Gna! was a centralized location where

software developers A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles Software development, ''software developer'' and Software engineering, ''software engineer' ...

could develop, distribute and maintain

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

. The service was shut down in 2017 after 13 years in service for dozens of software projects and millions of downloads served. In August 2022, Gna! was relaunched by Loïc Dachary as a paid service for hosting

Forgejo Gitea () is a forge software package for hosting software development version control using Git as well as other collaborative features like bug tracking, code review, continuous integration, kanban boards, tickets, and wikis. It supports self ...

instances.

History

In the beginning, GNA ( recursively acronymed "''Gna's Not Axis''"), was an association formed by Loïc Dachary for the distribution of

. On the 12 April 2001, GNA turned into the French chapter of

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985. The organisation supports the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...

(FSF). At the end of 2003, the

GNU Savannah GNU Savannah is a project of the Free Software Foundation initiated by Loïc Dachary, which serves as a collaborative software development management system for free software projects. Savannah currently offers CVS, GNU arch, Subversion, Git, Me ...

server was replaced by FSF after a security compromise. A dispute broke out between FSF, who owned Savannah, and Savannah's maintainers, including developers of the Savannah software over the levels of administration the FSF should be given. FSF announced that it was going to switch to

GForge GForge is a commercial service originally based on the Alexandria software behind SourceForge, a web-based project management and collaboration system which was licensed under the GPL. Open source versions of the GForge code were released from ...

, leaving frayed tempers among the developers, as result of a conflict about Savannah maintainers' role. In January 2004, Loïc Dachary (who also started

) and several former

maintainers set up "Gna!" as a continuation of the Savannah project, but hosted on servers owned by the

France. ''Gna!'' is paradoxically recursively acronymed "''Gna's Not an Acronym!''". It is managed by a self-organized team, supported by Free Software Foundation France. For the hosted projects, Gna! provides source code version control ( CVS, and SVN), a download space, project monitoring facilities, etc. A notable exception to other

free software community The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for software users, namely the freedoms to run, study, modify, and share copies of software. Software which meets these requirements, ...

portals is Gna's strict

licensing A license (American English) or licence ( Commonwealth English) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another par ...

restrictions: only

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

compatible projects may be developed on the server. This is one of the reasons why it is significantly smaller than other portals. Its small userbase is advertised as a positive because it generally aids in the quick resolution of problems; a process which can take weeks on the larger sites. In November 2016, the Gna! project announced it would soon be closing down, and explained "soon" to mean "within 3 months f February 2017 or when the hardware dies." On 24 May 2017, Gna! servers were shut down. In April 2022, Loïc Dachary and Aravinth Manivannan launched a paid service for hosting

Gitea Gitea () is a forge software package for hosting software development version control using Git as well as other collaborative features like bug tracking, code review, continuous integration, kanban boards, tickets, and wikis. It supports self ...

(later

) instances, called Hostea. In August 2022 Hostea was renamed to Gna!.

Impact and reception

Among other projects Gna! hosted the popular software

MyPaint MyPaint is a free and open-source raster graphics editor for digital painting. It is available for Linux, macOS, and Windows. History MyPaint versions up to 1.00 and bug/issue tracking were hosted by Gna!. MyPaint uses graphical control elemen ...

and the games

Freeciv ''Freeciv'' is a single-player video game, single- and multiplayer video game, multiplayer turn-based strategy game for workstations and personal computers inspired by the proprietary software, proprietary ''Civilization (series), Sid Meier's ...

The Battle for Wesnoth ''The Battle for Wesnoth'' is a free and open-source software, free and open-source turn-based strategy video game with a high fantasy setting (similar to J. R. R. Tolkien's Tolkien's legendarium, legendarium), designed by Australian-American d ...

Warzone 2100 ''Warzone 2100'' is an Open-source video game, open-source real-time strategy and real-time tactics hybrid PC game, computer game, originally developed by Pumpkin Studios and published by Eidos Interactive. It was originally released in 1999 fo ...

, Hedgewars, and Warmux; providing 100,000s of software downloads every month to the users.Gna monthly downloads 2017-02
(archived)

References

External links

* {{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170516193536/http://gna.org/, date=2017-05-16, title=Welcome to Gna!
Gna! project archived by Archiveteam
Discontinued open-source software hosting facilities

History

Archive

Impact and reception

See also

References

External links