and domains to be placed under community management. The request was rejected. The fork was inevitable.
Forgejo was announced on December 15, 2022, under the auspices of Codeberg e.V., a non-profit based in Berlin, Germany. The name means "forge" in Esperanto — the international language, naturally. Codeberg, which hosts over 300,000 repositories, migrated from Gitea to Forgejo, instantly giving the fork a massive production deployment and credibility.
The project initially maintained compatibility with Gitea as a "soft fork," cherry-picking changes between the two codebases. But in early 2024, contributor Earl Warren proposed what many had been thinking: Forgejo should become a hard fork with an independent development path. The community agreed, and Forgejo began diverging from Gitea, focusing on reducing tech debt, fixing security vulnerabilities more aggressively, and using exclusively free software tooling (Weblate instead of Crowdin, Codeberg instead of GitHub).
Forgejo represents what Gitea was supposed to be: a genuinely community-governed forge. The project's governance structures are independent of Codeberg, but the non-profit holds the domains, ensuring no repeat of the trademark heist. It's the anti-corporate-takeover fork, built specifically to prevent the exact thing that caused it.
Discovery that Gitea trademarks and domains were transferred to Lunny Xiao's for-profit company
Open letter from contributors asking for community custody of trademarks — rejected
Forgejo announced under Codeberg e.V. as a community fork of Gitea
Codeberg migrates from Gitea to Forgejo, bringing 300,000+ repositories
Forgejo becomes a hard fork, beginning independent development path
Forgejo announces Gitea 1.22 is the last version supporting transparent upgrade to Forgejo
Forgejo has become the standard for community-driven, self-hosted Git forges. With Codeberg as its anchor deployment, it serves hundreds of thousands of repositories and proves that non-profit governance can sustain a major software project. The hard fork in 2024 marked the point of no return — Forgejo is now its own project with its own identity.
The fork also established an important precedent: when trademarks and domains are held by individuals or for-profit entities, the community is always one quiet transfer away from losing control. Forgejo's non-profit structure specifically addresses this vulnerability.