Dear Gitea maintainers & owners,
If someone wants to rent an online Gitea instance, they currently have nowhere to go. If they wanted a forum, they could go to https://discourse.org, but there is no equivalent for Gitea.
After a week discussing this @realaravinth and myself are ready to dedicate the time required to bootstrap a Gitea hosting service, under the umbrella of the Gitea project. If the Gitea maintainers and owners agree, this hosting service would become an integral part of the Gitea project and be subject to the same decision process.
It would not require any work from the Gitea owners or maintainers. We would do all the work, with your permission.
The income would add to OpenCollective and be distributed under the control of the Gitea owners. It may eventually generate enough income to pay salaries, not only to run the hosting service but also the development of Gitea itself and help sustain dependencies such as the software used to run the CI.
The devil is in the details and a summary was written to explain how it could work and why.
Do we have your blessing to start working on a Gitea hosting service? If the majority of the Gitea owners and maintainers are in favor, we need nothing else and can start right away 
What do you think?
Q: But we (Gitea maintainers & owners) are already super busy, there is no time!
A: @realaravinth and myself will do all the work, all we need is a pat on the back and your blessing.
Q: Can’t you do that on your own, why under the Gitea umbrella?
A: Yes, it can be done independently of Gitea. But we think it could help sustain Gitea development in the long run.
Q: If the service is good enough, users will find it, why does it need to be under the Gitea umbrella?
A: When a service is technically good, the marketing effort will be successful. Being under the Gitea umbrella does the marketing for the service. If it is not under the Gitea umbrella, the marketing must be done differently.
Q: I’m a Gitea maintainer or owner, what do you really need from me?
A: Your approval. Nothing else.
Q: Who will it benefit?
A: The income will first go to us, to pay for our time. The profits will then be shared, at the discretion of the Gitea project, between projects it depends on and to further its own development.
Q: The devil is in the details, did you think this through?
A: We’ve been pretty thorough and took the time write down a summary that has detailed explanations on every facet of this project.
Q: How is it different from Gitea Hosting: a fully managed private Gitea server for you and your people.
A: https://hostedgitea.com/ is an independent project, this proposal is to run the same kind of service but as an integral part of the Gitea project, to sustain its development.
Q: What is the license?
A: AGPLv3+
