With its brand new design, PeerTube‘s new interface isn’t just prettier (although it is). It is also simpler, easier to use and understand and more accessible. Welcome to a new era of this software that empowers creators to get, control and connect their own video platforms.

Let’s reflect the growth of the PeerTube Ecosystem

Seven year ago, PeerTube was mainly a tool that tech-savvy FOSS enthusiasts were happy to toy with. Then it became popular among content creators that wanted a self-hosted mirror of their YouTube/Twitch channels ; and among communities who wanted to create and regulate their safe space (deaf people, queer people, etc.)

Nowadays, PeerTube is experiencing increasing success among content creators who publish original content (or exclusive content for their community), alternative media, and institutions : colleges, ministries of education, national television and radio archives, etc.

Public structures often need to share video content without attention-grabbing mechanisms or data exploitation.

Learn more about the history and values of PeerTube with this interview from the Association for Progressive Communication.

To us, this is a new step in the evolution of PeerTube‘s audiences.

That is why this year, we’ve asked La Coopérative des Internets to lead a thorough UX research (complete with interviews, tests, etc.) and help us start a top to bottom redesign of the interface. Our goal was to improve on PeerTube so it would better fit the need of those new audiences. We were clear that everything was on the table : colors, vocabulary, layout…

Well, we are proud to release this v7 of PeerTube, that lays the ground to a complete remodeling of the interface.

Check the source code Support Framasoft

First look : themes, new colors and vocabulary

PeerTube design, color schemes, vocabulary, etc. has been constructed over seven years, as we went along, learning, getting help from the community. This new design was an opportunity to take a step back an get some intentions behind the interface.

PeerTube new light/beige theme

The new Light/beige default theme is calmer, easier on the eye than the original Black & orange one. We also added a Dark/brown theme into the core for the dark mode aficionados. Both aims to facilitate video browsing.

Creating those new themes was an opportunity to clean up and simplify how the interface is coded (specifically : clean up the CSS, with a focus on the variables), while limiting breakages with preexisting customized themes. It is now really easier to create new themes for PeerTube, and we hope you’ll share your creations !

PeerTube new dark/brown theme

We also updated the PeerTube lingo. There is a reason we are now using the word « platform(s) » to talk about all the servers where PeerTube has been installed.

Yes, calling them « instance(s) » has been the norm in the tech savvy-world of activity-pub enthusiasts. But, to those not privileged enough to know about the fediverse and its protocol, the word platform is self-explanatory, and facilitates inclusion.

PeerTube Website Support Framasoft

Enjoying simpler and relevant layouts

There are lots of informations to display on any PeerTube page. The layouts and menus grew organically during seven years of development… and needed some pruning ! We remodeled those menus and pages to bring forward relevant informations, and present a more intuitive way to find out what you are looking for.

OK, the « PeerTube Nightly » description is not the most thrilling one… But we trust you’ll find more intersting descriptions of your platform to inform passers-by.

For exemple, content creators used to access their channels and uploaded video in their library (where any PeerTube user can get to their playlists, history, etc. of the videos they watched). Now in PeerTube v7, there is a new section called « video space » specific for video uploaders’ needs.

In the same way, « admin » pages for PeerTube platforms administrators have now been separated into an Overview page (to get more info about users, hosted videos, etc.), a Moderation one (to manage abuses, blocking, registrations), and a Settings one (to access configurations, runners, etc.)

Platform administrators have more convenient menus (here on the overview page)

The several pages that presented the videos on a PeerTube platform (Recently added, Local videos, Trending) have been merged into a « Browse videos » page, that includes quick filters to display the same selections of content in a more forward way.

The same intent has driven the new layout of the « Discover videos » page we hope it will empower curious users.

Obviously, the left bar and header menus have been reorganized to reflect those changes and make navigation even more intuitive. You can now access your account settings and notifications from the header menu, as it is customary on other websites.

PeerTube Search Engine Support Framasoft

Displaying relevant information to show video diversity

A big feedback from new users was that the old interface was confusing, that is was hard for a user to know where they were, and where the videos came from.

That is why, in PeerTube v7, we have added more ways for platforms owners to customize and identify their platforms : easily add a banner (used on pages, mobile app exploration, and our search engine SepiaSearch) and a platform icon (used by the mobile application) More, the name and description of their platform is now displayed to non-registered users in the left hand menu.

Platforms banners positively pop on search results (here on joinpeertube.org)

We have also changed how video miniatures appear in all pages that lists videos. Channel avatar are always displayed so it’s easier to identify creators, titles are highlighted, the date and viewcount of the video are present but toned down. Those changes make pages that lists videos easier to read, and facilitate identifying the video you want to watch.

PeerTube Mobile App Support Framasoft

Accessibility on the forefront

The redesign was also the opportunity to prioritize the interface accessibility (for impaired people). In 2023, we prepared the code and worked on what we knew… so the planned 2024 full accessibility audit (thanks to the NGI Entrust consortium) would bring as much new and detailed improvements as possible.

Thanks to the audit, we have improved on so many issues : we fixed color contrats and themes, progress bar, several components, and various screen reader issues. We added missing labels on interactive elements, « skip menu » links, underlining to links. We also improved keyboard navigation, and re-implemented components of a non-accessible dependency.

Did you know that the former orange used for PeerTube wasn’t contrasted enough to be accessible ?

We sincerely think that PeerTube have caught up with accessibility issues and should be up to standards… but we know, now, that there is always room for improvement, and for learning directly from those who are concerned.

Follow PeerTube on Mastodon Support Framasoft

Editing captions, promoting videos and more…

With the brand new remote transcoding tool we introduced last year, getting a transcription or subtitles for your video is easier than ever. But the caption editing tool was… hum… let’s say « barebone ». We are now introducing a new modal that makes editing captions really convenient.

Editing your captions is waaaay more fun with our new interface

We welcomed and integrated upstream a community contribution on SEO (search engine optimization), to help promote PeerTube-hosted-content on search engines. A platform avatar now appears in the opengraph tags, empty accounts and channels are hidden from the sitemap, while additional video tags are now present there.

Last, PeerTube has been translated into Slovak.

We really want to take time to thank the community that contributes to translations of PeerTube, we would never have thought that our software would one day be available in more than 38 languages.

Huge thanks to all of you, wonderful people, who took time and care to contribute on our translation tool : you are amazing.

Chasing bugs and gardening the common grounds… The PeerTube community <3
Illustration : David Revoy (CC-By)

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There is more to come…

We still have more work planned from this whole interface remodel. We hope to deliver it in the firsts months of 2025. First, we are currently finishing the translation of the UX research report from La Coopérative des Internets and we will publish it in the hope that it will help the whole fediverse community.

We will also wait a bit for PeerTube administrators to update their platforms, and then update the PeerTube documentation with new screenshots, and the new menus pathways.

Our next interface changes will focus on streamlining the channels & videos management experience for content creators (where several tools and menus added to the pile over the years). We also plan on fine-tuning the categorization of NSFW videos.

Illustration : David Revoy – Licence : CC-By 4.0

We obviously have many more items to our 2025 roadmap, but are still trying to secure funds to realize them : we’ll keep you informed as soon as we know more !

About funds, we really want to thank the NGI0 Entrust program for their grant that funded most of the work on this new version (and on the PeerTube mobile app we released last week). The NLnet team has been a great partner on the management of this grant, and the accessibility audit from the consortium has really made a huge difference.

Share ideas & Feedback on PeerTube Support Framasoft

The challenge : 20,000 times €20 donations for Framasoft’s 20th anniversary !

Even though those new developments has been funded, maintaining PeerTube, offering great (and free) support, integrating contributions, etc. happens on our own dime. And Framasoft isn’t an IT company : we’re a non-profit advocating on digital emancipation.

Framasoft is funded by your donations ! Every €20 you donate will be a new balloon to celebrate 20 years of adventures and help us continue and take off for a^21st year.

Framasoft is a model of solidarity :

• 8,000 donors in 2023 ;
• over 2 million beneficiaries every month ;
• your donation can benefit 249 other people.

To date, we have raised €110,619 of our campaign target. We still have 14 days to convince our friends and raise enough money to get Framasoft off the ground.

So, challenge accepted ?

🎈🎈 Help Framasoft fund its 21st year of existence ! 🎈🎈

Today, at Framasoft (bonjour !), we publish the very first version of the PeerTube Mobile app for android and iOS. A lot of care went into its conception, to help a wider audience watch videos and discover platforms, while not getting their attention (and data) exploited.

Another step into PeerTube growth

Even though we have been developing and maintaining the PeerTube software for 7 years, we, at Framasoft, are far from being an IT company. First because we are a not-for-profit (funded through donations, you can support us here), and then because our goal is, actually, to help others educate themselves on digital issues, surveillance capitalism, etc. and to give them tools that helps them get digitally emancipated.

Developing PeerTube has been, to us, an (happy) accident. We wanted to show that with one paid developer (for the first six years, then two), very little means (~ €650,000 over 7 years) and lots of community contributions, we can create a radical alternative to YouTube and Twitch. It also took a lot of patience. From the get go, we knew we needed to aim for a slow but steady pace of growth for the software, the network of video platforms it federates, the whole ecosystem and the audiences it reached.

Videos and live-streams are increasingly watched on mobile devices. We knew the next step to widen the audience of the PeerTube network of platforms was to develop a mobile client. Last year, we decided to hire Wicklow (who completed his last internship, before graduating, here with us), to train him on mobile technologies, develop a mobile app, while continuing to get familiar with PeerTube’s core code.

Support PeerTube & Framasoft

Getting funded and getting help

This was (and still is) a big decision : a new hire needs to be funded (our huge thanks to NLnet and the NGI0 Entrust program !), and we want to stay a small structure, so we don’t have lots of room in our team. In hindsight, though, we believe it was the right one.

We surrounded ourselves with Zenika, to get help on architecture and experience on mobile strategy. We soon realized that peer-to-peer video sharing wouldn’t be a wise strategy on mobile devices. After benchmarking different technologies, Wicklow picked Flutter for the development.

La Coopérative des Internets (French design workers-owed-company), helped us pinpoint the relevant user experience and design an app fit for videos on the fediverse. We decided, for the first release, to limit the scope of the app to the « spectator use-case » : browsing and watching videos.

We plan to share all their reports soon (early 2025), as soon as we put in the final touches. We hope that sharing this expertise and experience will help other FLOSS initiatives in their endeavor.

In the meanwhile, the PeerTube Mobile app is (as always with us) Free-libre and open-source, and you can find the source code here on our repository.

🎈🎈 Celebrate Framasoft’s 20th birthday 🎈🎈

Fediverse complexities made simple

This preparatory work helped us realize that a mobile client was an amazing opportunity to simplify the PeerTube experience. PeerTube is not a video platform : it’s a network of video platforms, each with their own rules, means and focus, that can choose to federate with others (or not).

It is, by design, more complex than a centralized platform. One of the main feedback we got from video enthusiasts was

« I don’t know where to get an account. I don’t know where to search & find videos » (even though we maintain SepiaSearch).

Local account

Within a mobile client, we can create some kind of local account, directly on your device, so you get your watch-list, playlists, faves, etc. It saves you the hassle of finding a platform where you’d need to create an account if you just want to enjoy video content.

Explore platforms

We can also include a search engine and an interface to explore the federation of PeerTube platforms and find videos suited to your interest. Not everyone knows SepiaSearch (and other fediverse search engines) exists : you get it from the get go, in your pocket.

Highlighting platforms’ diversity

Finally, we can present content in a way that highlights the platforms, and show you where the videos/channels you watch are hosted. Differentiating platforms is a practical, visual way of introducing the concept of federation to a wider audience.

Fund Framasoft’s work

Designing out dark patterns

Humility check : a small French nonprofit will never have Google’s workforce nor Amazon’s money (and vice versa). But we have an edge : we are not constrained by surveillance capitalism rules, and its captology models.

Neither PeerTube nor the mobile app have any interest into grabbing your attention, force-feeding you ads and milking behavioral and personal data from you.

That is how we freed the design from toxic design patterns such as doom scrolling, curated feeds, needy notifications and so on.

It might sound obvious, but it takes real effort to conceive an interface cleaned from what has unfortunately became the new normal. Even more if you need to keep it familiar enough so it says easy to use.

A very first build, limited by (play & i) stores

We knew beforehand that fitting into Google’s PlayStore and Apple AppStore would be a challenge. They clearly weren’t ready to host a client for (not-a-platform but) a network of autonomous video-sharing platforms, published by a small French nonprofit, funded through its independent donation website.

