Curious to see this here, given that I've been trying to set up some of these "decentralized services" at my home servers and figuring out if it is really possible to replace the common mainstream services.
So far, I installed my own Matrix server (synapse), my own XMPP (ejabberd), yesterday I got semi-happy with my mastodon setup, and now I was just finishing some tests with ownCloud to see if I could replace Dropbox.
MediaGoblin is on my list of services to setup. I ran a basic deployment and checked some other instances of it before, but I didn't put it higher on my priority list because to me it looks like it focus too much on being a "community-driven website" instead of providing a solid service as a media-hosting/publishing/catalog system.
To me it looks like they are shooting for the wrong level of "decentralization granularity". Each instance of these services are aiming for a "community", and think that the people use the mainstream tools because they don't want to/won't manage the server.
The point they seem to miss is that this only creates another type of top-down organization. It would be MUCH easier for them to focus on a "single-user" system, and start from the point that the communication will work when the applications talk with each other.
To me this is why Diaspora failed, and Wordpress is still such a big part of the internet.
Another thing I noticed: the projects that really focused on separating client from server produced much better results in terms of UI/UX. With Matrix, I just had to setup the server, and then I could have the riot app just point to my instance. If by any chance a better client comes around, my instance would be untouched.
> I didn't put it higher on my priority list because to me it looks like it focus too much on being a "community-driven website" instead of providing a solid service as a media-hosting/publishing/catalog system. To me it looks like they are shooting for the wrong level of "decentralization granularity". Each instance of these services are aiming for a "community", and think that the people use the mainstream tools because they don't want to/won't manage the server. The point they seem to miss is that this only creates another type of top-down organization. It would be MUCH easier for them to focus on a "single-user" system, and start from the point that the communication will work when the applications talk with each other.
This 1000 times. It just kills me to think about how much potential progress has been lost to these major projects spending so much time and energy on social federation protocols instead of working on the actual primary function of the software.
Mediagoblin could have already been THE software go-to for personal media organizing and display, but it seems to be getting stuck like every other potentially great project that runs out of steam when the main developers lose their focus. And now Yahoo has sold assets to Verizon, and millions of Flickr users are wondering what will happen next.
Would you consider writing a blog post on all the tech stacks you tried and how it panned out? I'm kind of in the same place as you and there is just an overwhelming number of underwhelming options.
I just had a brief look at Mastodon, and it appears to have the same humongous flaw that Diaspora has. No events management.
What the hell? That is the main feature required in a social network, after the ability to see each others comments. People want to organise their lives using the graph that their social network provides.
Is anyone aware of a distributed or federated open source social network which provides event management functionality? I would love to hear about it if you have... Gallery functionality would come in handy too.
I dabbled with ownCloud, Seafile, etc and came away disappointed. At the time I was trying to run them on a raspberry pi and ownCloud at least was too heavy. Eventually I found Syncthing and that's been the ticket for me. It's great for synchronization but not so much for general sharing.
>"Curious to see this here, given that I've been trying to set up some of these "decentralized services" at my home servers and figuring out if it is really possible to replace the common mainstream services."
Just in case its not yet on your radar, you may be interested in Sandstorm:
It bills itself as a 'self-hostable web productivity suite', but it's much broader than that, it's really a platform for self-hostable decentralised apps. Sandstorm manages security and app interoperability, so that developers and users can focus on the core functionality of the apps.
Interesting the various stacks that people are coming up with for their home servers. I use ZNC, Bitlbee, NextCloud, Offlineimap + remote notmuch, mopidy.
I'm actually very happy with this - contacts, calendars, news, files - never have to go on the cloud for these things.
The uptime I've been able to manage for the last 2 years is about 95%. Most of the downtime was due to a kernel panic, a shady bios on the intel nuc, and no means of remotely restarting the thing.... had to get a "smart switch" and now my uptime could potentially hit 99%.
DR is next... got to drop my RAID disk + server combo with some friends and family. Probably slap on gluster, or just use lsyncd to synchronize changes.
I think to be able to say you're a "decentralized alternative to YouTube, Flickr, SoundCloud", you really need some way to search across all the servers in the network or at least interact with them and as far as I can tell, that doesn't exist. In the tour there's not even any mention of decentralization that I can see.
Is there something I'm missing?
Also in terms of self hosting, something I'd really like is the ability to point it at a pile of files and have it ingest them in place. Any idea whether that's possible?
I'm still waiting for an open source self-hosted alternative to Google Drive. Even just the basic functionality of a file browser, image thumbnails, photo gallery, and video player would be fantastic. Many such projects exist, and maybe I'm just lazy, but I really don't want to have to set up a PHP server in order to run such a thing. I would love something like Syncthing where you download a compiled Go binary, start up the service, and configure it through your browser.
