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Your FOSS Project Deserves its Own Domain
Where does your project live? Where do people find it? Who controls how people access your project's resources on the Internet?
https://our-project.org/
Github the Mega-Mall
In practice, what do ninety-something percent of small FOSS projects do? They sign up on Microsoft Github. If we are one of these, then we feel our little project has a home on the Internet, its own address: https://github.com/our-name/our-repo. Oops, but did I say an address of its own? Well, there's the catch. I meant an address of Microsoft's own.
Github is a Gatekeeper. Every link to our project now takes the reader through a virtual gateway owned and ruled by Github's owner, Microsoft. The domain name is the gate, and its owner holds the key. Want to visit the source code? Before we reach our-name/our-repo we must walk through their gate at github.com. We must pass through whatever they put in the gateway. Ads? Nagging to sign up? Then they will let us visit the source code that we feel is “ours”.
Of course they make it appealing: if we're signed up and logged in already, we don't see the nagging, the self-advertisement to log in or sign up. But other visitors do.
Github operates on the model of free-as-in-free-beer, convenient-to-start, you-are-the-product, pay-with-your-data-and-your-attention, we-got-you-cornered, now-we-got-your-users-too.
Beyond source code...
Want to distribute the builds from your project? Github provides easy ways to automate the builds of your software using generous amounts of compute time and storage “for free”, and ways to publish the results.
Want to publish documentation? Easy. Remember, Github provides features that are convenient to start with. Github helps your users read the docs, conveniently hosted at our-project.readthedocs.io/. That's a Github domain name too. Microsoft now controls everybody's access to “our” docs. They can add things — such as adverts — and prevent us doing certain things with our docs. They can redirect readers' attention to their own business. They do this to millions of projects at once, manipulating the users of these millions of projects, all to drive their business goals.
Feeding The Corporate Interest
It's the network effect, as in social media, combined with the ease of use that comes from letting somebody else do the administration. People and small projects feel they are getting value, individually, out of this system, and in an individual and short-term sense indeed they are; but all the while being coerced into feeding the corporate interest, and all the while putting bigger obstacles in the way of other people's freedom to choose a different path.
There is no technical reason why a big company should not offer services that it provides on your own domain, so that you retain the addressability if you should decide to move to a different service provider. Services that we pay for, such as many email providers, offer bring-your-own-domain service. But the big “free” ones? They need to monetise you some other way, and they get a huge lock-in factor by putting your stuff behind the gate of their domain.
What To Do?
Get your own domain name. Host your code, docs, forums there.
You don't have to self-host it: look for a bring-your-own-domain provider for your services.
The federated music server “funkwhale” is a good example. The project's home is https://funkwhale.audio with many of its resources at subdomains like {forum,docs,dev,blog}.funkwhale.audio.
Owning the address of our project is key to owning our project.
“Millions of Free Software developers forgot why it matters to own their tools.” — ForgeFriends
Postscript: Non-DNS Naming Systems
With DNS, access to a domain is controlled some person or company who we can loosely call the “owner”. Technically that is the “registrant”, somebody who registers and pays for the domain name. The registrant (“owner”) of our-project.org has ultimate control over access to all resources under that domain name and all its subdomains.
In the near future, DNS is set to remain the dominant naming system. However, DNS is not perfect. In fact it has serious problems. You may have heard of several other systems for naming things on the Internet. A lot of work is going into these, and I am hopeful that we will see widespread use of one or more alternative naming systems. If you are involved with any of those, you might want to consider how we can apply the principle that people and projects deserve to own their own name space.
Related: – FOSS Apps Live in FOSS Forges– FOSS Apps Live in FOSS App Stores!
More: #awesomeFOSS #selfHosted #GiveUpGithub #DitchDiscord
Feedback:
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julian@foad.me.uk - matrix me:
@julian:foad.me.uk
Donations gratefully accepted
Feedback:
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julian@foad.me.uk - matrix me:
@julian:foad.me.uk
Donations gratefully accepted
FOSS Apps Live in FOSS Forges
Software is a process, and whoever controls it ultimately decides what the developers can do and how they communicate.
Have the Freenode sell-out (2021) and the Twitter fiasco (2022) taught us nothing?FOSS thrives in FOSS ecosystems.