We knew about the issues encountered by Thorium (another PeerTube mobile client). We got help and advice from Gabe, who develops the streaming tool Owncast (may your keyboard always repel crumbs and click smoothly), and encountered many obstacles… We knew about all that but, oh my Tux, it was a wild ride.

After jumping though hoops, here we are, you can download the PeerTube mobile app here :

Soon  

🔗Download the latest apk🔗 ((Android/Advanced)

🎈 Contribute to Framasoft’s Future 🎈

(un-)Limiting the federation

To get through Apple’s (and, in a lesser way, Google’s) validation processes, we had to present the mobile app with a curated « allowlist » of PeerTube platforms that meet their standards.

Here is the state of those limitations right now :

• Apple AppStore : limited to a very strict allowlist. Truth be told, a week before release, we are still unsure of being validated. Once we manage it, we’ll see how to widen the list & let users add platforms they want ;
• Google Play Store : limited allowlist, but users can already add the platforms they want. We plan to widen the allowlist next ;
• F-Droid (coming soon) and direct download apk : all PeerTube platforms we have indexed on SepiaSearch are available. If an instance isn’t declared to our index or is moderated, you can add it manually.

Soon  

🔗Download the latest apk🔗 ((Android/Advanced)

We cannot stress enough how their stores are not ready for independent solidarity-oriented networks. For exemple, a small « support us » donation link in our website footer or even on one of the allowed platforms triggered a « nope » from Apple.

And that’s consistent : as seen in their fight with Epic (owners of Fortnite) Apple take their share in every in-app purchases. They have an economic interest to keep your expenses enclosed in their ecosystem. Please, please : consider getting your freedom back ;).

Coming soon, in the PeerTube App

Fitting into Apple’s (and Google’s) very small boxes took time and energy, more than what we expected. We decided to release a first (incomplete) version of the app in December anyway, and gradually improve on it.

Here are the features we plan to develop and share for the PeerTube app :

• Soon (early 2025)
  • Finalize and publish design and mobile strategy reports
  • Publish documentation
  • Play video in background
  • Log in to one’s account, gets subscriptions, comment videos
  • next video recommandation
  • improve on the limited platforms list situation
• Then (mid 2025 (if funded))
  • adapt to tablets
  • adapt to TVs (well : AndroidTV… as for AppleTV, it will depend on their limitations)
  • Watch offline (for downloadable content)

Right now, we are still waiting to secure funding for those mid-2025 features (for which we have requested a NGI0 Commons grant to NLnet).

Depending on the app success and usage, we would love to add the content creator usecase to the app. But that’s a big one : upload and publish a video, manage one’s content, create a livestream, etc. We are still wondering where, when and how to get funds for this undertaking.

Illustration by David Revoy – Licence : CC-By 4.0

Care, Share and Contribute !

This is the part where we need you.

We hope you will enjoy this app, download and use it, and share it with your friends. This is a new gateway to promote PeerTube content, get audience to fabulous content creators, entice them to share more and boost that virtious loop.

This app is also a way of showcasing how media could be presented, when they are made with care for your agency and attention. More than ever : sharing is caring.

Soon  

🔗Download the latest apk🔗 ((Android/Advanced)

You can also contribute by reporting bugs (within the app), helping on the code (here is the git repository), and translating the interface. This is an important one : right now, the App is only available in English and French. Your language contributions are welcomed here on our translation platform.

Obviously, we plan to maintain the app, add translations, implement bugfixes and security updates when needed : but this has a cost. We need to secure Framasoft’s 2025 budget to make Wicklow’s position permanent in our team (which is a priority to us). Our donation campaign is active right now, you can add your support here (and thanks !).

Illustration by David Revoy – Licence : CC-By 4.0

The challenge : 20,000 times €20 donations for Framasoft’s 20th anniversary !

Framasoft is funded by your donations ! Every €20 you donate will be a new balloon to celebrate 20 years of adventures and help us continue and take off for a^21st year.

Framasoft is a model of solidarity :

• 8,000 donors in 2023 ;
• over 2 million beneficiaries every month ;
• your donation can benefit 249 other people.

To date, we have raised €84,817 of our campaign target. We still have 21 days to convince our friends and raise enough money to get Framasoft off the ground.

So, challenge accepted ?

Support Framasoft

Framasoft invites you to try out the prototype of Lokas, a new speech-to-text transcription application that respects your privacy. This functional demo is also an experiment by Framasoft in the field of AI, accompanied by the Framamia website, which we present here (in French).

Make note-taking easier with Lokas

Lokas is an application (for Android or iOS smartphones) that allows you to transcribe the sound of your voice into a text file.

Basically, during a meeting : you put the phone in the middle of the table, press the ‘Record’ button at the start of the meeting and the ‘Stop’ button at the end. A few minutes later, the application sends you a text file containing the sentences spoken by everyone.

Lokas can and will do many more things, but we’ll come back to that at the end of this announcement.

Who is Lokas for ?

Lokas is aimed at anyone who takes part in meetings. That’s a lot of people on the planet :)

However, we can share a few usecases.

First example : a nonprofit’s Annual General Meeting

Let’s imagine a nonprofit AGM. There are 15 people in the room, 2 moderators and 1 note taker. And a 2-hour meeting.

Concerns :

• Note-taking is exhausting

• The person taking the notes has limited participation

• The notes may be incomplete (a ‘blank’ due to a bathroom break).

What does Lokas offer ?

Lokas assists the note-taker, making it easier for him or her to participate (while still allowing for a pee break !).

Example of a transcription of a voice exchange using the Lokas application.

Second example : a workshop with teenagers

A workshop run by the ‘ Les petits débrouillards ’ association. 3 groups of 5 teenagers. A majority of girls in the groups.

Concerns :

• Note-taking can be very complicated.

• Boys monopolise the floor

What does Lokas offer ?

Lokas makes it possible to keep a record (audio and written) of what was said. It also makes it possible to compile statistics on speaking time, particularly by gender, so that we can see for ourselves that boys leave very little speaking time for girls.

Example of transcription of a voice exchange using the Lokas application

Third example : a video meeting in a foreign language

Your activist collective is close to a Spanish association. Camille, a volunteer from your group, who speaks a little Spanish, will be doing the video with her contact in Madrid. The video will therefore take place in a foreign language.

Concerns :

• You need to be able to listen again with your head down

• You need a French transcript to share with board members.

What does Lokas offer ?

With Lokas, Camille will be able to listen to the video again, automatically transcribe it into French, and share it from your smartphone (by email, via Signal, Matrix, WhatsApp, Telegram, etc).

Support Lokas (and Framasoft)

AI isn’t magic ✨. Neither is Lokas 🤷.

Lokas is just a tool. It can assist you in taking notes. However, like any tool, it shouldn’t exempt you from using your brain !

Writing (another highly sophisticated technology) was invented at least 3,000 years ago. So humanity has been able to get together and keep written records for at least that long. Without AI. Without smartphones. Don’t throw away several millennia of technology with the water of AI. A tool like Lokas could be useful in some cases, and completely gimmicky, even unproductive, in others. This is reminiscent of the concept of Pharmakon, a concept dear to the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler : Lokas, like any technical object, is simultaneously poison, remedy and scapegoat.

The web, for example, is both a technological device enabling participation, and an industrial system dispossessing Internet users of their data in order to subject them to omnipresent marketing that is individually traced and targeted by user profiling technologies.

In the same way, Lokas can be emancipating (by facilitating participation rather than note-taking), or on the contrary restrictive (meetings in a noisy bar can be interesting, but we shouldn’t do without them because the tool works better in a quiet environment), or frustrating (« The application has crashed, I don’t have any backup notes ! Technology is shite ! »)

Lokas, like a car, a hammer or a pen, is not a ‘neutral’ tool. It’s up to you, collectively, to decide whether and how you want to use it.

Inevitably, it won’t work as well – CC-By SA Gee

‘This is the story of an app…’

We thought it would be interesting to tell you how the Lokas app came about. It means lifting the curtain on what goes on behind the scenes at Framasoft, and understanding how we can decide to do (or not to do) such and such a project. It’s also about showing that sometimes, with a bit of luck and a bit of elbow keyboard, you can do things that might seem impossible. However, as this part is not essential, we’ll leave it up to you to decide whether or not you want to read it.

Click here to read the (improbable and fabulous) origin story of Lokas

The idea for Lokas has been in the head of pyg, a member of Framasoft, for three or four years now.

The original idea (code name : ‘ Brewawa ’) was mainly to come up with an application that would be able to calculate the speaking time of participants in a meeting. The (not at all hidden) aim was to easily demonstrate that during a discussion with people of different genders, it is overwhelmingly men who monopolise the conversation.

Various tests have been carried out in recent years (hi Gee, hi bnjbvr !) to study the feasibility of such an application. But the fact is that in 2020, even if the technical possibilities were there, they weren’t really available to our tiny association, especially on a project piling on all those that Framasoft was already carrying out.

‘It’s all about technical improvements…’.

However, with the evolution of softwares such as Vosk and Whisper, audio transcription capabilities (i.e. the ability to transform the sound of sentences into text) have considerably improved.

So much so that today, these technologies are used by a huge number of software applications (from YouTube and PeerTube to BigBlueButton and WhatsApp), and are often even integrated directly into devices (Samsung has clearly made this a selling point).

The last decade has also seen improvements in ‘diarization’ processes. This rather barbaric term is in fact the technique used to identify different⋅es speakers in a discussion. For example, if Alex, Camille and Fred are having a meeting, the diarization will know how to attribute to each their sentences (no, the software won’t guess the person’s first name, but it will know – more or less – identify that there were three participants, and say ‘This sentence was uttered by person #1. This sentence was said by person #2.’, etc.

This is obviously an essential phase in being able to understand ‘who said what’ in a meeting.

This process is still imperfect, but it is improving month by month. We therefore need to look ahead to 2026 or 2027 to imagine truly reliable diarization, but today it is ‘sufficient’ in 60 to 80 % of uses under ‘good conditions’.

‘It’s the story of an alignment of planets…’.

It just so happened that Framasoft had the skills needed to develop such an application.

Chocobozzz, developer of PeerTube, had already worked hard on the process of integrating Whisper into PeerTube, in order to be able to automatically generate subtitles for a video. So he’s very familiar with Whisper, its configuration options, its performance and so on.

Wicklow, developer of the PeerTube application, has been working for several months with the Dart language and Flutter SDK, which enables an application to be developed for different terminals (Android, iPhone, computer/tablet, web, etc.) in a single code base.

Luc, our favourite system administrator (it’s not complicated, mind you, we only have the one 😅 ) manages Framasoft’s entire technical infrastructure (around sixty physical computer servers). So setting up the machine that manages the transcriptions, installing it, securing it, etc, was child’s play for him.

pyg, former director of Framasoft, now the association’s digital services coordinator, has managed countless projects for Framasoft over the last 20 years. So one more, even in the middle of a campaign, wasn’t going to stop him.

With this range of skills, and the technical capabilities of the transcription and diarization software, the planets were aligned to launch such a project.

‘It’s all about luck…’

However, as is often the case, you also have to rely a little on chance or luck.

Indeed, pyg had somewhat dropped the idea of this application, simply out of ignorance of the technical advances in terms of diarisation.

It was while discussing the idea of this application at the last Framacamp, in July 2024, that Wicklow dropped a piece of information in the nick of time : ‘Ah, but you know, Whisper now does proper diarization.’

BIM 💣

‘Ah, very interesting ! But I imagine it would take a long time to develop such a free transcription application ?’ asked pyg.

‘Oh, I’d say in 3 days I can have a working prototype if Chocobozzz takes care of the server part.’

BANG 💥

So instead of enjoying his evening playing poker, pyg went off to his room and prepared a presentation of a dozen slides on a potential application project, which he presented to the association the following morning.

One of the slides produced overnight…

 

Some members were enthusiastic, others less so. And we can understand them : first, because it was adding yet more work to an already particularly busy and exhausted association. More, this project would use software derived from artificial intelligence, a technology about which we are (unanimously) very critical.

However, this application, which was to become Lokas, seemed to us to be a good way of ‘embodying’ the social purpose of Framasoft : to educate the public about the challenges of digital technology and the cultural commons.

This enabled us to move away from the pedagogical aspect, which is both essential and insufficient in terms of appropriation and self-determination. By creating a ‘manipulable digital object’, we could use Lokas as an additional opportunity to explain what AI is, its possibilities, but also its weaknesses. And so return to our ‘Pharmakon’ mentioned above.

What’s more, as well as being able to assist any collective holding meetings, this enabled us to put into practice, in concrete terms, an application bearing our values : a user-friendly tool, not exploiting users data, under an open licence, aimed above all at people who are changing the world for more social progress and social justice.