I started implementing something like this myself but didn't make it very far. The fear of eventually running out of space or having privacy/security issues on Drive hasn't produced enough pain for me to really do anything yet.
which would setup the entire LEMP stack for you (along with a full-featured, minimalist hosting admin panel) and then you can install any of the available file sharing tools.
I always seem to remember this project sort of limping along, only to forget it a while after as even though I'm an artist and I could make some use of it, the setup is far too much of a trouble when a Wordpress blog would do the trick for sharing my works just fine. Maybe it needs something akin to what happened with GNU/Social and Mastodon to be thrown into the limelight.
I don't have much experience with it but IMO mediagoblin might suit small organizations slightly better than individuals. It's probably best for folks who want their cycling club, makerspace, HOA, scouts troop, university, etc to be able to share media without being subject to content restrictions, silly communities, etc.
Youtube differentiates itself by being a go-to platform, a website that people actually visit to watch videos. Otherwise, call it an alternative to Vimeo, which is de-facto just a video hosting platform.
Well, there's always VidMe. That's what they're trying to be, a new YouTube.
But when it comes to decentralised services... I suspect the answer is 'whatever instance connects to most of the others and draws the most traffic'. Which raises its own issues, since [BigVideoSiteInstanceNameHere] basically just ends up with the same problems as YouTube. Being able to control what a large percentage of users watch on a de facto level, even if the actual underlying system is decentralised.
Hi, MediaGoblin co-founder and co-maintainer here.
It's still under active development, though I've temporarily handed over the reigns to others while I've been busy getting the federation standard we're going to use nicely shaped up through the W3C spec process https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/
That's taken up more of my last year (okay, last two years) than I expected. I'll be back in the swing of things within the next few months. We have a federation branch right now, but the standardization process of ActivityPub meant that we're going to have to retool some things before its released in 1.0!
The good news is that ActivityPub is looking to be picked up by projects like NextCloud, Mastodon, Pump.io, and quite possibly GNU Social, Diaspora, postActiv. This means we should be able to have more federation working across the many federated social web projects out there.
If you're interested in ActivityPub and federation generally, I highly recommend checking out the tutorial, which is baked into the spec: https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#Overview
In the meanwhile, Boris Bobrov (breton) has been kindly doing the main work along maintainership while I've been preoccupied. But, I'll be back soon... and it'll be good to be back!
I found a video on one of the example sites and opened it on mobile, iOS and the Google Search app. The video didn't play. That is why Youtube is so dominant. 12 years later and nobody else has figured out how to make videos that actually play.
I figured it out. You need to store several encodings of the same file. One in webm for most cases, and one in mp4 for all other cases. If a platform doesn't support webm or Mp4, it probably couldn't play the video anyway.
This may be off topic, but does anyone think that there is a correlation between pop culture (Silicon Valley's Pied Piper this season) and services like this springing up/getting more attention than normal?
I am confusing with decentralized.
If there is no central server, how can my node find the first neighbor node? If there is a server maintain a nodes list, it isn't decentralized, right?
I'm not understanding what is decentralized about it. It just looks like a bunch of Gallery 2 installations. Do the servers interact in some way? Is the content hosted in a decentralized fashion? I can't find anything on the website that clarifies it.
If you're looking for a more end-to-end solution, suitable for lecture/event recording, processing and distribution with a more permissive license, you might want to checkout http://www.opencast.org as well.
[+] [-] rglullis|8 years ago|reply
So far, I installed my own Matrix server (synapse), my own XMPP (ejabberd), yesterday I got semi-happy with my mastodon setup, and now I was just finishing some tests with ownCloud to see if I could replace Dropbox.
MediaGoblin is on my list of services to setup. I ran a basic deployment and checked some other instances of it before, but I didn't put it higher on my priority list because to me it looks like it focus too much on being a "community-driven website" instead of providing a solid service as a media-hosting/publishing/catalog system.
To me it looks like they are shooting for the wrong level of "decentralization granularity". Each instance of these services are aiming for a "community", and think that the people use the mainstream tools because they don't want to/won't manage the server.
The point they seem to miss is that this only creates another type of top-down organization. It would be MUCH easier for them to focus on a "single-user" system, and start from the point that the communication will work when the applications talk with each other.
To me this is why Diaspora failed, and Wordpress is still such a big part of the internet.
Another thing I noticed: the projects that really focused on separating client from server produced much better results in terms of UI/UX. With Matrix, I just had to setup the server, and then I could have the riot app just point to my instance. If by any chance a better client comes around, my instance would be untouched.
[+] [-] BugsJustFindMe|8 years ago|reply
This 1000 times. It just kills me to think about how much potential progress has been lost to these major projects spending so much time and energy on social federation protocols instead of working on the actual primary function of the software.