The ForgeFriends “State of the Forge Federation” newsletter puts it like this:
Millions of Free Software developers forgot why it matters to own their tools. They know, better than anyone, how to fix and improve them. But when they choose to collaborate only via the most popular proprietary software forges, they are denied the right to use their skills and cannot work with fellow developers who are banned because they reside in the wrong country. They have been made to believe that the tools they use daily to craft their own software are out of reach. As if their software was a product that could be separated from the other software running the tests, allowing changes to be merged or bugs to be filed. But software is a process, and whoever controls it ultimately decides what the developers can do and how they communicate.
The source code and the development process of so many great Free-as-in-Freedom projects are currently hosted on the proprietary Microsoft Github. This makes me sad. In my strong opinion, to better serve FOSS as a whole they would GiveUpGithub and move to a FOSS software forge provider such as Codeberg.org and/or host a FOSS code forge at their own domain.These fine FOSS people do it right
... in their own code forge such as gitea or self-managed gitlab, or on a FOSS code forge such as Codeberg or Framagit:
- Domain at Codeberg
- FediLab at Codeberg
- Fediverse Enhancement Proposals (FEP) at Codeberg
- ForgeFed at Codeberg
- Funkwhale at their own domain
- FUTO Circles at their own domain
- GadgetBridge at Codeberg
- Hubzilla at FramaGit.org
- Interpeer Project at Codeberg
- KeyOxide at Codeberg
- Libravatar at Ubuntu's LaunchPad.net
- Mobilizon at FramaGit.org
- NextPush at Codeberg
- Plume at their own domain
- Simple-Matrix-Bot-Lib at Codeberg
- (streams) at Codeberg
- Ubuntu at their own domain
- UnifiedPush at Codeberg
- Vocata at Codeberg
- Wordpress at their own domain
- ... and thousands more.
Pwned by Big Tech: these fine FOSS people need a nudge
I love these fine people. I value what they are making. I understand these fine people had to choose something and they chose to prioritise the convenience of Microsoft Github, but I feel more and more every year that our world of FOSS overall is stifled by being owned by such megacorps and I want to take a stand in support of prioritising our FOSS values. I would be joyful to see them improve their relationship to the FOSS world by putting their assets in FOSS infrastructure under their own control.
- Authelia
- Authentik
- Calibre-ebook
- Diary by Bill Farmer
- Element [matrix] software
- Elementary OS: AppCentre apps “must be hosted in a Github repository”
- Fediverse Enhancement Proposals (FEP)
- Gitea
- Healthchecks
- Homer by Bastien Wirtz
- InfiniTime
- Jellyfin
- LibreTranslate
- Mailspring
- Mastodon
- Navidrome
- Nextcloud
- ntfy
- OpenAndroidInstaller
- Photoprism
- PocketCasts
- Sandstorm
- Syncthing
- Traefik
- Vaultwarden
- WriteFreely federated blogging
- YunoHost
- ... and thousands more.
(I'm linking only to their free/libre/open home pages, not to github.)
I'll repeat and emphasise, I love these fine FOSS projects I have listed here. I value, use, support, and/or contribute to, and recommend them to you for the fine work they are doing in free software world. I would also love to see them adopt FOSS principles when it comes to their choice of code forge.
Related: – I Can't Wait for Forge Federation– Your FOSS Project Deserves its Own Domain– FOSS Apps Live in FOSS App Stores!
More: #awesomeFOSS #selfHosted #GiveUpGithub #DitchDiscord #forgeFed #forgeFederation #ForgeJo #Codeberg
Feedback:
- email me:
julian@foad.me.uk- matrix me:
@julian:foad.me.ukDonations gratefully accepted
Feedback:
- email me:
julian@foad.me.uk- matrix me:
@julian:foad.me.ukDonations gratefully accepted
FOSS Apps Live in FOSS App Stores!
Don't lock a FOSS Android app in Google's proprietary store!
Many of us are looking to FOSS solutions in order to keep our digital lives under our own control. We don't accept that any Big Tech company should hold the keys to a vast swathe of our digital life. So on our smart phones we may choose to use a FOSS version of Android. That means one that uses the open source parts of Android but avoids the proprietary Google lock-in parts. These so-called “deGoogled” Android-compatible operating systems include LineageOS, Murena /e/-OS, CalyxOS, GrapheneOS and more. Users of non-Google phones can find various “back door” ways to obtain apps from Google's play-by-our-rules-store, but that's completely the wrong way. FOSS apps should be available through FOSS app stores such as F-Droid.