In the end, the majority of members present said : ‘Let’s go for it !’.

‘It’s (also) a story of limits’.

As mentioned above, the constraints were considerable.

A project inevitably costs time and money. Time and money that can’t be used elsewhere.

As you know, Framasoft lives off donations. So we have to run donation campaigns. And the end of the year was already particularly busy with the finalisation of various projects and their announcements.

In discussions with Thomas and Pouhiou, co-directors of the association, it was decided that Lokas should remain a project subject to strict limitations : it should cost less than €10,000 all-included ; it should not have a major impact on the missions of Chocobozzz, pyg or Wicklow ; and it should be completed (in ‘wasted time’) between mid-September and mid-November (in particular because of the validation deadlines for the Android and iOS stores, which we don’t control).

With such constraints, it was impossible for us to produce a well-finished product. So we’ve decided to focus instead on making a prototype available. Think of this prototype as a showroom house. We’ve produced this version not by focusing on a long-term project, with solid foundations, but rather as a ‘proof of concept’, developed rapidly, to see if the concept is sufficiently attractive and interesting for us to priorise the development of this application in 2025 (if donations are sufficient, that is !).

To give you enough ‘desire’ to see a version 1.0 of Lokas arrive one day, we called on the skills of Atelier Domino to create a logotype and a graphic charter. This led us to create the project website in-house  : lokas.app

At the same time, Wicklow and Chocobozzz set about developing the prototype and the transcription server.

‘It’s a story just waiting to be written…’.

A fortnight’s work later (and an estimated cost of €7,500 all-in, with roughly half the time spent by Framasoft and half on services : Domino workshop, server hire, domain names, validation of Google & Apple app stores), we can proudly and somewhat anxiously present our prototype !

Support Lokas (and Framasoft)

How does Lokas work ?

1. Get in the right conditions

Lokas, like all transcription tools, is imperfect. Outside noise, poor articulation, a faint voice in the background, people cutting each other off… These are just some of the reasons why transcription can be difficult.

As a result, plan to be in a quiet room, place the telephone in the centre of the table (the better the sound quality, the better the transcription), don’t hold several discussions at the same time, and… take ‘old-fashioned’ notes (paper+pencil, computer+pad, etc.) in case of problems.

Once you’ve done that, it’s very simple.

AI isn’t magic : Lokas needs the right conditions – CC-By SA Gee

2. Start recording

Simply click on the ‘Record’ button. Position the phone so that it can best pick up the exchanges. And start your meeting.

Record your meetings with Lokas

To limit abuse, recordings are limited to 5 per day and per device.

Note that the language model managed by Lokas means that it can already be used in around fifty languages, including : Dutch, Spanish, Korean, Italian, German, Thai, Russian, Portuguese, Polish, Indonesian, Mandarin, Swedish, Czech, French, Japanese and, of course, English ! Other languages are supported, but recognition will be less effective.

At the end of the meeting, click ‘Finish’.

3. Send your file for transcription (and be patient)

You may wish to listen to your file again before clicking on ‘Send’.

Your file will then be sent to our server where it will be queued for transcription.

This stage can take from a few minutes to a few hours, depending on the number of files in the queue.

You can check manually whether your file has been transcribed, or wait quietly for the notification (the verification task is carried out every 15 minutes).

The screen showing that the audio file has been sent to the Framasoft servers.

Once the transcript has been received

Once you have received the transcript, you can display it in Lokas.

You can of course share it (with the application of your choice : email, Signal, WhatsApp, etc.) to correct it.

Display of the sharing menu (audio or text) in Lokas. The transcript in the background.

You can also see the speaking time statistics (NB : this feature is relatively experimental). If you wish, you can assign a first name (or pseudonym) to each participants to make it easier to read the notes. To obtain speaking times by gender, you can also allocate them manually, obviously ensuring that you have the consent of the people concerned to communicate this information. Note that this information is voluntarily manual, and does not leave your phone, and is therefore not transmitted to Framasoft nor anyone else.

Overview of speaking times, as well as names and genders of participants (none of this information is transmitted to Framasoft)

Confidentiality point : one of the special features of Lokas is that we respect your privacy : the audio file is recorded on your phone. At your request, it is sent to our servers, which will then transcribe it. Once the transcription is complete, a notification is sent to your phone ; when you open (in ‘My files’) the meeting in question, the transcription is then downloaded to your phone. Once this stage has been completed, and after a slight delay to ensure that everything has gone well technically, everything is deleted from our server : the audio file as well as the transcript. And if you give us names, pseudonyms or genres for statistical purposes, please note that we do not process this information in any way.

Support Lokas (and Framasoft)

What about AI ?

At Framasoft, we are not at all fans of AI. We think that this technology (or rather this set of technologies) poses more problems than it solves. In fact, we tried to summarise our position on AI on the Framamia website, which we present here on the Framablog (in French).

So, isn’t it contradictory to use AI in Framasoft applications such as Lokas or PeerTube ?

In our opinion, no. For several reasons.

Firstly, as we wrote on the Framamia website, not all artificial intelligence models are created equal. Whisper, the software used for transcription, is a ‘specialised’ AI, not a ‘generalist’ AI like ChatGPT, for example.

‘Specialised models are optimised to solve a specific task efficiently. Their impact is often controlled, and may correspond to that of other software’.

Framasoft, on the Framamia.org website

Whisper is certainly an AI, but it runs ‘in isolation’ on our servers.

The algorithms used are more complex than a ‘Remove the red eyes from this photo’ filter with GIMP or Photoshop, but it remains a relatively simple model (with an input/output process) that uses infinitely less energy than a training model. In fact, inference (the process of using the model to perform a task) consumes much less energy than training. For example, running Whisper to transcribe an audio file lasting a few minutes requires relatively modest computing power.

Secondly, a project like Lokas does not require the purchase of 350,000 GPU chips for $9 billion, as Meta/Facebook recently did, which is roughly equivalent to Togo’s GDP in 2023. We don’t think we’ll be taking part in the growth of the AI financial bubble, or in the runaway growth of algorithmic capitalism.

Finally (and most importantly), with Lokas or PeerTube, we remain consistent with one of the values at the heart of Framasoft, namely respect for the confidentiality of your data. Indeed, we do not make any use of your files, apart from the task explicitly requested, for example transcription. They are not used to enrich an AI model based on your discussions, your identity, etc. We don’t keep audio or text files, we don’t have access to the names/first names/genders that you manually assign to participants⋅es in a discussion (that stays on your phone), etc. And, of course, your data is NEVER monetised.

In short, Framasoft doesn’t care about the content of your data, it belongs to you and is nobody’s business but yours.

Despite this, we respect the point of view of people who wish to boycott AI, and we understand the contradiction they might find in a technocritical association like Framasoft proposing projects using AI.

Our aim is to offer a tool that will enable people to think about the issues in a concrete way, so that they can form their own opinions and come to their own conclusions.

A mechanical parrot takes notes : quite a symbolic Illustration by David Revoy – Licence : CC-By 4.0

When is Lokas coming ?

You can Download the Lokas app on the Play Store, iOS (still in TestFlight on iOS, because they are 🤬… let’s say picky EDIT : it’s now available), (and soon on f-droid), or get the android apk directly from us here. But keep in mind it is a prototype (if you haven’t already, take two minutes to read ‘The Lokas Story ’ and understand why), so it’s normal that lots and lots of things don’t work !

We’ve already taken time, energy and a bit of money out of limited resources (did anyone ever tell you that we only live off your donations ? ;-) ). And, obviously, this POC is open source, the code is publish here on our forge.

So before going any further, we need to confirm that you are interested in this project. If the donations aren’t big enough, or if the contradictions are too strong : we’ll stop there (the code is free, so it won’t be ‘lost’).

If, on the other hand, you find it relevant, there are countless possibilities for future developments. For example :

• Complete redesign and accessibility (in prototyping mode, we went very fast, and Lokas is therefore very perfectible) ;

• Ability to (re)transcribe the file of your choice (from Lokas, a video or another application, for example) ;

• Add a ‘web’ mode to the application. This means you can use Lokas from your computer (similar to the Scribe server used by our friends at the Céméa) ;

• Add the possibility of automatic summaries of the transcripts, to quickly find the key points ;

• Translate the application (and the website) into languages other than French and English ;

• Ability to edit and correct the transcript directly from your phone ;

• Provide the option of obtaining the transcript in the language of your choice (e.g. a meeting in English transcribed into French, or vice versa) ;
• etc

But to do this, we’re going to need some staff time, and therefore money. So, at the risk of sounding insistent, we invite you, if you can, to make a donation.

Make a donation to support Lokas

The challenge : 20,000 times €20 donations for Framasoft’s 20th anniversary !

Framasoft is funded by your donations ! Every €20 you donate will be a new balloon to celebrate 20 years of adventures and help us continue and take off for a^21st year.

Framasoft is a model of solidarity :

• 8,000 donors in 2023 ;
• over 2 million beneficiaries every month ;
• your donation (66 % tax deductible) can benefit 249 other people.

To date, we have raised €58,625 of our campaign target. We still have 29 days to convince our friends and raise enough money to get Framasoft off the ground.

So, challenge accepted ?

Get Lokas Support Framasoft

As a reminder, the participants in the European ECHO Network exchange belong to 7 different organisations in 5 European countries : Ceméa France, Ceméa Federzione Italia, Ceméa Belgique, Willi Eichler Academy (Germany), Solidar Foundation (European network), Centar Za Mirovne Studije (Croatia), Framasoft (France).

Report on the week in Zagreb.

Click here to read the article in French.

Travel,travel

As with every ECHO trip, the first day was reserved for travels and reunions. Four of us from Frama made the trip : Booteille, Numahell, Pascal and Yann. And while the last three shared a cabin on the plane (almost avoiding having to deal with hold luggage), Booteille chose to take the bus, for more than 18 hours, with no changes but with stopovers including Toulon, Nice, Genoa, Venice, Trieste, Lubjana and finally Zagreb. It was an opportunity for him to see our Italian companions in Venice get on the bus.

In the evening we tried to meet up with our CEMÉA comrades, using the name of a restaurant as our destination, which turned out to be one of a chain with many branches in the city. This gave us the opportunity to look around the town, which was decorated for Christmas. The atmosphere was rather quiet, although a festive (winter) breeze blew through the streets.

We ended up meeting up with the CEMÉA team in a bar opposite the famous restaurant. It was a good opportunity to have a few drinks while waiting for dinner. Many of the European partners came to the restaurant, giving us a great opportunity to catch up with people we’ve met before and to meet people we haven’t.

This first evening (which would be followed by many others) was the occasion to notice something rather surprising : THEY SMOKE IN THE BARS ! It’s horrible. And while it was very cool to spend time with the other members of the project every evening, every night it was the same thing : smoking in the bars. Apart from the fact that you can’t breathe indoors, the smell of cigarettes on our clothes (and in the dreads of those with the best hair…) lingered in the hotel room.

Yes we let the sentence in French because OSS 117 cannot…does not want to speak English,obviously !

The Center for Peace Studies

The next day began at the Human Rights House in Zagreb, in the same building as the Centre for Peace Studies. There was a brief introduction to the seminar and a presentation of the three structures sharing the premises.

First, we had a few words from several people as a whole group, then we split into three small groups, where each entity presented its actions to us and to whom we could ask our questions. After a few minutes, each group rotated to meet a new entity. In the end, we got to know :
– the Dosta & Jemrznje platform, which helps manage online discrimination and hate speech ;
– the Documenta organisation, which aims to create links and documentation around war, as well as educating people about anti-war issues ;
– CROSOL, an international cooperation platform for development and humanitarian aid.

The Centre for Peace Studies (CPS in English, CMS in Croatian) is the result of years of development. It was originally a participatory work camp project in the 90s, with the aim of building links between people in the Balkan countries through action.

The culture of the CPS revolves around anti-war, anti-fascist and inclusive movements. Today, through a wide range of actions, CPS seeks to promote this culture in their territory. There is also a strong focus on the right to asylum and its protection. And that’s just part of the work carried out by this small team. You can find more information here : https://www.cms.hr/en/o-cms-u-tko-je-tko/cms

After a very pleasant meal on site, we took public transport back to the city centre. It’s great to be able to get around the city quickly and efficiently thanks to the dense network of trams, with timetables so full that you never have to worry about them – they’re never far away !

Fascists ! Fascists everywhere !

We met up with a historian who spent the afternoon taking us on a tour of different parts of the city, looking at places that are emblematic of fascism and the resistance. Croatian history is not very well known in our part of the world, and our guide gave us a lot of information about the country and its relationship with fascism and history, particularly during and around the Second World War.

