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Dear Free Software Supporter,

As we said in an end-of-year [post][0] highlighting our work
supporting free software development and infrastructure, the Free
Software Foundation (FSF) is planning to launch a public code hosting
and collaboration platform ("[forge][1]"), to launch in 2020. Members
of the FSF tech team are currently reviewing ethical Web-based
software that helps teams work on their projects, with features like
merge requests, bug tracking, and other common tools.

[0]: [link removed]
[1]: [link removed]

The new site will complement the current [GNU][2] and [non-GNU][3]
Savannah servers, which we will continue to support and improve, in
collaboration with their awesome volunteer team. (By the way, if you
want to volunteer, please email <[email protected]> with
a note about your interest!)

[2]: [link removed]
[3]: [link removed]

Infrastructure is very important for free software, and it's
unfortunate that so much free software development currently relies on
sites that don't publish their source code, and require or encourage
the use of proprietary software. Our [GNU ethical repository
criteria][4] aim to set a high standard for free software code
hosting, and we hope to meet that with our new forge.

[4]: [link removed]

We plan on contributing improvements upstream for the new forge
software we choose, to boost its score on those criteria. Our tech
team is small for the size of the network we maintain, and we don't
have any full-time developers who work for the FSF, so we are limited
in the amount of time we can spend on the software we choose. We'll
communicate with the upstream developers to request improvements and
help clarify any questions related to the ethical repository criteria.

So far, we have been researching a list of candidate programs, and
analyzing them in terms of ethical and practical criteria. Some of the
software candidates we're looking at were found on the [Free Software
Directory][5]. We aim to initially reach a B rating on the GNU ethical
repository criteria, and then to work towards reaching an A rating
after we launch. Reaching a B will require [LibreJS][6] support, no
third party tracking, proper license information, and more. We also
came up with a list of practical criteria, which includes two-factor
authentication (2FA), high performance, being well supported upstream,
and other common forge features.

[5]: [link removed]
[6]: [link removed]

We are filtering out systems that are targeted toward single
organizations or companies, because we want users to be able to sign
up and create their own repositories on our site. If you're looking for a
system to handle your organization's source code management needs,
there are some fully free options out there for you, including
[Kallithea][7], [Allura][8], and [Phabricator][9].

[7]: [link removed]
[8]: [link removed]
[9]: [link removed]

We also hope that in the future we'll be able to see decentralized,
federated collaboration platforms that meet most needs. We will
continue to be interested in that direction, but we think the need for
this freedom-respecting forge is time sensitive, so we're going to do
it with the free software we have available right now. Allowing issues
and other data to be imported and exported is a feature that we want
in our new forge, because that will at least ensure that users can
move to another instance of the same platform.

We are tracking our [ongoing analysis][10] on the LibrePlanet wiki,
and will continue updating the page with information pertaining to our
research about free software for our upcoming forge.

[10]: [link removed]

The project will operate with a high level of transparency: we will
publish the source code that runs on the server and document how we
run the system, and we welcome volunteers to help guide and improve
the project. Reach out to us at the [LibrePlanet developers mailing
list][11] if you're interested in participating.

[11]: [link removed]

Up next for the FSF tech team is to do more research about systems
that have met our initial requirements, in order to find the best
options available. Once we know what we're interested in, we'll start
trying them out and performing more extensive tests.

Stay tuned to hear from us about the software stack we end up
choosing, and for our site launch announcement!

Happy hacking!

Andrew Engelbrecht
Senior Systems Administrator

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