F-Droid is not only an app store, it's also a protocol or “app store kit” that allows anyone to publish their own F-Droid-compatible app store. (I set up one up just to publish one camera app for myself and friends.) Each app publisher can choose whether to publish their app in the F-Droid store following its rules and conditions, or publish on their own store where they can set their own rules and conditions. Each user can decide which F-Droid-compatible stores they want to use, according to their own assessment of the publisher's reputation.
Read more about F-Droid:
These fine FOSS people do it right
- FUTO Circles a.k.a. Circuli, matrix-based private social media — published in their own f-droid repo [1]
These fine FOSS people need a nudge
- Pocket Casts — issue filed: “Add to F-Droid” (I've up-voted it)
TODO: add lots more examples
These Fine People Understand
Read More
- FOSDEM '23 talk
Sat 15:00Reckoning with new app store changes: Is now our chance? — Recent legal and policy developments around app stores and what they mean for free software - FOSDEM '23 talk
Sat 16:00EU alternative to app stores — Guardian Project tooted: “At #FOSDEM,@marcel_kolajawill present the #EU pilot project to look into open-sourcing the EU's apps and publishing them outside of #BigTech including on @fdroidorg. @eighthave will join, talking about how F-Droid will help pull the EU towards #FreeSoftware. Join us!”
[1] An f-droid repo link is not a web page. To use it, you open your f-droid app's “repositories” settings and add the link there.
Related: – FOSS Apps Live in FOSS Forges– Your FOSS Project Deserves its Own Domain
More: #degoogled #awesomeFOSS #selfHosted #GiveUpGithub #DitchDiscord
Feedback:
- email me:
julian@foad.me.uk - matrix me:
@julian:foad.me.uk
Donations gratefully accepted
Feedback:
- email me:
julian@foad.me.uk - matrix me:
@julian:foad.me.uk
Donations gratefully accepted
I made my first Android app. Well, I didn’t write it from scratch, I took an open source camera app and just renamed and modified it a bit, and rebuilt it.I called it Trax Cam.
It is a fork of Open Camera. The initial, test version of Trax Cam makes just two small improvements over Open Camera:
(old)
Trax Cam
(old)
Trax Cam
- improving the visual difference of the shutter buttons between video and photo mode, recording and not recording, by contrasting colour and style;
- not forgetting the zoom level when temporarily switching to another app and back, switching between photo and video modes, and the like.
Impressive? Is this everything you have ever wanted from a camera app? No, I didn’t think so. That’s not the point of it. Dear reader, it’s not for you. Not yet, anyway. Sorry!
Trax Cam is not yet intended as a product for ordinary users. Rather, the purpose of this project, at least initially, is as a learning exercise for me. The status of it, at the time of writing, is it is stable, being based on a stable version of Open Camera, and I am running it as my main camera app on two different phones, but I am not committing to making further fixes or updates. I might or might not continue developing or updating it. Switching to other projects will give me a broader and probably more useful learning experience.
Default Camera for /E/-OS
/e/-foundation‘s /e/-OS comes with OpenCamera as its default camera app. I had previously installed OpenCamera on my main LineageOS-powered phone, alongside the default LineageOS camera code-named ‘snap’.I would sometimes switch between OpenCamera and ‘snap’. I like different things about them, mainly the range of options in OpenCamera and the simplicity of ‘snap’, with neither of them managing to bring the best possible combination, and both still having annoyances and room for improvement.
It was while evaluating /e/ that I noticed again several of the shortcomings of OpenCamera, and decided it could be time for me to do something about it. I had some ideas noted in my head, and have now written them down in a bug tracker.
Trax Cam Issues: https://lab.trax.im/trax.im/traxcam/-/issues . Issue #1 is Remember my zoom level , #2 is Boldly indicate photo/video/recording states (both still “open” as I am not satisfied that I have yet completed them as well as could be done), and I have opened several more.
At the same time, I discovered /e/-foundation is recruiting among other positions a Camera developer: “[You want] to make open source camera apps as good as high-end camera apps?” (If you are an “experienced (5+ years) Android developer”, check it out.) It’s good to see that /e/-foundation recognizes the need and seems to have some resources to tackle it.
