@pilou would you be so kind as to create an issue in the Gitea tracker with the following content?
Title: Grant application for the implementation of federation
Bonjour,
TL;DR: grant application for implementing federation, because it is not making progress (100% transparent)
Despite some interesting discussions late 2020, the magnitude of the effort to move forward with the implementation of federation is apparently too much for the developers currently involved in Gitea. It is best demonstrated by the 5K€ grant earmarked for federation: it did not trigger any proposal. Months ago cjslep suggested applying for a grant (which is an order of magnitude more money) would help and the discussion resumed a week ago.
The conclusion of this conversation was to start working on (i) a generic grant application, (ii) use the material of this generic grant application whenever a call is open that would be a good fit. I will do the legwork, reporting progress when the same day. Full disclosure: although I do not intend to be funded by this grant, it is in sync with the fedeproxy project that I am working on; therefore my interest is not purely altruistic.
The only condition I set for my participation is that the entire process of the grant application is 100% transparent, as well as the work funded by the grant (see the fedeproxy grant to understand exactly what I mean by 100% transparent). @zeripath, cjslep and techknowlogick are aware of this particular requirement and did not raise any concern so far. But if anyone feel like it is too much, please speak up now.
Cheers