3.7 KiB
Fediversity
The Fediverse
The 'Federated Universe' which in our project translates to 'Federated Distributed Social Media' and we take this as broad as possible.
Of course we say that 'all systems using the ActivityPub' are part of this, but also Matrix, e-mail, and EduMeet or NextCloud (for it's calender sharing) are part of this. Any open federated distributed system that allows for communication falls under this flag.
Open Source, Open Systems, Open Everything
We take a bit of a principal stand on 'open source' (for reasons explained below).
When in our project plan it is mentioned that we use 'Open Source Software' we mean:
- Software that is publicly developed
- By an open and easy to join team
- Not governed by a 'tech giant' (companies that have more than 10.000 employees)
- In a fully open 'ecosystem' (no 'opencore')
We are especially vigilant towards systems that are open source, but require (excessive) payments to get to 'the good stuff' or lock you in to a non-open ecosystem. If alternatives exist we will prefer to use those. Examples of this are (with alternatives):
- docker (alternative: lxc)
- kubernetes
- zimbra (alternative: normal mailservers)
- macOS (alternative: NixOS)
- MySQL (alternative MariaDB)
- GitLab (alternative: Forgejo)
The most important reason for this is that we want to make the barrier to use our proposed setup as low as possible, both in cost as in legal options.
Two verticals
The Fediversity project is divided by it's target towards two verticals:
- The public sector
- The hosting sector
Public Sector
The Public Sector entails:
- Universities
- Public organisations (Town city councils, National administrations)
- Libraries
- NREN (National Research and Education Networks)
- Broadcasting Organisations
For these sectors we focus on making the use of 'the Fediverse' as smooth as possible (we support them in any way possible so there are no reasons not to use it). Our main goal here is validity of the Fediverse.
Validity is a very hard to achieve goal because of the so called 'network effect'. For example: if all my friends and family are using WhatsApp, why would I change to Matrix 'there is nobody using that'. We want to fill that void with 'look, universities, libraries, broadcasting, administrations are all using the Fediverse.
The Hosting Sector
The Hosting Sector entails:
- companies that run their own infrastructure
- traditional hosting companies (it infrastructure consultants with their own hardware and usually leased datacenter-space)
- open micro-cloud providers (more on this below)
We see a strange movement in the Open Source world where software is being made based on open principles, but then hosted (and geared towareds hosting on) the big tech hyperscalers: Microsoft, Google, Amazon. In our view this is 'throwing away the baby with the bathwater', we want to make sure that this is no longer needed.
There are people that use companies like OVH, Hetzner, Strato, Tilaa, Team Blue. But these companies also do not further the open source ecosystem, they too (like the hyperscalers) are mainly in it for the money. The very well described process of Enshittification, by Cory Doctorow, is already kicking in at some of these providers.
We want to enable small idealistic 'micro-cloud' providers with the tools to succeed.
Micro-cloud providers are small (not for profit) organisations that consist at least:
- multiple experienced tech maintainers (for 24/7 support)
- knowledgable and experienced support staff (for quality support)
- experienced local sales and marketing staff (to get a durable client base)
These micro-cloud providers should (based on the tooling that we provide) be able to supply 1000's of customers with access to the Fediverse without the need to use Big Tech.