It was very interesting to visit the places, often not very far away, where the government and its opponents were located during the war. We joked about the fact that it seemed that every building in the centre had at one time or another housed its own personal contingent of fascists. A map has been created to pool and record the information.

Unfortunately, the weather was not on our side, and with the cold and rain, we ended up in a warm bar, where our guide continued to tell us the story over a drink.

Si vis pacem para pacem

On the second day of the seminar, we returned to the Human Rights House. Various organisations presented their work on access to education. Once again, it was very intense in terms of information.

The CPS introduced us to the concept of negative peace (absence of violence, fear of violence) and positive peace (building a peaceful society). We also learned that in formal education (#school), civic education in Croatia is now mandatory. This is based on the understanding that peace education cannot be an individual subject and that it needs to be linked to human rights and other societal issues.

The CPS shared with us some principles of peace education :

– encourage participants to explore the subjects of war and peace through different disciplines ;
– focus not on experts in diplomacy but on citizens and civil society, particularly in their role in building a fairer world ;
– Peace Studies is value-based and therefore requires academic objectives that recognise the ethical approach to peace and social justice ;
– there is a need to be transformative, society needs alternatives to the status quo : peace is the result of radical transformations of values, social arrangements and international relations. From a positive peace perspective, the aim is therefore to prevent wars, to move towards social justice and respect for human rights, and to combat oppression and structural violence.

Migration flows and AI

After the CPS presentation, we were introduced to the work of a programme focusing on migration.

This work focuses in particular on the creation of links with refugees in Croatia, seeking to open up discussions on the causes of migration, its place in Croatian society and empowerment.

Readings, films and music were shared with us, with the aim of deconstructing our preconceptions and developing critical thinking.

We then met Ana Cuca on video. Ana is a researcher who, as we understand it, works in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina. She told us about the impact of pseudo-IAs on migratory flows. It was a very interesting meeting. She talked about how Europe is trying to anticipate and prevent migratory flows by making massive use of pseudo-IAs at its borders.

In the category of false good ideas, there is the fact that pseudo-IA algorithms are used for asylum application forms. Except that certain accents and dialects are not recognised by the algorithm. So people find themselves unable to make their application, all because the algorithm was designed that way.

Ana also told us about uses of the pseudo-IA that she sees as positive. In particular, through a project to analyse migratory flows to try to anticipate where there might be a need for humanitarian aid of food or medicine.

We invite you to read her presentation, which we found very interesting.

Coders Without Borders

Finally, Coders Without Borders brought the presentations to a close with their projects.

With the help of volunteers, they train refugees in various digital techniques to help them find employment.

At the end of their presentation, we raised the following question : « Have you ever thought about and/or started migrating to tools other than Google when working with refugees ? I understand the idea of acculturating with tools that everyone uses and that the aim is to reduce the divide between refugees and the society into which they are trying to integrate, but I find it dangerous, in a fascist political context, to put Google in the hands of people for whom it could sooner or later harm their lives. If a fascist government came to power, it would be very easy to find and target refugees and do them harm. »

We then discussed this question and the issues involved. We concluded that we needed to work on a diagnostic grid that would enable organisations to ask themselves certain questions and come up with some answers about their digital practices.

At the end of the day, we went to the Human Rights Film Festival to see The Old Oak. In this film, we follow a bar owner who helps a family of refugees who have just arrived in town, despite the racist rhetoric of his most loyal customers : the pub regulars.

Difficulties paying in Zagreb’s restaurants

During our ECHO Network meetings, we don’t just work : we also eat. This led to a little anecdote that we’ll share here.

That same evening, in a restaurant after the film, it was extremely difficult for us to pay ‘normally’. The waiters would only let us into the restaurant if we didn’t pay separately ! This is a cultural thing in Zagreb : you don’t pay separately, even if there are invoices to pay. And when we wanted to pay ‘by organisation’, the waiters refused again.

In the end, we had to find a compromise by paying by country, on condition that we were seated at our tables according to our country ! The scene struck us as particularly surreal.

A little peace (in the world and for our stay)

We changed location for the last day. We found ourselves in the Community Centre, in a room with a few small pouffes. It was great to spend the morning lying on the floor !

There we met Paul, a sociologist and anti-racist activist. He sees himself as a historical artifact and is an outstanding storyteller. He told us how Zagreb was at the cutting edge of digital communications in the 1990s.

He also told us about the ZaMir network (a network for peace communications), which was used by pro-peace activists all over the world.

Listening to Paul was really good for us, thanks to his talents as a speaker. After two days of information-packed presentations – but exciting ones ! – Paul’s presentation was relaxing to listen to. It made you feel less like you were at school and had to concentrate to make sure you didn’t miss any of the information in the course.

Activism and cyber-surveillance

After Paul, we met up with Tomislak Medak, who told us about his work on the Memory of the World online bookshop, as well as the Syllabus project. This is a research project on activism in Europe that takes into account ‘care’ and piracy. Yann’s eyes sparkled as he drank in Tomislak’s words.

We ate in small groups between lunchtime and midday, and then met up again for the final afternoon, hosted by CÉMÉA France for a workshop on cyber-surveillance.

Individually, we had to respond to the following instruction : ‘Based on your knowledge and experience, illustrate cyber-surveillance by drawing or writing’. We then got into small groups and discussed our respective drawings, before illustrating our common definition. We then repeated the exercise in larger groups. Finally, we had to share our ideas in plenary.

In all this, the idea of the panopticon came up several times. We also discussed surveillance capitalism, political and police control, and the fact that surveillance could help regulate online hate speech. We also talked about moderation on the internet and the inequalities between individuals in their knowledge of their rights in the digital space.

The session concluded with a discussion on alternatives to cyber-surveillance. As well as the obvious idea of burning capitalism – we won’t drop any names – technical tools were mentioned, as well the issues of regulation, degrowth (disengaging from digital technology) and education.

Back home, via the museum of broken relationships

It was on this last activity that we ended the seminar, thanking our hosts and sharing our feedback. We found the subjects and the structures we encountered absolutely fascinating, but the form made the whole thing difficult to digest. Bouteille in particular found that there was a huge amount of information, in a very vertical format to which he is no longer accustomed, which made the meeting intense and tiring for him.

We finally said our goodbyes that night, after closing down a bar that our Croatian hosts had enjoyed.

While the others headed home the next day, Booteille had to wait for his 6pm bus and ended up visiting the Museum of Broken Relationships with Gabriela and Alexandra from Solidar.

The museum is full of objects linked to broken relationships and the little stories that go with them. This little exhibition takes you through a lot of emotions.

At the beginning, you read some things a bit light-heartedly, laughing, then you read this story linked to the war, or this one linked to bad luck, you laugh at this broken relationship with this pizza lover who unfortunately is now allergic to gluten. Then you open the (huge) guestbook, and frankly, you laugh out loud at the violence of some of the messages. The guestbook has obviously served as an outlet for a lot of people !

Translation from the French version made with DeepL

As a reminder, the participants in the European ECHO Network exchange belong to 7 different organisations in 5 European countries : Ceméa France, Ceméa Federzione Italia, Ceméa Belgique, Willi Eichler Academy (Germany), Solidar Foundation (European network), Centar Za Mirovne Studije (Croatia), Framasoft (France).

Report on the week in Rome.

Click here to read the article in French.

This is the third study visit as part of the ECHO Network program, this visit takes us to Rome, the museum city. Well, us : only Numahell, since COVID decided otherwise for the other three who had planned to come…

After a short trip by bus then train from Lyon, I arrive in the afternoon at Termini station in Rome. With the members of CEMÉA France, we join two members of Solidar to eat together. Questions about popular education cross our minds from the first evening during the meal : what is the difference between popular education and active education ? And active education, what happens if you have no curiosity ? In short, very rich discussions.

Termini Station (CAPTAIN RAJU – CC BY-SA – Wikimedia)

The first two days take place in the « Casa del municipio » in Rome. These municipal houses allow the city’s associations to meet there, do activities, and book rooms for free. A bit like some community centers in France, or the community centers in big cities (except that in most big cities it’s paid, for example in Toulouse it’s €60 a year).

We start with icebreaker exercises to get to know each other : spelling each person’s first name by miming the vowels of their first name, communicating to position ourselves in alphabetical order, and finally classifying ourselves according to where we come from, from the furthest to the closest. Led by Christina from CEMEA Mezzo Giorno, these icebreakers will be our ritual at the start of the day.

Day 1 : distance training, screening on ECHO Network, squat visit

Distance learning, face-to-face training : feedback and start of strategies

The first morning is dedicated to feedback from three organizations on distance learning. If you remember, about 3-4 years ago there was a lockdown or two… forcing us to change our training practices.

The Acque Correnti (translation : « the water currents ») must train volunteers for the Italian equivalent of civic service, about 15,000 people per year. The Italian state sets strict rules on civic service training, there are three components.

Suddenly, Covid and bam : the question of distance learning arises. Massimiliano tells how they used Zoom’s breakout room features (we know the free alternative BigBlueButton which also offers this feature).

Founded in 1951 by educators and teachers, the Movimiento di cooperazione Educativo advocates active pedagogy methods. It is part of the FIMEM, an international organization around Freinet pedagogy, created in the 1950s.
Made up of territorial groups, they provide training activities each year, and also lead a research group at the national level, on the disciplines they deal with.
For children, this ranges from kindergarten to secondary school. The training is mainly provided remotely, and this before COVID.
Donatella presents the experience accumulated, and in particular the site senzascuola.wordpress.com.

The CEMEA Federazione Italiana as its name suggests federates the CEMEA of Italy. The training provided by the federation consists of ten courses per year, approximately nine days per course. At the beginning, many trainers refused to teach remotely : it is important to recognize the limits of distance learning. Luciano explains that we must « curbare la technologia » (bend, twist the technology) to our practices, and not the other way around. The question is how to use our active teaching methods remotely. He returns to eleven issues of distance learning, some of which are similar online or on site, such as time and space management, or alternating types of learning.

The question/answer time allowed us to identify some interesting points. One of our hosts, Claudio, says that we should fear dehumanization more than the technologies themselves. In addition, virtual projections restrict our use of body language, by seeing the body through the 2D space of screens. It is therefore important to re-appropriate bodies and spaces in 3D, for example by taking breaks away from our computers.
Accessibility issues also contribute to the marginalization of some participants, particularly the issue of the language barrier.

We agree that we should not abandon online training to private markets : these organizations do not necessarily do active pedagogy and have a more lucrative than emancipatory goal. Unfortunately, these are the organizations that institutions finance, « ed tech » (education technologies), rather than popular education collectives, which have a more ethical aim.

ESS, digital education in Italy

In the afternoon, we collectively reflect on the continuation of the ECHO Network project, answering the following questions : what each of our structures does, what interests us all and finally the future prospects of the project.

We then split into small groups for a more informal discussion. In my group, we compared practices between Italy, France and Belgium on the ESS (Social and Solidarity Economy) and then on the place of digital teaching in schools.

Christina from CEMEA Mezzo Giorno explains the situation in Italy, where recent reforms have reconfigured the landscape of the ESS (Social and Solidarity Economy).
In Italy, three organizational statuses are included in the ESS :

• Odivu which is a type of volunteer organization
• APIES : associations with social aims, non-profit and with less than 50 % employees
• the « impresa sociale », a new type of company with social components, currently being tested

The boundaries are blurred between these types of organization. The current debate in Italy concerns the public/private boundary and the control of ethics : the third category brings a relaxation of the rules to determine whether an organization falls under the social economy or not. A bit like we can see in France with CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), there is a significant risk of social-washing.

We learn that in Italy, school principals have much more power than in France and that there is a compartmentalization between schools and associations, including at the teacher level. This prevents associations from intervening in schools and bringing active methods and themes such as awareness of digital issues.
In Belgium, it is paradoxically in « free » (private) schools that there are more and more experiments in active pedagogy. There is therefore something to dig into the socio-structural context of each country on these subjects.

Then, on the subject of digital technology, I spoke for the French case of the Scratch programming language which is used in technology in middle school and of Digital and Technical Sciences in the second year. I could also have spoken about the PIX platform, which is used for the validation of acquired skills.

On the subject of equipment, I explain that in France it often quickly becomes obsolete and is poorly maintained. It depends on the town halls, departments or regions depending on the nature of the establishment.

In Italy, the State invests a lot with EU money, IWBs (Interactive Digital Boards) equip almost every class, but teachers are not trained and do not know a tenth of the possibilities.

According to recent research, about 75 % of teachers use frontal teaching methods in Italy : I wonder how many in France.

