FFmpeg moves to Forgejo
87 comments
·August 13, 2025mpalmer
Duralias
It has simply been normalized and for a lot of smaller scale sites, that this was first made for, being a little less professional isn't a problem.
But for situations where a company simply won't use Anubis because of its branding then they do sell a unbranded version.
c0balt
> but I would not use Anubis unless I could disable the imagery, and every time I see it on another site, I think: "hm. weird. whose branding is this?"
They do offer an unbranded version, botstopper. It is part of their commercial offering [0] and intended for "professional" environments
mpalmer
Can't fault the logic. Will never use it if that's part of what they've chosen to paywall.
xena
Once the project is sustainable (where I define sustainable as monthly recurring revenue--not one time donations--to be at $5000 USD per month as that is the point where my bank account stays flatlined not accounting for tax), an option to remove it will be added to the version you don't have to pay for.
Otherwise, it's MIT licensed software. You can remove it all you want, but I will use that as a signal to focus my time and energy as I see fit.
clickety_clack
I respect the expression of individual taste, but it suggests strongly that the platform has not reached professional maturity.
null
overboard2
I for one don't see anything wrong with anime characters, though I suppose neither of us are likely to change our minds.
mpalmer
"sufficiently tasteful/professional/anodyne" != "wrong"
OptionX
I didn't know about Forgejo so I went to the site.
"Forgejo is a self-hosted lightweight software forge"
OK, cool. But wth is a software forge?
Go to the FAQ. Have to scroll way down just to the the "how it compares to gitea" to indirectly tell me it was a git management piece of software.
I could've Google it, but having to go outside to just figure out what it was lets me belive the documentation is going to be primo stuff. Did tell me about 50 times how it follows the CoC through. Priorities I guess.
necovek
Are you not familiar with SourceForge? Did you know what a (non-software) "forge" is?
The term actually predates Git (SourceForge started with CVS and SVN IIRC).
I am not saying documentation should not be better — it should — but I am surprised someone in software development would not know of the term. And knowing how good free software projects are at documentation, not turn to searches first (or is it just software projects? I've recently tried to find out what VMWare product I can run virtual machines on Windows with, and it took me a bit too).
Edit: the homepage at https://forgejo.org/ actually has phrases like "self-host your projects and get everyone involved in delivering quality software on the same page" or "Self-hosted alternative to GitHub"
tonyhart7
well not everyone is boomer
tylerritchie
this is one where "software forge" is industry specific jargon (similar to "isostaticrebound" in earthquake science and "evapotranspiration" in biology) which the intended audience would tend to know the definition of. that said, it's a fair complaint for the quality of their marketing material (if not their technical documentation).
as an aside, i checked and it takes four taps (with an thumb highlight thown in ) to define it from my phone.
wilsonnb3
It does say “a self hosted alternative to GitHub” on the main page
esperent
Opening this site I get "Oh Noes! Invalid Response" with an anime girl.
Tried refreshing, opening in a private windows, same thing.
EDIT: tried it again and got to "Making sure you're not a bot" with the same cringey anime girl, then the site loaded without CSS. Tried one more time, finally it loaded.
EDIT 2: clicked on a link and I'm back to "Oh Noes!...".
ericbarrett
That is Anubis trying to get your browser to do proof of work: https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis
null
reactordev
What's with the anime girl? I couldn't get past her. Is that a Fargejo thing?
rice7th
That's anubis, an anti web crawler tool [0]
nozzlegear
Why is the anubis mascot an anime girl?
xena
To entice people to support the project. See this comment for a breakdown of the finances of the project: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44926915
Once I reach the $5000 per month goal across all funding platforms, features currently exclusive to the private fork of Anubis for corpos (including changing the images and soon HTML templating support: https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper) will be merged into the open source repo.
wpm
For reasons I struggle to understand, some people are into that sort of thing.
MiiMe19
Because it can be
crote
It's Anubis[0], an AI crawler blocker.
null
thrdbndndn
The biggest news is not what software they use but they finally moved away from mail list, which is a big win.
setheron
Dunno why but lately I can't visit any Anubis protected websites from my phone (Android).
