From 4e957553b3a69e07cb9e020055494ac156b9537d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: oppiliappan Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2026 09:04:33 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] blog: we need a federation of forges Signed-off-by: oppiliappan --- blog/posts/federation.md | 57 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 57 insertions(+) create mode 100644 blog/posts/federation.md diff --git a/blog/posts/federation.md b/blog/posts/federation.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..a96ed0f6 --- /dev/null +++ b/blog/posts/federation.md @@ -0,0 +1,57 @@ +--- +atroot: true +template: +slug: federation +title: we need a federation of forges +subtitle: git is decentralized, but what of the rest? +image: https://assets.tangled.network/home-page-self-host-light.svg +date: 2026-04-29 +authors: + - name: Akshay + email: akshay@tangled.org + handle: oppi.li +--- + + + + + + +GitHub seems to be crumbling the past couple of weeks. +Whatever the reason, ultimately its not great for 90% of the +world's OSS to depend on one provider. Centralized systems +always crumble; it's the emails, gits, and IRCs that stand +the test of time. Tangled aims to fit in this space, allow +me to explain. + +Code collaboration has always made use of two protocols, one +for code transfer and one for communication: + +- It began with the email flow: git (code transfer) + email + (comms) +- Then there was GitHub: git (code transfer) + GitHub the + website (comms) +- There is the ForgeFed project: git (code transfer) + + [maybe + ActivityPub](https://forgefed.org/blog/actor-programming/) + (comms) +- We are building Tangled: git (code transfer) + [AT + protocol](https://atproto.com/) (comms) + +Tangled federates events among git servers (called "knots"). +You can collaborate on repositories on any server and you +can fork across servers. You can even push to a repository +on your own server, and open a pull-request on a repo hosted +on a completely different server. In a lot of ways, this is +quite like hosting your own cgit instance, and sending out +patches via email. + +Tangled uses AT to facilitate the Authenticated Transfer of +events surrounding code: like issues and pull-requests, and +it also enables a few social bits: a timeline of events, +follows, stars (and vouches very soon). AT is used to share +collaborator invites and ssh pubkeys, but the rest is just +good ol' git. + +OSS needs to break free from monocultures like GitHub, but +code collaboration should still be fun and social. -- 2.51.2