Finally, we talk a little about the question of using games or video games in class, and I take the opportunity to mention to my friends the Minetest project (a free equivalent to Minecraft).

An entire building under self-management, a common in the city

In the late afternoon, we visit an emblematic occupation site in Rome, Spin Time Labs, which welcomes refugees, homeless people, and students striking against rising rents. The building has an auditorium, a concert hall, and a radio studio. Many cultural and craft activities take place there, and we discover in particular a paper newspaper published by a collective composed exclusively of young people under 25, Scomodo.

This place is managed by its residents and contributors, there is no rent but people who benefit from the place can offer their time in exchange, make financial donations or offer their help on renovation projects.

About 150 families are housed in this occupied building, where even the Rome City Hall, which is not very left-leaning, tolerates this squat for the services provided there, and even the social workers of the city hall refer people to this place to find help and resources.

After this visit, we met up to chat on a lively street in the Pigneto district, where local residents are particularly involved in the life of the neighborhood.

Day 2 : AI, workshops

The next day, September 27, Claudio receives us to introduce us to the CSV (Centro di servicio volontario) Lazzio. The place is a bit like his home, we’re in our element.

Christina leads a game to stretch : everyone chooses a gesture that corresponds to them and has designated it throughout the game, which forced us to have visual attention during this moment. This type of popular education exercise aims to improve group cohesion, and it works !

Presentation on AI

Then we attend the presentation by Marika Mashitti, a doctoral student at the University of Roma tre in the Department of Educational Sciences.

She begins with definitions (what AI is, the different types of systems) and recalls that AI is above all a scientific discipline. Then she goes on to give a brief history, which shows the speed of the latest advances, especially since the start of the pandemic, as if it had become urgent to develop this field.

For her, it is a question of power. Indeed, who is involved in AI research ? Personalities like Elon Musk and web giants such as Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, etc.

She gives some examples of biases due to AI : discrimination in facial recognition (only 52 % success in recognizing faces of black women), targeted advertising for job opportunities, profiling.

The word “Algocracy” (“power through algorithms”, coined by Danaher, 2018), is dropped. She insists on the fact that technology is never neutral. She addresses the point of singularity, taking up the proposal of Frederico Cabitza, Professor at the University of Milan. He defines singularity as the moment when humans choose to leave almost complete control to the machine rather than its classic definition, namely the moment when the latter becomes indistinguishable from a human.

The members of the assembly appreciated her presentation, both its content and the energy that drives it and asked many questions.

Workshop on digital issues

We start the afternoon with a game that I proposed, and that I had already tried at the Climate Camp 2022. It involves positioning yourself on two axes for a given question : one axis according to your level of confidence and the other your level of comfort, by splitting into three groups. Christina, Morgane and Claudio prepared a list of 4 issues :

• online training
• AI
• political regulations on digital technology
• the power to act

Interesting discussions took place, with each person having to explain their choice of position. This exercise allowed people who had spoken little to express themselves, the small groups making it easier to listen. I learn that two people in the group regularly use generative AI for their daily work in communication, and that this morning’s conference made them aware of the issues.

Then we resume the discussions, either around the work done the day before, or on the writings started in the morning, to summarize them on an A2 sheet : my group represented all this in a word cloud.

Day 3 : workshops, “Zazie Nel Metro”, retrospective of the week

Improv digital workshops

On Thursday, we meet in the same place for two workshops on digital technology, imagined the day before following the reorganization of part of the program, due to the absence of one of our covid comrades.
We ran these two workshops in parallel twice, so that each group could benefit from them.

• mobile workshop : settings to improve your privacy, and some interesting free applications. Led by Domenico and myself.
• desktop / internet workshop : free software and applications to organize yourself, including Zourit. Led by Lucas from CEMÉA Belgium and Olivier from CEMÉA France

I was surprised because there were only a few of us who knew these tools and tips. The participants really enjoyed discovering them. I find this workshop format practical for getting started and avoiding Prévert-style lists, which sometimes drown the audience.

Visit to “Zazie Nel Metro”

Zazie Nel Metro is an associative bar and its associated bookstore, managed by a collective of very nice people, who organize various artistic and civic events. They organized 3 days later a festival called “Zazie la bona vita”, combining militant / political discussions and concerts.

Our host presents us with a selection of books by anarchist or left-wing authors, including « Cimento, arme di construzionna di massa » by Anselm Japp, or a book by Ivan Illich that we appreciate at Framasoft. This strangely echoes too many useless, imposed and ecocidal construction projects…

I will go back if I ever come back to Rome (e perchè no :))

Looking back on the 3 days

We meet in the afternoon at the CEMEA Mezzo Giorno premises (which means « Midday » but also « center of Italy »).

Morgane leads the next moment by asking everyone to write down on post-its three things from our stay, which we classify on three illustrated posters :

• what to keep (in a fridge)
• what I’m going to think about in the coming weeks (🧠)
• what to throw away (a very well-drawn trash can)

School Party Invitation

To end this last day, some of us attend the school party in which our hosts from CEMEA Mezzo Giorno, Christina and Domenico intervene. This school is located in a socially mixed working-class neighborhood ; it is interesting because CEMEA Mezzo Giorno have initiated a multitude of projects for over ten years (joint activities, music workshops, etc.) with the aim of ensuring that the migrant population is better accepted : and it works.

I admit that I have a little moment of nostalgia, as this school party atmosphere reminds me of the one my children went to <3. And it is time to say goodbye, I will visit Rome the next day and continue my journey back to France quietly by train, having the privilege of having time in front of me this time.

Still more features on Framaspace ? Yes ! At the moment, we’re spoiling the users of this service, with the integration of quite a few features like the Forms and Tables applications, but also the ‘Intros’ app developed by Val, our summer intern. And because it’s Val, it’s festival (shameful rhyme !) : just before leaving us for a well-deserved holiday and a final year of studies, he delivered a new ‘Ownership Transfer’ application that will make life easier for administrators of Framaspace spaces.

Hi Val, we’re not going to ask you to introduce yourself, as you already did in the previous interview. We’ll just remind you that you’re doing an internship at Framasoft from the beginning of May to the end of August 2024, with the aim of developing tools to support Framaspace, and therefore Nextcloud free software.

Hi ! Check out my previous interview to find out more about me ! I introduce Intros, a Nextcloud app to help users get to grips with Framaspace.

At the end of the interview, I mentioned I was working on another Nextcloud app, OwnershipTransfer. Back then things were only getting started, but I cooked, and now it’s ready.

OK, so let’s talk about the OwnershipTransfer App. What’s it for ? Who is the target audience ?

As mentioned in the previous article, OwnershipTransfer makes it possible to transfer data from one user to another in Nextcloud. For example, when someone leaves an association that uses Nextcloud (say, on Framaspace 😏), it can be useful to move their files to another user before deleting their account. You could avoid losing important archives, invoices… The same goes for calendars or address books.

Well worry no more, OwnershipTransfer (or « OT » from now on in this article) does all that. It allows Nextcloud admins to transfer data from whoever to whoever. Initially mostly designed for files, I extended it to calendars and contacts transfer.

OT allows a transfer of all the data, but also a more fine-grained choice. One can choose the calendar, address book or folder they want to transfer, so they don’t end up with someone’s holidays pictures in their files.

But… didn’t this feature already exist in Nextcloud ?

It did, but not the way we wanted it to.

Nextcloud already allows transferring your own files to another user, with a small graphical interface in the user settings section. You can only transfer your own files to another user, but not choose a source user : this isn’t suitable for an instance admin who would want to move files from one user to another.

An instance admin can also transfer files or calendars from one user to another, with an OCC command. OCC is Nexctloud’s CLI, via which admins can handle some server settings. You can only use it from the command line in a terminal, which to most human beings is… cryptical.

In short there are existing working solutions, but not with a simple graphical interface for admins. This is especially an issue in « Nextcloud farms » (an organization hosting Nextcloud instances for a lot of clients at once) like Framaspace, because admins don’t have access to the CLI in this case.

Technically, how does it work ?

Since it’s integrated with other Nextcloud apps, OT is heavily relying on existing Nextcloud APIs. The app also uses adapted parts of Nextcloud’s code. For example, I use the code from the existing files transfer feature, which I modified to fit with our requirements. The same goes for the calendar transfer.

However, I add to implement the contacts transfer, since it is not available in Nextcloud (not even through a cryptic CLI). It looks a lot like the calendar transfer, since both of them are based on the WebDAV protocol, so I had an example to work with.

The interface is built with Nextcloud’s Vue components, of course. They are pretty pleasant to use, and new ones are often released. It allowed me to build a complete graphical interface in no time, while staying consistent with the rest of Nextcloud’s UI.

Have you encountered any technical or organisational problems ?

Since Nextcloud’s documentation hasn’t miraculously grown since last time, I had to wander around in Nextcloud’s source code to find the functions needed. I could almost make a hobby out of that. Almost.

At least the features exist in Nextcloud already, so adapting them wasn’t the most difficult thing ever. I could also rely on tcit’s advice, co-director of Framasoft and Nextcloud contributor. In short : I write code, he looks at it, says « cool thing, but not scalable », and I correct it.

Scalability was the most common problem. It always works on my small test environment with 5 accounts and 7 folders, but it should also (and most importantly) work on big Nextcloud instances with lots of files. For example, the files transfer can take a lot of time and resources : it has to move all the files from the source to the destination folder, which takes more or less time depending on the amount of files to move and the underlying storage type. Because of that, it is handled in the background : instead of launching it upon receiving the request, it is placed in a jobs queue that the server periodically handles.

Calendar and contacts transfers do not have this issue : they only consist of a simple SQL query to change the right property on the right element. This operation is fast, so it can be handled in the foreground.

Besides the actual transfer, building the interface was also challenging. The app allows the admin to choose which element will be transferred, so they need an interface to choose it. For calendars and contacts, it’s fairly simple : with Nextcloud’s components, I could easily build a list of calendars or address books. But for files, things are getting complicated : we need a whole tree-style view to show the subfolders’ content.

Luckily, I’ve got back up. Romain, former fellow INSA Lyon student (in Telecom, just like me !) and former Framasoft intern, worked on Sorts a few years ago. The goal was to make an app to enhance Nextcloud’s file search, mostly with filters. And Sorts has something I was really interested in : a tree-style files view. Exactly what I needed.

After a few tweaks here and there in Sorts’ code, which wasn’t necessarily easy, its tree-style view perfectly integrated with OwnershipTransfer. It helped a lot and saved a lot of dev time, and I could even improve it a bit with some lines to better view the current folder and some sharing icons.

Now that your internship is coming to an end, and you’ve been « eating » some Nextcloud for the past 6 months, what are your potential takes on this software ?

It’s rant time !

Anyways, besides the rant and all the things I could blame on Nextcloud (like its lightweight documentation, its occasional slowness or its imperfect UI), its a very functional software, and it’s all that matters for pretty much everyone. It could be better (and it’s already happening !), but I find it to be working just fine for most typical usages. I’ve been using it for 2 years on a Raspberry PI to backup my files and photos, and I’ve never had any major issues with it.

However, its collaborative features can definitely get better (things like multiple people writing on the same text or calc document at the same time), especially since they are very popular among the people who use Nextcloud. These features exist, but they are typically hard to use, especially the first time, and poorly optimized. So when I see Nextcloud bragging about how they now have AI integrated (which I think most people don’t find that useful anyway), while opening a shared file sometimes still causes a mess… I think they could focus on more important things. But I guess you do need something to make it look shiny.

We’ve been very very pleased and satisfied to work with you over the last few months ! Any final words ?

I was delighted to work at Framasoft ! I’ve learned a lot through this internship, and I want to thank the association again for its welcoming and comfortable working conditions.

Right now it’s time to relax, for me at least (before going to « class » again, but don’t mention it), and then to go back to work on my final internship at the beginning of next year ! I’m just saying, of course ;)

Main links for Ownership Transfer :

• Link to Ownership Transfer in the Nextcloud application shop : https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/ownershiptransfer
• Link to the Ownership Transfer code on the Framagit forge : https://framagit.org/framasoft/nextcloud/ownershiptransfer

The Framaspace project currently hosts a cloud environment (files, calendars, contacts, wiki, kanban, etc.) for more than 1,200 associations and groups. That’s as many instances of the Nextcloud free software. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to get to grips with Nextcloud, despite the documentation, forums and so on. So Framasoft decided to get an intern, Val, to work on the subject of supporting people using Nextcloud for the first time. Here’s his story.

Hi Val, can you introduce yourself ?