Just says Invalid Response :(
kiwijamo
I can access it ok on Firefox on Android FWIW.
ec109685
Why did it move to Forgejo?
bigfishrunning
They were using an old fashioned mailing list to pass patches around, I would imagine features like pull requests and issue tracking made forgejo an attractive option
dsissitka
It sounds like they're still testing but there's this from https://ffmpeg.org/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2025-July/346938.h...:
### July 22nd, 2025, Modernization of contributions
The project is modernizing its contribution methods and switching to a software
forge.
We have setup a platform on [code.ffmpeg.org](https://code.ffmpeg.org/). The new
process features continuous integration on all commits and merge requests,
labelling for categorization, conflict resolution, and logging in via OpenID or
Github.
The main repository will become
[code.ffmpeg.org/FFmpeg/FFmpeg](https://code.ffmpeg.org/FFmpeg/FFmpeg), with all
others being mirrored to it. Users are encouraged to begin using it, effective
now.
Mailing lists have supported our development for nearly 25 years, but as more
and more contributors started to become involved, the ratio of merged patches to
total mails begun falling. Mailing lists became a source of friction, with
discussions frequently stalling and uncategorized noise drowning out patches by
bumping them down in inboxes.
Although [patchwork.ffmpeg.org](https://patch.ffmpeg.org/) was set up to track
submissions, it was less than reliable, with many patches and mails slipping
though. Since its activation exactly 9 years ago, it recorded 54,476 patches,
with 53,650 patches having the state of not archived. In comparison, the mailing
list has had a total of 150,736 emails during the same time period.
Additionally, new users have frequently encountered difficulties with mailing
list development. From finding out the correct SMTP login details, configuring
git send-email, new email security mechanisms interfering with mailing list
operations, and finally not having a comfortable workflow to review patches.
After years of discussions, and a vote, we officially announce the new platform,
[code.ffmpeg.org](https://code.ffmpeg.org/), running
[Forgejo](https://forgejo.org/). Documentation will be updated to reflect the
change.
Mailing lists will continue to be monitored, and used for project discussions
and other topics better discussed elsewhere, but traffic and noise should become
significantly reduced over time.
Bugs/issues will be accepted on [code.ffmpeg.org](https://code.ffmpeg.org/),
alongside with [trac.ffmpeg.org](https://trac.ffmpeg.org/) for the time being.
We are also hoping that this will significantly reduce the amount of unmerged
patches. If you submitted a patch which received no replies or conclusion, we
apologize, and you are encouraged to resubmit it on the new platform.rs186
I wish a certain open source project would take notice of the reasoning here...
joshbaptiste
Main link should point to this ...
kjeldsendk
The list seems long? https://forgejo.org/
null
mmaunder
Why not GitHub?
mrcsharp
Does it make a difference? More alternatives to Github is a good thing and alternatives mean nothing if no one is using them.
frollogaston
It's impressive how much GitHub dominates with so little lock-in. It's so easy to add a new git remote. And for a long time, GitHub required you to pay for private repos while alternatives didn't.
xeonmc
Oh boy do I have some recent news for you…
prabinlamsal19
I don't understand why FFmpeg is so unique to not use github. I mean, everyone is using it. So, if not for the fun and the ultimate coolness for developers, why the hassle?
For me, this just means that the devs at FFmpeg are having so much fun. Trying around github alternatives for memes.
crote
It is quite common for larger open-source organisations to self-host their repositories and issue trackers. After all, they would quite literally stop existing if Github were to do an oopsie. Voluntarily putting the keys of your entire existence in the hands of a third party isn't exactly an attractive option.
ashton314
Lemme guess: you might think that everyone should just write their blogs on Substack, right?
The web thrives on diversity. More forges is good.
Furthermore, GitHub has been making moves that understandably worry some and so it’s great that there are some excellent alternatives.
rice7th
Well github is very much owned by Microsoft, and with the recent changes of the CEO there are a lot of reasons to prefer a non closed source and non-gigant-tech-corp-controlled software forge.
cornstalks
The FFmpeg culture is… very different. It’s hard to explain. But one hard requirement they had is that they did not want to give someone else control over their infrastructure. And it had to be open source. Only self hosting options were considered.
jazzyjackson
official reasoning is posted elsewhere, but GitHub means you rely on Microsoft.
Forgejo is a fork of Gitea which is a clone of Github.
crabmusket
Why GitHub?
shmerl
Congrats! I was waiting for them to start using a decent bug tracker.
eviks
So now you have to see some anime flash instead of just having the website open?
sergiotapia
How exactly does mailing list contributions work? I've only ever seen a few urls of messages but they are extremely obtuse. You would need to click parent parent parent to get context on the message you originally read.
