Hello from a fellow free software developer

Welcome
#1

Hello @dachary and @pilou,

I keep hearing about fedeproxy (shout out to @aschrijver) but I’m glad to finally get the time to drop by and say hi. I’ve only gotten involved with the fediverse in the past several months but have long cared about FLOSS and user freedom in general. I’ve always considered data portability as a fifth freedom that arises out of an increasingly cloud-provided world.

Federation is an interesting phenomenon and it wasn’t immediately clear to me how it would help solve important problems in source code and project management. After reading the project description however I see that this project aligns very well with this fifth freedom, attempting to solve the problem of project lock-in to forges.

Part of what took me so long to say hi was that the links that were shared with me were always for a live event rather than something more asynchronous like this site. And here, I’m overcoming a desire to fit in because I think a Welcome or Community category would be best for introductions like this. In any case, I wanted to say hi and give the suggestion to create such a category.

Now that I’m signed up to the forum I hope to keep track of the project and help where I can. My focus tends toward making life easier for developers and for focusing in on the right problems to solve. I’m generally game to setup an instance and help document my experience so let me know if that would be helpful and what distro is best.

Finally, I think it would be good to make it easy for new folks to know how they can help the project today and put that on your home page and in a sticky on this forum.

Thanks and good luck!

David

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#2

@weex great to see you here!

Excellent idea! Done.

This is also an excellent idea although I’m not sure how to write that down so that people find that attractive. Do you have a specific idea in mind?

Would you be available to participate in the next fedeproxy monthly update October 18th, 10:30am UTC+2 ? We’re planning an experiment with simultaneous translation.

I’ve read the thread you started on socialhub a few months ago and now I’m curious to know what keeps you busy on the federation front?

P.S. I’m amazed by the talent of @aschrijver to connect people and projects. It feels like he is part of the fabric of the fediverse. Although he is human. Maybe he is a human tech ? :grin:

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#3

That’s a tricky time (1:30am here), but I should be able to make it. I put it on my calendar so will let you know if I can’t make it. I would be a good test case for translation since I only know a little french and likely can’t follow a technical discussion in anything but english.

My main project is C4Social. A key insight driving that project is that it should be as easy as possible to contribute to a project, even if it’s a bit messier than the usual review-intensive process. We’re testing that idea by forking some big projects: Mastodon and Diaspora. It’s a little crazy but working so far. The main need there is for more maintainers. We have our own definition of maintainer which is much simpler than usual.

Some folks will apply a label like “goodfirstissue” to some issues or simply point out gaps in the project that are ready to be filled. I’ve found it helpful to think like a new user, a new admin and new contributor to be sure there’s something for each of them at project entrypoints.

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#4

You may have noticed that I’m knee-deep in fundraising this month, although it’s not my preferred activity :slight_smile: May I ask how you fund your work on C4Social? I’ve read about it and found it both original and intriguing.

#5

Intriguing it is, I’m not sure I’ve worked this hard since the last time I was trying to secure a job. I think one of our next acts will be renaming the forks so if you have any ideas…

On the fundraising question, expenses aren’t much so far, mainly hosting and a few domains and I’ve been fortunate in that my living expenses are covered for a while so that I can focus on the fediverse. That’s not sustainable long-term or really scalable so I hope to make it possible to make a living while growing these healthier online spaces. I’m not sure if that’s through grants or through hosting/service oriented work but time will tell. I know there are some big valuable problems to solve so I have a feeling the money will become available ideally without corporate strings.

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#6

My work on fedeproxy started in the same way, i.e. me volunteering. And for @pilou as well. This is very significant funding, at least two order of magnitude more than the hosting costs :slight_smile: It is reflected in the expense/incoming spreadsheet as a donation to the project

I suggest spending time on User Research. For me it is both brutal and necessary. Brutal because it forced me to focus on what other people need instead of in my own personal interest. Necessary because I ultimately want to publish software hat is useful to other people and not just me.

#7

Too much honor :blush: but good to hear, appreciated. Maybe I’m a Ghost-in-the-Shell federated AI. Oh wait… we had a vidcall. Nah, just human. I am also on that same volunteering path, and my method is to always take that bit of time to make cross-references between people’s work to increase chances of co-creation. This ‘fostering of inter-connectivity’ I see as part of a “Community has no Boundary” paradigm (here linked in the context of AP Groups support, where I also mention FedeProxy) and crucial for a deeply social web. The work is time-consuming though and detrimental to deep focus. Eventually I also need to find an income in some way or other.

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