Hi ! I’m Val, and I’m 22. I was raised in Paris’ suburbs, and I have been studying at INSA Lyon, an engineering school in Villeurbanne for 4 years now. I am parisian, lyonnais, suburbanite, or even Swedish, depending on the mood.
If everything goes as expected, I’ll graduate next year as an Telecommunication Engineer.

I like singing and playing music, climbing plastic walls, solving Rubik’s cubes and playing video games, when I’m not busy tweaking some lines of code. Over the last few years, I have also been active in multiple associations, including some at INSA or the Red Cross.

Photo of Val, Framasoft intern between May and August 2024

You chose Framasoft for your internship. Why ?

I had to search for an internship while being in Sweden, and it wasn’t really easy. Searching from another country didn’t help of course, and I also wanted an internship matching my personal values. Basically, being cheap labour to help big business get richer isn’t really my thing.

The year before, I participated in organising an event with the Exit Lyon association, at which a Framasoft employee gave a conference on queer emancipation through digital technology. Being engaged in associations, I already knew Framasoft from their web services, as many do. I still had her email, so I sent an application, and there I am !

It was kind of an ideal case : an internship in a non-profit, breaking with capitalism, and contributing to build more social justice in our society.

Val choosing his internship at Framasoft — Allegory

Let’s talk about your internship. What was the general objective ?

Framasoft’s collaborative cloud platform for associations and activist groups, Framaspace, has been active for 2 years now, and is based on Nextcloud. Even though it is a good solution, this open source software is far from perfect, and in particular is more difficult to use than other existing solutions (closed-source and maintained by GAFAMs, such as Google Drive or Microsoft 365).

My internship tries to solve part of this problem : how to make sure that first time someone logs into Nextcloud they don’t run away. My aim is to make the first use of Nextcloud easier, by supporting users and helping them using the software. It would encourage people to stay on a free solution that respects their privacy, and not run towards GAFAM solutions, considered easier to use.

Luckily, Nextcloud allows the community to create apps that integrate with the software to enhance it. Hence my first contribution to this mission is a Nextcloud app, « Intros ».

OK, so let’s talk about the Intros App. What’s it for ? Who is the target audience ?

Intros answers an user’s most simple question when meeting Nextcloud : « Where is the button to [insert a random action] ? ».

To answer it, Intros highlight elements, buttons or even parts of Nextcloud’s interface to explain what they do. For example, the app will highlight the small sharing icon and display a text explaining how to share a file to someone else. This applies to several Nextcloud apps, including files, contacts or calendar.

Video demonstration of how the ‘Intros’ app works

Technically, how does it work ?

The app uses the intro.js library, which helps creating step-by-step tutorials that highlight a web page’s elements. The library simply integrates to Nextcloud as any other javascript library would, and we can customise tutorials for the users.

That’s it ? No ! The library handles most of the visual aspects for us, but it had to be adapted to integrate to Nextcloud properly. For example, remembering when a tutorial has already been seen to not display it again, and making a menu to re-enable it if needed. Or even handling multiple languages, displaying buttons in Nextcloud’s style, highlighting elements nested in menus… Lots of small enhancements that allow a smooth integration of the library to Nextcloud.

Have you encountered any technical or organisational problems ?

Of course, otherwise where would the fun be ? As always when I’m coding something, sometimes it works and I think, « wow, I’m a genius », and sometimes (often) it doesn’t work and I think, « wow, I’m an intern ».

For example, during development I realised that the application sometimes had trouble finding some elements on the page. One of the problems with intro.js is that the library is designed to be deployed on a site that has been designed by the person who writes the tutorials. This person would have a good knowledge of the site’s structure, and would know which elements need to be selected for it to work every time… Except this person isn’t me. I’m integrating it into Nextcloud, which I obviously didn’t design, so I have to adapt to the structure of the existing pages. As if that wasn’t simple enough, the way the pages are built changes depending on the application (Files, Calendar, Contacts…) or even the version of Nextcloud. So I had to reverse-engineer the HTML DOM on a case-by-case basis, to find out which elements it was possible to select and avoid selecting elements that could change name, class or even completely disappear.

But even being careful, it sometimes didn’t work. The application couldn’t find certain elements, and displayed an explanation over empty space. Not ideal. In intro.js, by default, you give a list of elements to highlight and the explanations that go with them, and the library takes care of detecting them in the DOM when the page loads. This was the critical point in this case : when the page loads. The elements are all loaded at once, so they can’t change along the way. I had problems with this specifically in two cases :

• first, elements nested in menus. We sometimes want to highlight an element that isn’t visible on page load, and would be after a user click
• then, elements that aren’t loaded immediately on page load. Some Nextcloud apps take a bit more time to load their elements, so the library can’t detect them on load.

So what ? Well, press the keys on the keyboard, in the right order if possible, and after a while it makes code that solves the problem. Here, instead of detecting all the elements at once, I’ve made sure to detect them just before they’re needed. Each time the user presses ‘next’, the application detects the next element to be highlighted and replaces the default element with this element before launching the next step. This way, we don’t have to worry about page load times or the fact that the button is in a menu. All that’s left to do is simulate a user click with javascript for buttons in menus and tada ! It works.

Val « This is fine » Mème

Now that the app has been published, what’s next ?

What’s next ? It’s not really about me anymore ! I hope the app will be used by Nextcloud’s users, and it’s already in use in Framaspace.

We have also discussed with Nextcloud for a possible integration of the app to the software core (and not as a third-party app). That would make it easier to add new tutorial to the apps for developers, but Nextcloud had some remarks regarding this. One of them was that the app explains the interface, while they could simply improve it so it wouldn’t need an explanation.

Screenshot of Intros in the Nextcloud application store

And of course, the app can still be perfected (I’m only a humble intern, after all) to make it more efficient, easier to maintain,… It’s also very important since we want it to be maintained over the (frequent !) Nextcloud updates.

A little birdie tells me that you’re working on another Nextcloud application, can you tell us more about that ?

A new app is indeed on the road (#WIP). The OwnershipTransfer app will allow admins to transfer the ownership of files (or even other types of data ?) from one user to another. This would be especially useful for when someone is leaving an association that uses Nextcloud, and forgot to transfer their important files to someone else ! It will prevent them from losing a very important budget file, forever. However, it still doesn’t make coffee… sorry.

We’ve come to the end of this interview. Would you like to share a feeling about the work you’ve done during this internship ?

I’m really satisfied with what I accomplished. Over and above the fact that I designed and developed a Nextcloud application for the first time from A to Z, I’ve learnt a lot of new skills. Whether it’s PHP, a language I’d only just got to grips with before my internship, or software development in general, managing releases, issues and merge requests, and so on. I’m very happy to be able to have learnt a lot during this internship.

By the way, huge thanks to Framasoft’s employee team who’s always been eager to help me and answer my questions when needed !

Last question, a recurring one in our interviews : what question would you like to have been asked, and what would your answer be ?

« Tell me, what do you think of Nextcloud’s documentation ? »

It’s time to rant (after all, I’m French !). It’s… lightweight, to say the least. But you can see it from a good perspective : I guess browsing the source code to understand how the APIs work is a great learning experience !

Thanks Val !

• Intros in the Nextcloud applications store : https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/intros
• Intros code on the Framagit forge : https://framagit.org/framasoft/framaspace/custom-apps/intros
• Administrator doc (to modify/create new tutorials) : https://framagit.org/framasoft/framaspace/custom-apps/intros/-/blob/master/DOCS.md

Once again this year, we asked David Revoy to illustrate our year-end campaign. And on this last day of 2023, it’s time to give a little nod to this important work !

Cliquez sur l’image pour soutenir l’ensemble des mascottes de Framasoft – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

An animated donation bar

Did you notice ? The monsters started the campaign very serenely, enjoying grilled data skewers. But as you donated more and more, they became more than a little concerned…

Our cheerful mascots face off against some rather repulsive Datavöres

Each Framasoft mascot, representing one of our projects, stood up to a monstrous, unattractive GAFAM. But did you notice that our mascots were showing signs of life ?

A little souvenir to download

After 7 weeks of presenting our projects to you via our mascots, we’d like to present them as wallpaper, available in three formats : HD landscape, 4K landscape, and portrait (mobile).

Once again, we’d like to extend our warmest thanks to David Revoy, who has been working with us since 2017 to illustrate our work and hopes with talent, heart and intelligence.

Find, under a CC-By free license, all the works Framasoft has commissioned from David on the site of his free webcomic Pepper & Carrot !

Thank you for contributing to our success !

Speaking of success, last night, we’ve reached our fundraising goal to meet our 2024 budget !

We’d like to take this last day of our review to thank all those who have worked, discussed, shared, supported, encouraged, criticized… and contributed to our actions. The Internet isn’t big enough to mention all of you at least as much as you deserve, but you know who you are and from the depths of our little hearts we modestly say : thank you.

Thanks ! – Clock to visit the « Support Framasoft » website

Thanks to you, we’ll have the means to continue our work over the coming year (well, if some of you want to give us a bit more means, we won’t say no… but that’s not the point !). Above all, thanks to you, we feel supported.

We hope you have a wonderful end to the year, and we send you ou best wishes of emancipation, joy and freedom in 2024,

The members of the Framasoft association

What is the concrete impact of our association’s actions ? That’s the question we like to answer at the end of the year : taking the time to quantify our actions is essential if we are to realise the service we can provide to others. Let’s get ready for Framastats 2023 !

Click to support us and help push back Hydrooffice – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

As for our online services…

More than 1.8 million people visit our websites every month : that’s twice as many people as visit Disneyland Paris every month ! This figure is up 16 % on last year, so it’s pretty crazy (and very motivating) to think that what we do is useful to so many people. And what about service by service ?

Click here to support us and help Espéhef and Ahèmvé – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

Framadate

Framadate allows you to create mini-surveys, for example to find the right appointment time. And in figures, Framadate is :

• 33,785,780 visits in 2023
• 1.2 million hosted surveys in 2023
• 80,000 more surveys created than in 2022

Graph showing the number of visits (blue) and page views (orange) to Framadate

Framapad

Framapad allows several people to write on the same document. Framapad is undoubtedly one of the largest Etherpad services in the world, with :

• 510,900 pads currently hosted
• Several million pads hosted since the launch of the service
• 309,000 accounts on MyPads (+ 60,000 compared to 2022)
• More than 5 million visits in 2023

Graph showing the distribution of pads according to our Framapad instances (annual, bimonthly, weekly, half-yearly, monthly pads and Mypads accounts).

Framalistes and Framagroupes

Framalistes and Framagroupes allow you to create email discussion lists. As the Framalistes server had reached its maximum capacity, we opened Framagroupes in June 2023 to continue offering this service, which we consider essential. Framalistes and Framagroupes are undoubtedly the largest discussion list servers in existence (excluding the web giants), with :

• more than 1.1 million users
• 63,900 open lists
• An average of 280,000 messages sent per working day

Framaforms

Framaforms makes it easy to create online forms. Framaforms in figures :

• 867,000 visits per month
• 418,628 forms currently hosted
• 172.289 forms created this year

Graph showing the evolution of visits (blue) and page views (orange) to Framforms (it’s going up !)

Framacalc

Framacalc allows you to create collaborative spreadsheets. It may also be the largest Ethercalc database in the world, with :

• 4,235,879 visits in 2023
• 218,000 hosted spreadsheets

Graph showing the number of visits (blue) and page views (orange) to Framacalc

Framateam

Framateam is a chat service that allows teams to be organised by channel. It is probably one of the largest public Mattermost instances in the world, with :

• 148,870 users of the service (5,582 of which log on daily)
• 29,665 teams
• 168,102 discussion channels
• More than 43 million messages exchanged since the launch of the service

Graph showing the distribution of messages sent to Framateam over a month (note the very high usage during the week !).

Framagit

Framagit is a software forge where developers can publish their code and contribute to the code of others. Framagit is probably one of the largest public Gitlab servers in France, with :

• 70,679 hosted projects
• 49,642 users
• 8,966 forks
• 149,789 issues
• 91,623 merge requests
• 1,764,909 commit notes

Screenshot of the Framagit homepage

Framacarte

Framacarte allows you to create maps online. And in figures, it’s :

• 2,770,510 visits in 2023
• 6,690 users (+ 1,246 in one year)
• 170,845 hosted maps (+ 33,476 in one year)

Graph showing the number of visits (blue) and page views (orange) to Framacarte

Framatalk

Framatalk allows you to create or join a video conference room. And in numbers, that’s

• 656,765 visits in 2023 (+45 % compared to last year)
• An average of 75 active conferences with 200 participants per working day

Graph showing the number of visits (blue) and page views (orange) to Framatalk (note the huge spike during the year of lockdowns !)

