Add HelmForge as a suggested Helm chart repository — open-source alternative to Bitnami

[mberlofa]

Portainer users who deploy Helm charts have limited visibility into alternative chart repositories. The dominant Helm chart ecosystem (Bitnami) has changed significantly after the Broadcom acquisition:

• Bitnami charts are tightly coupled to custom Bitnami-built images — not the official upstream images
• The previously free open-source Bitnami images were moved to bitnamilegacy/* on Docker Hub — no longer updated and may be removed
• Production use of current Bitnami images now requires Bitnami Secure Images (commercial tier)

Suggestion

Add HelmForge (https://repo.helmforge.dev) as a suggested or pre-configured Helm chart repository in Portainer.

HelmForge is an MIT-licensed repository with 33 production-ready charts covering databases, self-hosted apps, and infrastructure:

• Official upstream images — e.g., postgres:17.4, not bitnami/postgresql:17.4.0-debian-12-r18
• MIT licensed, forever — no open-core, no EULA, no usage limits
• Pinned, immutable version tags — no :latest, no floating tags
• Sigstore Cosign signed — every OCI artifact signed with keyless signing
• Built-in S3 backup — 17+ charts with automated backup CronJobs
• JSON Schema validation — values.schema.json on every chart

Links

• Chart source: https://github.com/helmforgedev/charts
• ArtifactHub: https://artifacthub.io/packages/search?repo=helmforge
• Comparison: https://helmforge.dev/docs/comparison
• OCI registry: oci://ghcr.io/helmforgedev/helm