In my opinion, one thing /e/ could do to encourage volunteer developers to develop OpenCamera (or another) in a useful direction for /e/ and other libre Android uses, would be to publish a road map or a prioritization of issues for what they consider needs to be done. I feel that projects providing a summary of what they want done is often missing and often a surprisingly effective driver in open source development. Developers tend to be quicker and more efficient at implementing something that is at least loosely specified (along with rationale to explain why) than creating something that they need to invent from scratch.
Comparing with Other Cameras
Besides OpenCamera and Lineage ‘snap’ I also briefly tried FreeDCam and OxygenOS camera (proprietary). Those each have some very slick UI designs which bear studying and would be nice to bring in. In particular, if I recall correctly they both use swipe to review the last and earlier taken pictures, which seems to me more intuitive and easier to use.I noticed the OxygenOS camera used slick-looking rotary dials for analogue settings such as exposure compensation. I really liked this at first sight. In use, I found their behaviour a bit fussy and skiddy, easy to leave it on a random in-between value, hard to return quickly to the previously used value. It would be great if we could create something along those lines of analogue beauty, but with more positive and robust behaviour to set and leave a desired value. For example, I think it is common and so needs to be easy to switch between “auto” and the last used non-auto value. (Not just for camera controls, indeed, but for all kinds of settings in all apps.)
Available on My F-Droid App Store
You can try out Trax Cam if you like, even though it is not (currently) aimed at general use. https://fdroid.foad.me.uk/fdroid/repo/im.trax.cam_80.apk is a direct link to the installer file for my initial test version. It’s not published on Google Play store. You will need your “install from unknown sources” option enabled in Android settings.I also put up my own F-Droid app store, and put Trax Cam up on it, so we can install it on phones through the f-droid app. This too is not currently intended for general end users. However, you are welcome to try it. First install the f-droid app (https://f-droid.org/), then add my repository’s URL (https://fdroid.foad.me.uk) under settings, repositories, add.
If you are unfamiliar with F-Droid, it comprises:
- an Open/Libre app store system by which anyone can set up and serve their own app repository, and anyone can browse and install apps from such repositories; and
- the F-Droid app, for browsing and installing apps from any such repositories; and
- a repository of Free/Libre apps for Android, which is the default repository that the F-Droid app connects to until you tell it about other ones.
Putting up my own app store is part of my ambition to support independent creation of free/libre software and self-owned services.
https://blog.foad.me.uk/2021/05/11/introducing-trax-cam/
Issues · Trax / traxcam
Android camera based on Open Camera · Development repository · Introduction blog postGitLab
GrapheneOS: the private and secure mobile OS
GrapheneOS is a security and privacy focused mobile OS with Android app compatibility.GrapheneOS
FOSS Apps Live in FOSS Forges
Software is a process, and whoever controls it ultimately decides what the developers can do and how they communicate.
Have the Freenode sell-out (2021) and the Twitter fiasco (2022) taught us nothing?
FOSS thrives in FOSS ecosystems.
The ForgeFriends “State of the Forge Federation” newsletter puts it like this:
Millions of Free Software developers forgot why it matters to own their tools. They know, better than anyone, how to fix and improve them. But when they choose to collaborate only via the most popular proprietary software forges, they are denied the right to use their skills and cannot work with fellow developers who are banned because they reside in the wrong country. They have been made to believe that the tools they use daily to craft their own software are out of reach. As if their software was a product that could be separated from the other software running the tests, allowing changes to be merged or bugs to be filed. But software is a process, and whoever controls it ultimately decides what the developers can do and how they communicate.
The source code and the development process of so many great Free-as-in-Freedom projects are currently hosted on the proprietary Microsoft Github. This makes me sad. In my strong opinion, to better serve FOSS as a whole they would GiveUpGithub and move to a FOSS software forge provider such as Codeberg.org and/or host a FOSS code forge at their own domain.