Mediagoblin could have already been THE software go-to for personal media organizing and display, but it seems to be getting stuck like every other potentially great project that runs out of steam when the main developers lose their focus. And now Yahoo has sold assets to Verizon, and millions of Flickr users are wondering what will happen next.
[+] [-] doomrobo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mike-cardwell|8 years ago|reply
What the hell? That is the main feature required in a social network, after the ability to see each others comments. People want to organise their lives using the graph that their social network provides.
Is anyone aware of a distributed or federated open source social network which provides event management functionality? I would love to hear about it if you have... Gallery functionality would come in handy too.
[+] [-] anderspitman|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ZenoArrow|8 years ago|reply
Just in case its not yet on your radar, you may be interested in Sandstorm:
https://sandstorm.io/
It bills itself as a 'self-hostable web productivity suite', but it's much broader than that, it's really a platform for self-hostable decentralised apps. Sandstorm manages security and app interoperability, so that developers and users can focus on the core functionality of the apps.
[+] [-] user102938|8 years ago|reply
I'm actually very happy with this - contacts, calendars, news, files - never have to go on the cloud for these things.
The uptime I've been able to manage for the last 2 years is about 95%. Most of the downtime was due to a kernel panic, a shady bios on the intel nuc, and no means of remotely restarting the thing.... had to get a "smart switch" and now my uptime could potentially hit 99%.
DR is next... got to drop my RAID disk + server combo with some friends and family. Probably slap on gluster, or just use lsyncd to synchronize changes.
We should make a freenode channel for this!
[+] [-] unixhero|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PudgePacket|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Veratyr|8 years ago|reply
Is there something I'm missing?
Also in terms of self hosting, something I'd really like is the ability to point it at a pile of files and have it ingest them in place. Any idea whether that's possible?
[+] [-] grault|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anderspitman|8 years ago|reply
I started implementing something like this myself but didn't make it very far. The fear of eventually running out of space or having privacy/security issues on Drive hasn't produced enough pain for me to really do anything yet.
[+] [-] WrtCdEvrydy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Feld0|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] webtechgal|8 years ago|reply
As an alternative, you can just:
# curl -O http://vestacp.com/vst-install.sh # bash vst-install.sh
which would setup the entire LEMP stack for you (along with a full-featured, minimalist hosting admin panel) and then you can install any of the available file sharing tools.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] swiley|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simplehuman|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chipperyman573|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rchrd2|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simplehuman|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kemonocode|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wyldfire|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] galacticpony2|8 years ago|reply
Youtube differentiates itself by being a go-to platform, a website that people actually visit to watch videos. Otherwise, call it an alternative to Vimeo, which is de-facto just a video hosting platform.
[+] [-] CM30|8 years ago|reply
But when it comes to decentralised services... I suspect the answer is 'whatever instance connects to most of the others and draws the most traffic'. Which raises its own issues, since [BigVideoSiteInstanceNameHere] basically just ends up with the same problems as YouTube. Being able to control what a large percentage of users watch on a de facto level, even if the actual underlying system is decentralised.
[+] [-] paradite|8 years ago|reply
http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/mediagoblin.git/log/
[+] [-] paroneayea|8 years ago|reply
It's still under active development, though I've temporarily handed over the reigns to others while I've been busy getting the federation standard we're going to use nicely shaped up through the W3C spec process https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/
That's taken up more of my last year (okay, last two years) than I expected. I'll be back in the swing of things within the next few months. We have a federation branch right now, but the standardization process of ActivityPub meant that we're going to have to retool some things before its released in 1.0!
The good news is that ActivityPub is looking to be picked up by projects like NextCloud, Mastodon, Pump.io, and quite possibly GNU Social, Diaspora, postActiv. This means we should be able to have more federation working across the many federated social web projects out there.
If you're interested in ActivityPub and federation generally, I highly recommend checking out the tutorial, which is baked into the spec: https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#Overview
In the meanwhile, Boris Bobrov (breton) has been kindly doing the main work along maintainership while I've been preoccupied. But, I'll be back soon... and it'll be good to be back!
[+] [-] motters|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TorKlingberg|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scriptkiddy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xiconfjs|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://wiki.mediagoblin.org/Live_instances
[+] [-] cdolan92|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] somedumbguy22|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/153166/what-is-t...
[+] [-] cubano|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] con022|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] obmelvin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Espionage724|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] eco|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nnutter|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] criddell|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nobodyorother|8 years ago|reply
https://apps.sandstorm.io/app/70awyqss6jq2gkz7dwzsnvumzr0725...
[+] [-] symlinkk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tekni5|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] thunfisch|8 years ago|reply