Framindmap

Framindmap allows you to create mind maps. In numbers, Framindmap is :

• 295,379 visits in 2023
• 1.13 million hosted mind maps
• 489,690 users

Graph showing the number of visits (blue) and page views (orange) to Framindmap

Framavox

Framavox allows a group of people to meet, discuss and make decisions in one place. Framavox is probably one of the largest existing instances of the excellent Loomio software, with :

• 119,633 users
• 124.566 visits in 2023
• 12.265 communities

Framavox – Illustration by David Revoy

Framagenda

Framagenda allows you to create online calendars. In numbers, that’s :

• 260,000 calendars
• 122.919 users

Framaspace

Framaspace is a collaborative working environment for small associations and groups. In numbers, that’s :

• 850 associations and small groups not organised by Google
• 750 new spaces to be opened by 2023
• 16 servers (dedicated and virtual machines) providing 640 TB of storage
• More than 800,000 hosted files

Framaspace – Illustration by David Revoy

PeerTube

PeerTube is the alternative to video platforms. And in numbers, it’s :

• 300,000 users
• 893,000 videos
• 1,151 public entities
• 287,000 comments on videos
• 231 million views (a view is counted from 30 seconds)
• 434 TB of files
• 413 issues resolved in 2023 (out of a total of 4,360 issues handled)
• 363,591 visits to JoinPeerTube.org
• 2 employees (the 2nd joined the team in September !)

PeerTube statistics for the last 3 months of 2023 : instances, users, comments, videos, views and weight of videos

Mobilizon

Mobilizon is our alternative to Facebook Groups and Events. In numbers, it’s :

• 313,554 events
• 29,789 users
• 86 instances
• 3,438 groups
• 1 developer (not even full-time !)

Mobilizon – Illustration by David Revoy

Framadrive

Framadrive, the document storage service, is no longer open for registration, but it’s still working ! And in numbers, that’s :

• 10.8 million files
• 4,794 users
• 2.6 TB of storage used

Framapiaf

Framapiaf, an installation of the microblogging software Mastodon, is no longer open to new registrations, but remains very active. In figures, there are :

• 1,500 users who have registered in the last 30 days
• 850 users who have posted at least one message in the last 30 days

The care given to our online services – Illustration by David Revoy

Technical infrastructure

To the best of our knowledge, Framasoft is the world’s largest web host for online services. And a priori, this associative operating model doesn’t exist anywhere else ! In figures :

• 58 servers and 60 virtual machines hosting our online services
• 0.6 tonnes of CO2 equivalent for the annual electricity consumption of our technical infrastructure (our host, Hetzner, uses renewable hydro and wind energy)
• 1 full-time sysadmin and 2 technical support staff
• 1 full-time support person

Support Framasoft

The association and the cultural commons

The online services we provide to the public are not the only things that keep us busy. Here are some figures on some of the other things we’ve been up to this year.

It’s thanks to your donations that Espéhef and Ahèmvé are facing Hydrooffice. Illustration de David Revoy

Internally

• Framasoft has 28 volunteers and 11 paid employees
• 45 presentations in 2023, face-to-face and/or online, on digital technology, the cultural commons and related issues
• over 130 articles published on the Framablog in 2023
• 2 books published by our publishing house Des Livres en Communs (in French)

Shared projects

• 1,097 entries in the Framalibre directory
• A training course and a MOOC created for ethical service providers
• 21 service providers able to support associations in their digital emancipation, listed on the emancipasso.org website
• 5 study visits in 5 European countries for the ECHO Network project
• 8 years of coordinating the CHATONS collective, which currently includes 91 alternative hosting providers

Support Framasoft

We need your help !

It’s thanks to your donations that we can guarantee the total financial independence of the association : the freedom to experiment, to continue, to fail, to stop, to continue our projects, from the most serious to the most mad, always in line with our associative project of popular education on digital issues and the cultural commons. And in figures :

• 93 % of our budget comes from donations
• 5,463 donors finance initiatives that benefit more than 1.8 million people every month
• 70 % of the budget is spent on salaries

Breakdown of Framasoft’s budget (in order : Human resources, Servers and domains, Operating costs, Interventions, Communication, Project services, Bank charges and tax)

Once again this year, we need you, your support, your sharing to help us regain ground on the toxic GAFAM web and multiply the number of ethical digital spaces.

If we want to balance our budget for 2024, we only have 3 days left to raise €48 000 : we can’t do it without your help !

Support Framasoft

There was one more present left at the foot of the Christmas tree… The French free software directory and founding project of Framasoft is evolving once again, into a site that’s nicer, simpler, more ergonomic… and a lot more practical for recommending your favourite free software !

There was one more present left at the foot of the Christmas tree… The free software directory and founding project of Framasoft is evolving once again, into a site that’s nicer, simpler, more ergonomic… and a lot more practical for recommending your favourite free software !

Just over six years ago, we introduced you to a new “2017” version of our collaborative FOSS directory, Framalibre. Since then, we’ve been testing, learning and observing changes in usage.

We have used all these lessons to create this new “2024” version of Framalibre, which we are proud to present to you today on Framalibre.org.

🎀 An obvious simplicity 🎀

So, for people who were used to the previous version of Framalibre, we warn you : it’s going to leave a gap… You have every right to exclaim “but where’s all my junk ?” … But for many newcomers to the world of free software, that was the problem !

Maiwann has done a lot of usability testing for us, especially at conferences and at the stands where we meet. These tests helped her to realise, for example, that putting a simple ‘mail’ label on the home page wasn’t helping people who were ‘looking for an alternative to Gmail’.

So for this new version, we’ve made a radical choice : simplicity. So we’ve gone to great lengths to simplify menus, sub-menus, drop-down menus, labels, boxes, notes, buttons, and so on.

This radical choice for simplicity came at a price : we had to refocus the Framalibre directory on digital tools. The previous version wanted to open up to free culture, objects and structures. But the problem with doing a bit of everything is that it’s hard to do everything well : presenting all open source resources meant multiplying menus and categories, while increasing the complexity of creating a listing.

The new Framalibre site is deliberately bare bones. It welcomes you with a page displaying tags (the most frequently used search terms) and a search bar. Goodbye the meta-categories, categories, sub-categories and sub-category filters… In short, the tree structure inherited from the 2001 directory !

Our aim is to respond as quickly as possible to your need to find free software to do what you need to do, or to find an alternative to the service provided by the web giants that you want to free yourself from : you search, you find.

Results for Photoshop search on Framalibre 2024

📃 Under the hood, the pages 📃

Click on GNU and Tux to support Framalibre ! – illustration David Revoy – License : CC-By 4.0

For the more technical among you (the rest of you can skip straight to the next part ^^), this simplicity can also be found under the hood.

Framalibre 2017’s Drupal 7 needed a good upgrade, which takes time and energy. The entries database was difficult to access : while we’d done a good job of tinkering with something so that it could be used by others, we would have had to spend more time and energy developing a practical, documented API…

Instead, we decided to devote this energy to applying this choice of simplicity to the software itself, by making the new Framalibre a static site, which we hope will be lighter and faster. The code for this tool, based on Jekyll software, was developed by the talents of l’Échappée Belle (thanks to Fanny and David <3), and of course it’s free and available online.

This choice of static allowed us to modify the structure of the entries and the database. Now written in markdown, these records can be read by both humans and scripts (as long as your robots remain well-behaved, of course :p). As the Framalibre records are CC-By SA, we hope that making them more accessible and readable will lead to some interesting re-uses !

We’ve also taken the opportunity to simplify the manuals as much as possible : you won’t find any screenshots of the software, for example. After a few years, these images are often outdated and misleading. From now on, the information presented in a manual will be simple and concise, and if you like this first look at a particular free software product, we invite you to find out more on the official website.

Entry for Krita on Framalibre 2024

🎁 “Here, this is what I use to free myself…” 🎁.

Click to support us and help to push back MS Blue Scream – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

Because our goal is not for you to stay on Framalibre as long as possible (yes, in the game of attention economy, Framasoft is frankly – and deliberately – bad ;) ). On the contrary, Framalibre aims to be a mediator, a ramp to take you to the official site of the free tool that meets your needs.

In addition to being a search tool, we have designed this new Framalibre as a tool for recommending free and ethical alternatives. Whether it’s during the preliminary surveys and tests for this redesign of Framalibre, during the regular meetings we attend, or even when we look at how we operate ourselves… we observe the same constant :

It’s much easier to adopt a free tool when it comes highly recommended by people we trust.

This is how we came up with the idea of adding a “used by Framasoft members” box at the top of certain search pages. This doesn’t mean that other software isn’t as good, or that it won’t meet your specific needs : it just shows the free software and services that we use regularly.

💝 Framalibre mini-sites : offer your choices ! 💝

With this new version of Framalibre, we wanted to go even further to encourage peer-to-peer recommendations. We know from experience that a person who uses free software today is a person who will help those around him or her to liberate their digital use tomorrow.

On the new Framalibre, you can make your own selection of free tools and get a link to a page that you can share with your friends and family !

Just for fun, here are a few examples we’ve put together for you :

• Protect your privacy – by Gavy
• Equip my family – by Maiwann
• Libérer mon asso – by Framatophe

We look forward to hearing your choice of free tools !

GNU and Tux against MB Blue Scream – Illustration David Revoy – License : CC-By 4.0

🤝 Collaboration is about sharing ! 🤝

Of course, Framalibre is and will remain a collaborative directory. Whether you want to add a record to the directory or correct an existing record, contributions are just a click away !

What’s more, we’ve made the whole process a lot easier (you can see there’s a theme here !). The downside is that your submissions will be reviewed by our team of moderators before they are published (rather than being moderated after submission, as was previously the case).

The upside is that there are already almost 1,019 entries to discover, like so many of the solutions that open source communities offer each of us to make our digital practices better.

And if you can’t find the entry for that great free software or application that freed you from the web giants… feel free to add it : you’ll see, it’s (unsurprisingly) easy !

So now it’s up to you !

It’s up to you to use Framalibre to find, share and, above all, recommend the free tools that make your digital life easier… and life in general !

Useful links

• The new Framalibre website
• The software code behind the new Framalibre
• The Échappée Belle association website
• Support Framalibre by supporting Framasoft…

Because, yes, at the end of the year, we need you, your support and your sharing to help us regain ground on the toxic GAFAM web and create more ethical digital spaces.

So we’ve asked David Revoy to help us present this on our ‘Support Framasoft’ page, which we invite you to visit (because it’s beautiful) and above all to share as widely as possible :

If we are to balance our budget for 2024, we have just 5 days left to raise € 71 398 : we can’t do it without your help !

Support Framasoft

Until 2022, the time spent on Emancip’Asso was mainly used to find funding for the project, set up and run a steering committee and organise training for ethical service providers, but it was in 2023 that the project really took off. We’re well on the way to enabling associations that want to free themselves from the digital tools of the web giants to find structures that can support them in this transition.

Click to support us and push back Toxicloud – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

Emancip’Asso, a 4-part project

Conceived in 2021 in partnership with Animafac, co-piloted by a large number of organisations from the popular education, voluntary and digital sectors, and integrated into our roadmap “Collectivese Internet / Convivialise Internet”, the main objective of the Emancip’Asso project is to bring together ethical digital service providers and voluntary organisations in need of support in their emancipatory digital transition.

In order to achieve its objective, the project will include 4 actions :

• Training for providers of ethical online services ;
• An online course, a digital version of the training ;
• A website listing service providers who specialise in helping associations make the digital transition and providing a place for associations to help each other and share their needs ;
• A major communications campaign to encourage associations to recognise the contradiction of trying to change the world using the tools of capitalism.

It’s been a busy year : the first 3 actions detailed above have now been completed ! We’ll tell you all about them in the rest of this article.

Training suppliers of ethical digital services to support associations

We’ve come to the conclusion that there are very few ethical digital service providers offering solutions that really take into account the needs of voluntary organisations, and in particular the support required to make a successful transition to open source digital tools. The first stage of the Emancip’Asso project therefore aims to support the development of the skills of these actors through two mechanisms : training and an online course (MOOC).

A much-appreciated training course in January 2023

20 people met in Paris from 16 to 20 January at the premises of the FPH (Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation for the Progress of Humanity) to take part in the training course “Developing a range of services to support associations in their ethical digital transition” (in French). Although the original training programme (in French) had to be slightly modified as Thursday 19 January was a day of action against the pension reform, all presentations were able to take place during the week.

Emancip’Asso – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

Once again, we would like to thank the 9 people who agreed to take part in this training session to share their expertise and exchange views with the participants. Their contributions were much appreciated (see below) and proved invaluable in providing a solid base of knowledge and resources for the production of the MOOC.