I must be missing something and since mailing lists are dying, would love to understand this relic of the past.
homebrewer
You're supposed to use a proper email client which solves this problem. Sourcehut uses the email contribution workflow and has the documentation to support it; have a look at it:
sergiotapia
Thanks for the links!
Seems you have to remember what -v you are sending as you respond to feedback. Pretty troublesome... Glad ffmpeg is moving to a more modern solution.
bhaney
I'm finding out about Forgejo (and their reasons for forking Gitea) right now for the first time. I already migrated my Gogs install to Gitea, and now I have to migrate Gitea to Forgejo? This shit is why people just stay on Github.
homebrewer
We've been using gitea for 6 years, and I see no reason to migrate anywhere at this moment. Gitea sees faster development and has more features (even though many patches flow to Forgejo — the reverse is impossible due to license restrictions).
It is possible to migrate from 1.22 to Forgejo simply by changing the binary, and downgrading from 1.24 to 1.23, and from 1.23 to 1.22 is possible if you know your way around PostgreSQL and have a spare hour. I always write downgrade scripts for each release and test them before upgrading Gitea to make sure that I can always back out and move to Forgejo if Gitea folds. Haven't seen much reason to do it up to this moment, though.
edit: for example, here's a 1.23 → 1.22 downgrade script; I don't have access to 1.24 → 1.23 atm:
bigfishrunning
Why would you have to migrate? If you're happy with Gitea just stay there.
bhaney
According to Forgejo[1], Gitea underwent a secret hostile takeover by a for-profit company and has been moving from free software to "open core" bullshit. The reason that I, and I assume a lot of other people, made an effort to switch from Github to Gogs/Gitea was to evade the for-profit corpo nonfree crap. The more I'm looking into it, the more it looks like the real development is happening on Forgejo too.
[1] https://forgejo.org/compare-to-gitea/#why-was-forgejo-create...
mappu
A more charitable framing of the situation is: the for-profit company is because people always complained about Gitea "why is it developed on GitHub, not your own hosting" but that means money has to be involved in the cloud hosting project; it is just the same Gitea core developers it has always been, not a takeover.
The "open core" (Gitea Enterprise) is not Gitea, it is a downstream fork by CommitGo, who you can pay for contract development for custom features. The features are expected to be upstreamed, there are open PRs, they just don't yet meet Gitea's code review standards. You can run them from the PRs if you like.
homebrewer
Yeah, it's hard to take them seriously when they've been saying very nasty things about the project their whole foundation is built upon, and from where they continue to draw most of their functionality. Gitea is ahead on that despite patches flowing one way only. If you look at forgejo commits, more than half of them are merges of library updates made by the renovate bot, which artificially inflates the level of activity you see. About half of the rest are cherry-picks from the Gitea repo.
Look instead at the amount of features introduced with each version. Forgejo releases twice as often as Gitea does, so compare two releases of Forgejo with one release of Gitea made within the same time frame. I haven't been impressed so far.
Also a bit more context: https://lwn.net/Articles/963608
xedrac
I looked into Forgejo, and the only new "feature" I discovered was the ability to put pronouns in user profiles. I think I'll stick with Gitea.
Incipient
I use gitea and it "just works". I'm definitely not going anywhere.
joshbaptiste
Why leave Gitea just because an alternative exists..
000ooo000
Oh no! Options - scary!
bhaney
That's pretty obviously not what I'm bitching about
jraph
I get the annoyance of having to migrate (although migrating from gitea to forgejo was a matter or replacing the gitea binary with the forgejo binary up to until recently - completely painless), but you don't have to migrate.
What are you bitching about, fundamentally?
Life happens.
tap-snap-or-nap
It's very likely not so different in function and performance for users and better suit their dev needs than what you may be used to.
null
With the calm, respectful understanding that everything is subjective and there's no accounting for taste -
and in my personal capacity -
I do not understand how cutesy anime characters have been deemed sufficiently tasteful/professional/anodyne enough to be displayed to literally every single person who visits my site.
With apologies to fans of the art style, it is a negative signal to me. I do not prefer to use Cloudflare for things like this, but I would not use Anubis unless I could disable the imagery, and every time I see it on another site, I think: "hm. weird. whose branding is this?"