The Government of the Netherlands has launched its own source code hosting service, code.overheid.nl, where they plan to publish and collaboratively develop open-source software for government agencies. This hosting is positioned as a European alternative to GitHub and GitLab and aims to ensure digital sovereignty. The open development platform Forgejo has been used as the foundation.
The project was initiated by the Open Source Program Office, established by the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations of the Netherlands, and promotes the philosophy of 'Open, unless stated otherwise' ('Open, tenzij'). According to this principle, the code for software products developed for government agencies should generally be published openly whenever possible, allowing other government bodies, citizens, and companies to review, use for their own purposes, and improve the code. It is anticipated that this approach will not only enhance the quality of the software but also increase the transparency of processes.
At the current stage hosting the open code is operating in a pilot mode and is available to a limited group of organizations. Developers and organizations interested in participating can join the testing by submitting an application to the project coordinator. It is expected that various government services in the Netherlands, from ministries to municipalities, will be able to join the project within the next year.
The Forgejo platform is a fork of the Gitea project, which in turn branched off from the Gogs platform. Key features of Forgejo include low resource consumption (can be used on inexpensive servers... VPS) and a simple installation process. Standard project management capabilities are provided, such as task management, issue tracking, pull requests, wikis, tools for coordinating groups of developers, release preparation, package deployment automation in repositories, access rights management, integration with continuous integration platforms, code search, authentication through LDAP and OAuth, repository access via SSH and HTTP/HTTPS protocols, connecting webhooks for integration with Slack, Discord, and other services, support for Git hooks and Git LFS, and tools for repository migration and mirroring.
Source: opennet.ru
