The NZOSS website has a list of online services run by the crew of people who host this forum, most of them now under the same iridescent.nz domain. The general purpose of these services are to demo what various Free Code server software can do, helping us identify the rights tools for replacing various proprietary services. With a side bonus of providing gratis services to people working towards different aspects of software freedom in Aotearoa, and on related issues like privacy, right to repair, and so on. Similar services are run by a range of individuals and community-hosting collectives around the country, including mastodon.nz, pixelfed.nz, lemmy.nz, and so on.
So where are the gaps? Are there any worthwhile packages that nobody is hosting in Aotearoa yet? Are there any proprietary services we havenāt found a satisfying replacement for yet? Hereās some ideas. Please suggest more, or let me know if there are in fact services running in Aotearoa or under a .nz domain using software on this list, or youāve tried it and donāt rate it;
-
BonFire Social (AGPL) - The first āflavourā of a next generation fediverse server
-
Castopod (AGPLv3) - A podcast hosting platform that enables following podcasts in the fediverse.
-
Continuwuity (āMITā) - A Matrix server programmed in Rust.
-
CryptPad (AGPLv3) - An E2E encrypted online collaboration suite, with a combo of office features (docs, sheets, presentations) and project management tools (kanban, code).
-
eJabberD (GPLv2 or later) -an XMPP server that also supports Matrix
-
Inkwell (AGPLv3) - Federated social blogging as a multi-tenant ActivityPub server (fair warning: vibe coded).
-
LimeSurvey (GPLv2 or later) - Web forms for surveys, registrations, etc. NextCloud Forms is better for simple to moderately complex forms. LimeSurvey has a greater range of features, but for a more complex UX
-
Loops (AGPLv3) - Federated short video as a multi-tenant ActivityPub server (project of the dev behind PixelFed, FediDB, fediverse.info)
-
MixPost (MIT) - A social media management dashboard that can support accounts on a range of platforms
-
Murmur (Mumble server) - A group voice system that can easily support dozens if not hundreds of participants in a voice room. The interface is kind of like IRC+voice chat. Apps with more modern interfaces would make it more accessible, but its very functional for those who can cope with the old school Mumble (web) and Mumla (F-Droid) apps.
-
Owncast (MIT) - A single-tenant livestreaming server, with chat functionality
-
PenPot (MPLv2) - An interface design tool, often pitched as a replacement for apps like Figma
-
Pol.is (AGPLv3) - A tool for large-scale public consultation. Warning: LLM dependencies. Although in the wild use of Polis in vTaiwan has a very positive reputation.
-
Wafrn AGPLv3 - A social network service that enables interactions both with the fediverse, via AP, and the ATmosphere using ATProto.
-
Zotero (AGPLv3 or later) - A local-first bibliography tool with sync to a remove server, designed for academic use
On some Discourse forums a post like this can be made in to a wikipage. Not sure if we can do that here. @lightweight ?
It would be really nice to have an NZ instance of Pol.is for community based consensus decision making.
I think one instance can allow multiple communities to use it. At least the master instance in the USA allows this, but the very fact that itās in the USA is the problem.
1 Like
Iāve been toying with the idea of setting one up under the iridescent.nz bannerā¦ might accelerate thatā¦ watch this space.
1 Like
FYI There have been uses of it in Aotearoa, I think by the Scoop folks, maybe othere? Would be good to have some specific test uses in mind, and maybe partner with some community groups who want to run large-scale public consultations? ActionStation comes to mind as one example, but maybe it would be a good opportunity to reach out to tangata whenua groups working on digital sovereignty?
I started implementing an instance last night. Itās quite a complex app. Will let you all know how I get on.
I did some investigation, and I think I found that Scoop appeared to have been using the default US instance, although I canāt find the details again.
DOC used it via Scoop for some public consultation.
It might be worth reaching out and finding out if Scoop were hosting nationally, or just using the US instance, and if they are running a local instance, if itās still going.
https://info.scoop.co.nz/HiveMind
Pretty certain it wasnāt being run locally. Suspect they used the reference implementation.
Iāve emailed Joe Cederwall using the email address at that link (cc @lightweight ) to ask if Scoop would be interested in using an onshore instance for HiveMind.
Has anyone tried Floccus (MPLv2) for syncing bookmarks and tabs across browsers? Iām wondering if there is a NextCloud feature or plug-in for this. Seems logical there would be.
EDIT: Now that Iāve actually skimmed the Floccus homepage, I see can be used with a NC server : ) Other (supposedly) libre servers it works with are Linkwarden (AGPL) and KaraKeep (AGPL).
