Monorepo for Tangled
tangled.org
blog: we need a federation of forges
Signed-off-by: oppiliappan <me@oppi.li>
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blog/posts/federation.md
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blog/posts/federation.md
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---
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atroot: true
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template:
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slug: federation
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title: we need a federation of forges
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subtitle: git is decentralized, but what of the rest?
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image: https://assets.tangled.network/home-page-self-host-light.svg
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date: 2026-04-29
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authors:
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- name: Akshay
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email: akshay@tangled.org
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handle: oppi.li
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---
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<picture>
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<source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="https://assets.tangled.network/home-page-self-host-dark.svg">
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<img class="h-auto max-w-full" src="https://assets.tangled.network/home-page-self-host-light.svg">
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</picture>
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GitHub seems to be crumbling the past couple of weeks.
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Whatever the reason, ultimately its not great for 90% of the
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world's OSS to depend on one provider. Centralized systems
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always crumble; it's the emails, gits, and IRCs that stand
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the test of time. Tangled aims to fit in this space, allow
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me to explain.
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Code collaboration has always made use of two protocols, one
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for code transfer and one for communication:
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- It began with the email flow: git (code transfer) + email
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(comms)
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- Then there was GitHub: git (code transfer) + GitHub the
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website (comms)
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- There is the ForgeFed project: git (code transfer) +
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[maybe
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ActivityPub](https://forgefed.org/blog/actor-programming/)
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(comms)
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- We are building Tangled: git (code transfer) + [AT
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protocol](https://atproto.com/) (comms)
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Tangled federates events among git servers (called "knots").
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You can collaborate on repositories on any server and you
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can fork across servers. You can even push to a repository
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on your own server, and open a pull-request on a repo hosted
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on a completely different server. In a lot of ways, this is
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quite like hosting your own cgit instance, and sending out
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patches via email.
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Tangled uses AT to facilitate the Authenticated Transfer of
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events surrounding code: like issues and pull-requests, and
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it also enables a few social bits: a timeline of events,
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follows, stars (and vouches very soon). AT is used to share
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collaborator invites and ssh pubkeys, but the rest is just
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good ol' git.
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OSS needs to break free from monocultures like GitHub, but
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code collaboration should still be fun and social.