Hosted verison ?

[arunavo4]

Doing a small poll on whether or not a hosted version is worth maintaining

[Tailscale-VPS]

@arunavo4 Not until core issues like #68 and #72 are fixed — otherwise it will be a hassle for you to manage as well.

A hosted version can mean two things:

1. Free service — done for fun or to give back to the open-source/self-hosted community.
2. Paid/subscription model — offered as a commercial service.

For both scenarios, encryption (client-side, server-side, and in-transit, like Bitwarden does) is a valuable security layer. While I think it’s good to have, it may not be necessary to overcomplicate the project since most people hosting Gitea can easily host this too.

For point 1

• You can provide it for free, but any free service involving bandwidth is prone to abuse.
• It’s ultimately your decision if you want to take that risk.

For point 2

• You’ll need to provide SLAs and handle the usual business obligations.

Regardless of whether it’s free or paid, if you’re providing a service, there are important considerations:

• 24/7 availability
• High Availability (HA)
• Network peering and optimization
• Code stability (no breaking changes without notice, backward compatibility where possible)
• Clear user liability policies

In the end, people will always have something to say.
Good Luck

[arunavo4]

@Tailscale-VPS Thanks for your feedback. My goal was that I initially built this to solve my own issue of being able to sync and mirror my repos on gitea. But people started asking for more features and over time making more features I dont get to test everything again and code stability has become an issue. And me investing more time on it without any sort of return is hard.
The issue with most open-source projects. And hosting this also seems like not so useful as people who know or have gitea they will end up using the self hosted version. So a hosted verison does not make much sense. unless maybe people are using gitea.com and they want to mirror there. which might be just handful of people. So, providing SLA's for that is hard.

[Tailscale-VPS]

I completely understand where you’re coming from — this is the classic dilemma with many open-source projects.
You start for your own use, then community requests pile up, and suddenly you’re maintaining something much bigger than you planned. Without a clear return (monetary or otherwise), it becomes hard to justify the extra effort, especially when code stability and testing time take a hit.

You’re also right that the audience for a hosted version is likely small — most Gitea users are self-hosters by nature. Hosting just for a few who might use gitea.com probably doesn’t justify the overhead of SLAs, uptime guarantees, and the operational burden.

If nothing else, I think it’s totally fine to keep the project scope aligned with your own needs first, and then only merge in community contributions if they meet stability and maintainability standards. That way, it remains sustainable and enjoyable for you, rather than feeling like an unpaid job.

[arunavo4]

Yes, thanks for the advice. I think this is what fits best, I will take this weekend to stabilise this project and test it all and keep it as it is and then only go for community contributions for features i dont need.