I believe the local-first bibiography system Zotero (AGPLv3OL) can be used for browser syncing too, anyone tried that? For that matter, anyone tried hosting their own FireFox Sync server?
Iāve set up the Bookmarks app on our NextCloudā¦ I personally use Readeck (my own self-hosted instance - but itās easy to set up compared to most services) over bookmarks (which are mostly locked to a particular browser on a particular computer) to keep track of online stuff I want to be able to reference. Zotero is fine if you want academic grade referencing, but with a lot more overhead.
I just added Continuwuity to the list. We already have at Matrix server running Synapse at chat.iridescent.nz. But one of the main selling points of Matrix for me is that itās an open protocol, which can have independent implementations. So testing Matrix servers other than Synapse, whose development is controlled by Element, seems worthwhile.
Iāll also add eJabberD. We donāt yet have an XMPP server, which is what it was designed to be. But the developers, Process One, added Matrix support in late 2022.
While looking up these links, I noticed that Process One have also launched Fluux Messenger (AGPLv3), a set of branded XMPP apps optimised to run on an eJabberD server. Fluxus seems to be intended as a Slack/ Discord replacement for team chat. Unlike Snikket, an otherwise similar project by the developer of the Prosody XMPP server, which is aimed more at families, clubs and community groups currently using WhatSapp, TeleGrim, Signal or ElementX.
I just added Inkwell.social to the list, a fantastic new social blogging platform, inspired by LiveJournal/ DreamWidth, and made in Elixir. Unlike Ghost and WP, this doesnāt require an add-on to federate over ActivityPub. Federation support is baked in, as with the dearly departed dead parrot Plume, for which this is a worthy replacement. I have no idea if the codebase is in a suitable condition for self-hosting but thatās something Iād certainly love to know.
Update: InkWell was made with the help of a Trained MOLE, so take that into account.
How did you go with setting up a Pol.is instance? What are the composite parts?
Side note: dependencies is something we need to pay more attention to, and Iām starting to discover libre-licensed server packages that depend on components which are Source Available components, pulled from questionable sources (eg the npm Javascript repository), or subject to vibe coding.
I had a website idea years ago I call SoftwareBurger, which visualises a software as a burger, with each of its components as an ingredient in the burger stack. Maybe with the thickness of the ingredient slice proportional to how significant it is to the overall package. Clicking on any ingredient would load the software burger for that component, rinse, repeat, right down to the most elemental software components.
I just added LimeSurvey, but if anyone has any experience with alternatives for surveys and web forms (eg NextCloud Forms), please share it with us.
BTW I have a vague memory of @lightweight saying there was a LS instance under nzoss.nz? Is there one currently running under iridescent.nz?
There was a LimeSurvey for ages, but it is not trivial to create forms (itās powerful, but itās complicated) and it wasnāt getting used. The LimeSurvey developers seem to resent people wanting to host it themselves and they made upgrades really painful, so I decided to let it lapse. In any case, I think NC forms is my goto now. Iāve tried at least 4 other specialised form web apps (see my list of apps), and theyāre all ok, but I use them enough to discern anything that would make one hugely better than the others.
Turns out that Pol.is uses a bunch of LLM Models that need to be integrated somehow. I got bogged down in trying to make that work, and eventually dropped it when other priorities emerged. I managed to get much of it working, but I think itād need some concerted effort to get it fully running.
Good to know. Just tested the NC Forms on hub.iridescent.nz. Very easy to use! Perfect for the simple forms I see most people using Goggle Forms or SurveyMonkey for.
Also good to know. My guess would be that theyāre not getting enough paying users to keep the lights on, and panicking (Iāve seen panic-driven design decisions degrading UX on a lot of ethically-motivated online services).
But as with a similar form of panic, switching to Source Available licensing, I think it would be better to encourage downstream use, and ask for a voluntary royalty (eg $N a year, or N% of any revenue the downstream makes out of it). Network effects apply to product familiarity too. The more common LS is, the more people will be willing or even keen to use it, and the more likely any given commercial LS service is to get paying customers, including the flagship at limesurvey.org. NextCloud is evidence an anti-proprietary approach can work, as is Koha.
That immediately makes me suspicious of it and less interested in using it : ( I guess I ought to look into which LLMs they use, under which licenses (for weights and data as well as code), and how theyāre used (on-server or via API calls to a proprietary service). But ā¦
I just added Wafrn. Very excited to discover that it federates over ATProto as well as AP. @lightweight this might be a good candidate for a long form fediverse app, especially given the dual-protocol support.
