Happy I Love Free Software Day! 💕

Unfortunately, this year I could not join nor organize any in-person celebration, BUT of course I want to share my gratitude to the many, countless #FreeSoftware services I don’t merely use, but actually depend on.

Last year, I decided to focus only on #YunoHost, because it would have been crazy to list all the projects I use and I love.

This time, even if I will most certainly forget someone, I am challenging myself to mention all the #LibreSoftware my life is powered by.

Without further ado, THANK YOU to:

• @yunohost, for powering Nebuchadnezzar
• @fedora, for running my beloved #Framework laptop
• @frameworkcomputer, for designing and building repairable, #Linux-friendly and truly open hardware
• @gnome and @GTK, for being just gorgeous
• @calyxos (thus @LineageOS), for powering my #Fairphone5
• #Obtainium, for making me directly download apps on my phone, and @fdroidorg for distributing them
• #AuroraStore, for proxying the download of apps I am doomed to get from Google Play
• @element, for developing #Synapse, even though the new proprietary Synapse Pro is VERY PROBLEMATIC AND DISAPPOINTING
• #Fractal, for being the most beautiful and awesome #Matrix client ever
• @signalapp, for keeping me connected with the people I love
• @Mastodon, for also maintaining a feature-packed experimental fork (#GlitchSoc), that is what Pan runs
• #Tuba and #Moshidon, for being the most beautiful and awesome #Mastodon clients ever
• #Firefox, for still remaining the best possible #browser choice, despite #Mozilla’s governance messiness
• @openstreetmap, for allowing us to find the right path, both literally and metaphorically!
• @organicmaps, for being the simplest, cleanest, yet feature-rich #OSM client and navigation app
• @protonvpn, for making me browse safely from/to anywhere in the planet and @protonprivacy #ProtonMail, for hosting my email, despite the latest alarming political statements…
• @libreoffice, for allowing me to draft documents with ease, the last of which was my #CV
• #LanguageTool, for preventing me from making embarassing spelling mistakes
• @photoprism, for safely storing and indexing all my photographic memories, on Aby, and for providing stellar and friendly support too!
• #Actual, for moderating the very likely risk of ending up completely broke, since it forces me to manage my finances consciously and coherently
• @readeck, for storing and sorting ALL my varied and overwhelming inputs
• @nextcloud, for storing and synchronizing my data, for its #calendar, its #tasks, and all its awesome apps
• #Rustdesk, for preventing my friends and family members from going crazy, by allowing me to remotely connect to their devices and directly address the issues they have
• #Listmonk, for sending out my newsletter
• @eleventy, for powering all the websites I maintain, above all the virtual representation of my mind, and for being the only reason why I resist and try to continue learning #JavaScript
• @forgejo, for giving us a chance to truly control and collectively develop the sources of our software, but most importantly @Codeberg, for RESISTING, RESISTING, RESISTING, despite the hatred and attacks nazi assholes throw at them
• @musicbrainz for keeping music knowledge open and free, and @ListenBrainz for scrobbling the crazy music I listen to
• The @fsfe, for promoting this celebration and fighting the good fight!

Lastly, but most importantly, the biggest thank you goes to all the free software libraries and dependencies the above mentioned #software are made of/built with, including #C, #JavaScript, #Python, #Rust, and all community-maintained programming languages.

I am super sorry if I forgot someone!

#OpenSource #ILoveFS #SoftwareFreedom #Fairphone #Android #LineageOS #FSFE #OpenStreetMap #PhotoPrism #LibreOffice #Readeck #Eleventy #11ty #GNOME #Signal #forgejo #Codeberg #MusicBrainz #ListenBrainz #MetaBrainz

Nebuchadnezzar

Information and insights concerning the configuration and maintenance of Tommi’s server.

^{Tommi (Tommi’s mind)}

There's an alternative version of Mastodon called "Mastodon Glitch Edition" (aka "glitch-soc" or just "Glitch"). Glitch is totally compatible with normal Mastodon, but adds experimental new features.

For example, Glitch instances let the admin alter the character limit, allow local posting, text formatting and lots of other stuff.

Many features in Glitch have eventually made their way into normal Mastodon after proving themselves stable and useful.

You can find out more at:

glitch-soc.github.io/docs/

If you run your own Mastodon instance you can switch to Glitch, and switch back again if you don't like it.

(You may be wondering how this post is so long? It's because FediTips is on an instance that uses Glitch, and the instance character limit has been extended to 1000.)

#FediTips #MastoTips #Fediverse #Mastodon #Glitch #GlitchSoc

I keep seeing lots of people who are totally giddy about the #Fediverse, who are gushing over it, who want to promote it, who want it to spread.

And who want it to advance. To learn new abilities. To grow new features.

That's all fine and dandy.

But almost all of these people are still fully convinced that the Fediverse equals #Mastodon. And nothing else. At least not until Tumblr and P92 join the fray. Okay, maybe the #WordPress plug-in that's the talk of the town now that it has become official. Okay, maybe a few of them have also heard of #Pixelfed and/or #PeerTube because their makers are all over the Fediverse.

