FSF: Free media-sharing system picking up steam [LWN.net]

From:		"Free Software Foundation" <info-AT-fsf.org>
To:		<lwn-AT-lwn.net>
Subject:		Free media-sharing system picking up steam
Date:		Fri, 12 Oct 2012 20:30:53 -0400
Message-ID:		<E1TMpcz-0000JW-W0@eggs.gnu.org>
Archive-link:		Article, Thread

Who hasn't gotten excited about a new Internet service, only to
discover that it falls short on free software values?

The Web is full of services for posting, sharing and commenting on
media, but most of them require you to run nonfree software or share
your data with third parties on their terms. It seems like these
problems are just getting worse, with more and more of our media and
personal information hoarded in the hard drives of a few giant
corporations, and previous uses of nonfree Flash being replaced with
nonfree JavaScript. Determined to find a better way, FSF member Chris
Webber started the GNU MediaGoblin project. He's leading a community
team to write a next-generation social web system where users will
share their experiences through photos, videos and audio, all without
running proprietary software or centralizing personal data in the
hands of a corporation.

Right now MediaGoblin is partially developed, but the team needs
financial support so that they can quit their day jobs for a year and
perfect MediaGoblin's features to a professional level. The FSF
believes their project is important to the future of the Internet and
free software, so we're partnering with them to launch a crowdfunding
campaign, complete with creative prizes for donors (give $350, and
Chris will make you a 3D-print of Gavroche the goblin, the project's
cute mascot). 

Can you help us out by spreading the word about MediaGoblin, and,
ideally, pitching in some cash? You can donate here:

  * <http://mediagoblin.org/pages/campaign.html>

You can read our blog post and press release about MediaGoblin, why
it's so awesome, and why it needs our help at:

  *
<http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/gnu-mediagoblin-offers...>
  *
<http://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-rallies-support-for-gnu-media...>

Help get the word out:

  * Upvote the FSF's MediaGoblin thread on reddit! --

<http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/11dhmn/an_online_m...>

  * Upvote other reddit threads (who know which will make it big?) --
    <http://www.reddit.com/r/photography/search?q=mediagoblin&...>

  * Please don't make an account on our behalf, but if you're already
    stuck in YouTube land, try spreading the word from the inside --
    <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmlxATwyklc>

---> Enough links! I want to donate! ($100 gets you a spiffy
     MediaGoblin tshirt, but even $5 helps) --
     <http://mediagoblin.org/pages/campaign.html>

MediaGoblin's goal is to raise $60,000. With that modest amount, Chris
thinks MediaGoblin can be ready to use in a year. We'll continue to
follow its development after the fundraising effort, and we'll keep
you all posted. If this works, then a year from now, we'll be posting
pictures online and sharing them with our friends, all with free
software!

-Zak Rogoff
Campaigns Manager

--
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FSF: Free media-sharing system picking up steam

Posted Oct 18, 2012 13:44 UTC (Thu) by cwebber (guest, #87309) [Link]

Heya,

There's some olllld writeup on this here: http://wiki.mediagoblin.org/DesignDecisions

The short of it is: I knew I liked Jinja2 better than django's templates, I knew I wanted to swap out a number of things, and originally we used Mongo (we're now using SQL... longish story for another time), and we were swapping out enough components that eventually you hit that point where you're replacing all the bits of your framework and you spend a bunch of time fighting the framework because you aren't using it quite in all the ways it's opinionated about.

Anyway, I think not using django and using a very django-like system pieced together from various libraries has been a mixed bag. I actually think it is paying off for us: the way that we're doing plugins likely would be a bit harder if we were using Django (long story again), and it's super, super fast and easy to adjust the core "unframework" of MediaGoblin if you know what you're doing (I recommend reading http://pythonpaste.org/webob/do-it-yourself.html ). Anyway, our system looks increasingly like the application structure of Django, but using components that pretty much look like Flask. I wouldn't recommend all applications do this... (and also, I think Django is really great... there's a reason MediaGoblin looks so similar) but I think it's worked out well for us.

I'd like to do a better writeup now that some time has passed. I might give a talk on the pros/cons this at next year's PyCon if my proposal is accepted.