These fine FOSS people do it right
... in their own code forge such as gitea or self-managed gitlab, or on a FOSS code forge such as Codeberg or Framagit:
- Domain at Codeberg
- FediLab at Codeberg
- Fediverse Enhancement Proposals (FEP) at Codeberg
- ForgeFed at Codeberg
- Funkwhale at their own domain
- FUTO Circles at their own domain
- GadgetBridge at Codeberg
- Hubzilla at FramaGit.org
- Interpeer Project at Codeberg
- KeyOxide at Codeberg
- Libravatar at Ubuntu's LaunchPad.net
- Mobilizon at FramaGit.org
- NextPush at Codeberg
- Plume at their own domain
- Simple-Matrix-Bot-Lib at Codeberg
- (streams) at Codeberg
- Ubuntu at their own domain
- UnifiedPush at Codeberg
- Vocata at Codeberg
- Wordpress at their own domain
- ... and thousands more.
Pwned by Big Tech: these fine FOSS people need a nudge
I love these fine people. I value what they are making. I understand these fine people had to choose something and they chose to prioritise the convenience of Microsoft Github, but I feel more and more every year that our world of FOSS overall is stifled by being owned by such megacorps and I want to take a stand in support of prioritising our FOSS values. I would be joyful to see them improve their relationship to the FOSS world by putting their assets in FOSS infrastructure under their own control.
- Authelia
- Authentik
- Calibre-ebook
- Diary by Bill Farmer
- Element [matrix] software
- Elementary OS: AppCentre apps “must be hosted in a Github repository”
- Fediverse Enhancement Proposals (FEP)
- Gitea
- Healthchecks
- Homer by Bastien Wirtz
- InfiniTime
- Jellyfin
- LibreTranslate
- Mailspring
- Mastodon
- Navidrome
- Nextcloud
- ntfy
- OpenAndroidInstaller
- Photoprism
- PocketCasts
- Sandstorm
- Syncthing
- Traefik
- Vaultwarden
- WriteFreely federated blogging
- YunoHost
- ... and thousands more.
(I'm linking only to their free/libre/open home pages, not to github.)
I'll repeat and emphasise, I love these fine FOSS projects I have listed here. I value, use, support, and/or contribute to, and recommend them to you for the fine work they are doing in free software world. I would also love to see them adopt FOSS principles when it comes to their choice of code forge.
Related: – I Can't Wait for Forge Federation– Your FOSS Project Deserves its Own Domain– FOSS Apps Live in FOSS App Stores!
More: #awesomeFOSS #selfHosted #GiveUpGithub #DitchDiscord #forgeFed #forgeFederation #ForgeJo #Codeberg
Feedback:
- email me:
julian@foad.me.uk - matrix me:
@julian:foad.me.uk
Donations gratefully accepted
Feedback:
- email me:
julian@foad.me.uk - matrix me:
@julian:foad.me.uk
Donations gratefully accepted
I Can't Wait for Forge Federation
I was just preparing a Merge Request to contribute upstream, when I noted,
You can review my merge request in the web UI at my TraxLab (gitlab) repo. Obviously you can't click the “Merge” button (until Forge Federation is done — there's an awesome project to check out).
It still grieves me that open source devs push me into working with Microsoft Github. Sure I understand the argument to use it “because it's convenient right now and 'everyone' is there” but to me there's a more important value I wish to uphold:Millions of Free Software developers forgot why it matters to own their tools.
... says ForgeFriends.org, continuing ...They know, better than anyone, how to fix and improve them. But when they choose to collaborate only via the most popular proprietary software forges, they are denied the right to use their skills and cannot work with fellow developers who are banned because they reside in the wrong country. They have been made to believe that the tools they use daily to craft their own software are out of reach. As if their software was a product that could be separated from the other software running the tests, allowing changes to be merged or bugs to be filed. But software is a process, and whoever controls it ultimately decides what the developers can do and how they communicate.
I'm looking eagerly to the great work of the forward thinking folks involved in ForgeFriends, the ForgeJo forge and Codeberg.org hosting, who are turning forge federation from a dream into reality. They are creating one of the most important movements in the open source software world today. I am keeping my eyes open for a grant opportunity or other financial support, as I would love to join them in making it happen.
Related:
#awesomeFOSS #selfHosted #giveUpGithub #forgeFed #forgeFederation #ForgeJo #Codeberg
Feedback:
- email me:
julian@foad.me.uk- matrix me:
@julian:foad.me.ukDonations gratefully accepted
Feedback:
- email me:
julian@foad.me.uk- matrix me:
@julian:foad.me.ukDonations gratefully accepted