When these people are talking about the Fediverse, they mean Mastodon. And when they're thinking about the Fediverse, they're only thinking about Mastodon. Because that's all they know.

So these people want new cool features or even new cool use-cases in the Fediverse, stuff that Mastodon doesn't have. They want Mastodon to have it, or they want new projects to be launched that have these features.

If only they knew.

If only they knew that everything, literally everything they propose has already been done. Yes, in the Fediverse. In projects which are fully federated with Mastodon. Why don't they know? Because they've never heard of any of these projects, much less what they can do.

So they want "quote-tweets" in the Fediverse. Which means they want Mastodon to introduce them.

Tell you what: Mastodon is the only microblogging project in the Fediverse that doesn't have quotes. Not only will Eugen Rochko never introduce them, but all the other projects have them with Mastodon forks #GlitchSoc such as being the exception. #Pleroma has them. #Akkoma has them. #MissKey has them. #CalcKey has them. #FoundKey has them. #GoToSocial has them. The old heavyweights #Friendica and #Hubzilla have them, and so does Hubzilla's youngest decendant, the #Streams project. Et cetera.

You want "quote-tweets"? Switch to something that isn't Mastodon, and you've got "quote-tweets".

Or text formatting in posts like bold type, italics, underline, strikethrough, code blocks etc. Would be great if Mastodon had that, in spite of other people saying they don't want it.

Again: Pleroma already has it. Akkoma already has it. MissKey already has it. CalcKey already has it. FoundKey already hasit. GoToSocial already has it. Friendica already has it. Hubzilla already has it (look at this post at its source in a Web browser and weep). (streams) already has it. And so forth. This time, even Mastodon forks have it.

It has been done. It has been done many times. It has actually been done before Mastodon.

Next, long-form blog posting. We need something like #Medium in the Fediverse that isn't Medium itself. Mastodon's 500 characters are too few, and Twitter-like threads are inconvenient.

Except we already have that, too. #Plume and #WriteFreely are about as close to Medium as Mastodon is to Twitter, including clean and distraction-less layouts. Oh, and Hubzilla can do that, too.

By the way: Again, Mastodon is the only Fediverse project that can do microblogging that has a 500-character limit. Pleroma, Mastodon's oldest direct competitor, raised it to a default of 6,000. MissKey and its forks have 3,000 as a default. Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) have character limits of "go ahead, drop your short story in one post in its entirety," so virtually none at all. And yes, Hubzilla has long-form writing on top of that.

Speaking of Hubzilla: Most recently, there has been the idea to uncouple one's online identity from a specific instance. Your online self should no longer be firmly tied to any one server exclusively. Now, this sounds so ambitious, it might just as well be science-fiction.

What if I told you that just this very thing already exists as well?

No, really. No, I'm not making this up. But you should know by now that I'm not.

Better yet: It was conceived as early as 2011. By the guy who launched Friendica in 2010. He invented a new principle named #NomadicIdentity and a new protocol named #Zot. In its early stages already, even with no technical implementation yet, Zot was more powerful than ActivityPub is today.

In 2012, Zot became reality as the basis of a Friendica fork which later became known as #RedMatrix and, upon its 1.0 stable release in late 2015, which is still prior to Mastodon's initial release, Hubzilla. Hubzilla is still being developed and improved, and it has a fledgling but growing "successor of a successor" named (streams) which offers nomadic identity, too.

Now, what does this nomadic identity even look like? Well, not only does it let you move your channel(s) around from instance to instance with ease and, unlike on Mastodon, with absolutely everything on it. No, it also lets you have your channel on multiple instances at once. Identical clones, automagically kept in sync in real-time, all with the same identity, the same content, the same connections.

Your identity is no longer strapped down to one instance. Not only that, but your channel, your posts, your content is no longer hosted on only one server. This means that if one instance with one of your clones goes down, you still have spares.

Okay, so how about community groups/forums? That'd be cool.

Well, for one, there's #Guppe. It's basically bolted on Mastodon, and in practice, it's centralised because there's only one instance. But it's impractical to use.

Besides, this is becoming a running gag here, Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) have exactly this built-in and open for the rest of the Fediverse.

Better yet: There's also #Lemmy which amounts to a federated #Reddit or #HackerNews clone. So not only does Lemmy offer this, it specialises in it.

Hubzilla alone can provide Fediverse feature suggestions with "has been done" for years to come. Not to mention what else the Fediverse has to offer. Even if someone should want a free, non-commercial, decentralised, federated #GoodReads clone in the Fediverse, it has been done: #BookWyrm.

- Fediverse.Party - explore federated networks

Let's make social media free, federated and fun! Fediverse.Party is your guide into the world of decentralized, autonomous networks running on free open software on a myriad of servers across the world. No ads and no algorithms.

^{fediverse.party}