We would also like to thank the 20 people who attended the 7 training sessions and took part in the many informal discussions that took place. Our objective of giving priority to alternative hosts who are members of the Collectif des Hébergeurs Alternatifs Transparents Ouverts Neutres et Solidaires (CHATONS) was achieved, as 70 % of the participants are active within an organisation that is a member of the CHATONS collective (14 people), representing a total of 11 structures that are members of the CHATONS collective (Alolise, Assodev-Marsnet, le Cloud Girofle, la Contre-Voie, Deuxfleurs, Immae. eu, Libretic, Nebulae, Pâquerette, Picasoft and Sleto). Of the 6 other participants, one has seen his organisation (FuturEtic) join the CHATONS collective in June 2023 and another (Krashboyz Bordel Klub) is currently applying to join.

Illustration CC-By David Revoy

The satisfaction questionnaire we sent out to participants highlights the fact that, overall, the week was beneficial for everyone. For example, 35 % of participants found the training very satisfactory, 60 % fairly satisfactory and only one participant found the training fairly unsatisfactory.

The most popular teaching sequences were :

• Carry out a digital diagnosis of an association
• Developing your network and thinking about complementary work
• Communicating and designing a service offer
• User training and support/assistance
• An overview of the digital uses of associations
• Understand the non-profit sector
• Establish a strategic dialogue with the association

(Satisfaction rate calculated on the basis of 5 criteria : quality of theoretical content, quality of practical content, quality of teaching approach, quality of facilitation tools and listening ability/availability).

We also asked participants how satisfied they were with other aspects of the training. And as the graph below shows, overall satisfaction was high, with a few rare exceptions.

However, we recognise that certain aspects could be improved :

• encourage less top-down methods of knowledge transfer,
• providing more practical work and exchange of practice
• improving the coherence between the different interventions
• using more appropriate premises.

And we’ll do our best if we decide to run the course again in the future. But at the moment we don’t have the funding to do so.

A full MOOC in December 2023

It took us almost a year to turn the training into a MOOC, but that’s it : the online course “Developing a range of services to support voluntary organisations in their ethical digital transition” is now available on the CHATONS MOOC platform (only in French, sorry !). Mind you, the paint is still fresh and there are bound to be a few typos, but this online course, which is primarily aimed at organisations and individuals who already provide online services or who want to offer them to associations, will enable you to acquire a methodology and support techniques that go far beyond simply providing services.

The CHATONS #2 MOOC is broadly based on the educational sequence of the training course and allows you to navigate as you wish within 8 major themes, each of which offers several lessons and an MCQ (for self-assessment of acquired knowledge). Each lesson is structured around illustrated textual content and sometimes includes activities for you to complete. While we do not aim to be exhaustive, we have tried to summarise the state of knowledge on each topic and systematically include a ‘further reading’ section so that anyone wishing to delve deeper into the subject can consult additional resources.

Illustration CC-By David Revoy

The course is now open and anyone can join whenever they like : there’s no registration period to keep to. In fact, you don’t even need to register to view the lessons. However, we recommend that you create an account to take advantage of advanced features :

• Access to self-assessment exercises in the form of multiple choice questions ;
• Access to the self-help forum
• Track your progress through the course (so you can pick up a lesson where you left off, or keep track of your assessment results).

The key word here is autonomy. We want to give learners as much freedom as possible in their learning path : everyone can follow the lessons at their own pace and manage the time they devote to this MOOC.

As usual with Framasoft, all content created for this MOOC is released under a free CC-By-SA licence (some images and videos from third party sites are marked as such). We hope that it will evolve, especially thanks to the contributions and feedback on the support forum. This MOOC should therefore be seen as an organic, living community : it will grow if we take care of it. If there are missing resources, if an activity is off the mark, if a lesson is too long, we invite you to share your opinion and suggest improvements on the support forum.

A website to help associations get in touch with service providers, but that’s not all…

The first objective of the Emancip’Asso project was to enable ethical online service providers to develop their skills in supporting associations, but the second was to create an online space where associations could identify them. That’s why, right from the start of the project, we planned to create a website to bring people together. But before we could start creating the site, we had to create a graphic identity for Emancip’Asso.

A graphic identity and design 👌

In September 2022, we asked a group of students to work on the creation of the graphic charter and visual identity for the Emancip’Asso project, as part of the supervised projects within the Colibre pro degree. After an initial phase in which the project was presented and our brief explained, 4 students⋅es carried out a comparison of the graphic charters/visual identities of ‘neighbouring’ projects before drawing up a set of specifications presenting their analysis of the needs, from which they each developed a proposal for the graphic charter. One of these proposals met our expectations and served as the inspiration for our service provider, Thomas Nicolas (thanks to him), to create the logo.

At the same time, we responded to a call for projects from the Latitudes association, which each year offers to help organisations with a committed digital project to bring it to fruition through a tutoring programme with students from their partner schools. Between October 2022 and January 2023, three second-year students from the CentraleSupélec engineering school worked on a prototype of the future website. After learning about the project, they thought about the tree structure of the future website and the functionalities to be offered on each page, before creating mock-ups using the Penpot tool. These mock-ups were then used by our service provider, the Coopérative des Internets, to build the site.

The graphic identity and design of emancipasso.org is the result of the work of many people, and we’re pretty damn proud of it.

Screenshot of the emancipasso.org website

A directory of service providers, a community and resources

The emancipasso.org website, created by La Coopérative des Internets (thanks to them !), is divided into 3 sections.

The first is a directory of service providers able to support associations wishing to make the transition to open source digital tools.

By “support”, we mean accompanying the association through all the stages necessary for its transition (co-development of a digital strategy, diagnosis and recommendations, implementation of these recommendations and assistance in getting to grips with the solutions deployed). We found that associations often had difficulty finding professionals who could provide this type of tailored support. Like many organisations, not-for-profits think in terms of ‘tools’ first, before thinking about a digital strategy to ensure a smooth transition (without having to return to the services of the web giants after a few months because they haven’t thought through all the aspects of this transition). For this reason, associations will not find in this directory providers who only offer technical solutions. In fact, we have systematically asked service providers who have volunteered to be included in this directory to prove that they have already carried out several projects to support associations.

Click to support us and help Shane, Émancip’Asso mascot – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

So far, 20 service providers are listed in this directory. That’s a start. Over the past month, we have been actively communicating with support professionals about the existence of this site. What’s more, we’re expecting service providers who have taken the training or the MOOC to register in the next few months. So it’s still a work in progress and you can access it. If you know of people or organisations that could be listed, please let us know.

The emancipasso.org website is also intended to be a gateway to a community where associations and other players in the emancipatory digital ecosystem can help and advise each other, share best practices and communicate their needs in terms of tools and/or functionalities so that development costs can be shared between several organisations. Based on the observation that associations, and in particular the people in charge of the digital aspects within them, currently have very few forums in which to discuss their practices in relation to the digital transition (thanks, incidentally, to the Mouvement Associatif and its regional delegations, which regularly address this issue), we felt it was essential to offer a space where they could feel less isolated on these issues.

Finally, the Resources section offers a selection of content aimed at voluntary organisations, so that they can familiarise themselves with ethical digital technology, but also at service providers, so that they can improve their knowledge of the voluntary sector and their methods of support. Our aim here is to list as much educational content as possible to promote the emancipation of the voluntary sector. If you have resources that we have not identified, please let us know (by sending a message to contact(at)emancipasso(dot)org) so that we can add them.

What about 2024 ?

In the coming weeks and months we will continue to work on the MOOC “Developing a range of services to support associations in their ethical digital transition” to correct what still needs to be corrected, improve certain content and add video sequences from the recording of the training session.

We will also continue to invite service providers to join the Emancip’Asso directory and to process applications. It’s a long-term task to identify all the existing structures and ensure that they really offer services to associations that include a support dimension. Throughout the year, we will try to be present at the main gatherings of ethical and responsible digital professionals to inform them about the scheme and encourage them to join.

Thanks to your donations, Shane is not afraid to fight Toxicloud. – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

But the biggest task will be to carry out the fourth stage of the project : to make associations aware of the incoherence of trying to change the world using the tools of capitalism and to encourage them to go to emancipasso.org to find resources, peer support and service providers to help them in their transition. To do this, we plan to launch a targeted communications campaign throughout March 2024. We are currently working on this and hope you will help us by sharing our communication materials with your favourite associations ! And throughout the year, we will be presenting the project at the main events that bring together the voluntary sector (Forum national de l’ESS, Universités d’été du Mouvement Associatif, Forum national des associations, etc.) to raise awareness.

Finally, once the associations are aware of the project and have joined the Emancip’Asso community, we will put more energy into animating this community in order to facilitate exchanges between participants. Our goal is for the Emancip’Asso community to become an essential space for all associations in transition or that have completed their digital transition, and for frequent visits to this community to become an integral part of associative practices.

Thank you for supporting Emancip’Asso and Framasoft

Although the costs of the Emancip’Asso project have so far been covered by the Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer pour le Progrès de l’Homme (FPH), the Fondation Crédit Coopératif and the Fondation Un monde par tous, we no longer have any external sources of funding for the rest of the project.

So if you like this project and if it’s possible for you, we encourage you to support Framasoft. A part of your donations will help us to finance the costs (communication campaign and project coordination) of the Emancip’Asso project in 2024.

Once again this year, we need you, your support, your sharing to help us regain ground on the toxic GAFAM web and multiply the number of ethical digital spaces.

So we’ve asked David Revoy to help us present this on our « Support Framasoft » page, which we invite you to visit (because it’s beautiful) and above all to share as widely as possible :

If we are to balance our budget for 2024, we have just 12 days left to raise € 109000 : we can’t do it without your help !

Support Framasoft

Developing an ethical and emancipating alternative to YouTube, Twitch or Vimeo without Surveillance Capitalism’s means is a huge undertaking. Especially for a small French not-for-profit that already manages several projects to promote digital commons.

We (Bonjour ! We are Framasoft !) have been developing PeerTube for six years. Two weeks after releasing the sixth version of the software, let’s take a step back on six years of work, examine the huge opportunity that the present times hold for PeerTube, and look towards what we plan to do next year to prepare for its success… if you give us the means to get there !

Click to support Framasoft and push back against the Yetube – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

Not a rival, just an alternative

The realization that led us to develop PeerTube is that no one can rival YouTube or Twitch. You would need Google’s money, Amazon servers’ farms… Above all, you would need the greed to exploit millions of creators and videomakers, groom them into formatting their content to your needs, and feed them the crumbs of the wealth you gain by farming their audience into data livestock.

Monopolistic centralized video platforms can only be sustained by surveillance capitalism.

We wanted small groups such as institutions, educators, communities, artists, citizens, etc. to be able to afford to emancipate themselves from Big Tech’s platforms, without getting lost in the world wide web. We needed to develop a tool to democratize videohosting, so it had to be designed with radically different values in mind.

And that is what we did. We build PeerTube to empower people, not databases or shareholders.

Today, PeerTube is :

• a Free-Libre software (transparency, protection against monopoly)
• you can host on your server (self-hosting, autonomy, empowerment)
• to create your video and livestream platform, with your own rules (community building, self-management)
• that lets you federate (or not !) to other PeerTube platforms through ActivityPub protocol (federation, network, outreach)
• that adds (optional) peer-to-peer streaming to classic streaming so it can withstand affluence (resilience, sharing, decentralization)
• where more powerful servers can help less fortunate ones with redundancy (solidarity, resilience)
• that can store videos externally with S3 storage (adaptability, cost-efficiency)
• that can deport CPU-hungry tasks such as video or live transcoding to a dedicated server (efficiency, resilience, sustainability)

So no : PeerTube is not, and will not be a rival to YouTube or Twitch. PeerTube is powered by other values that those coded into Google’s and Amazon’s ecosystems. PeerTube is an alternative, and that’s exactly why this is so exciting.

Click to support Sepia – illustration David Revoy – Licence : CC-By 4.0

PeerTube is a software : 6 years of developments

In the last six years, with more than 275 000 lines of code, we got :

• From a POC to a fully operative federated video platform with p2p broadcasting, complete with subtitles, redundancy, video import, search tools and localization (PeerTube v1, oct. 2018)
• Notifications, playlists, a plugin system, moderation tools, federation tools, a better video player, a presentation website and an instances index (PeerTube v2, nov. 2019)
• Federated research tool (and a search engine https://sepiasearch.org), more moderation tools, lots of code improvement, UX revamping, and last but not least : p2p livestream (PeerTube v3, Jan. 2021)
• Improved transcoding, channels and instances homepage customization, improved search, an even better video player, filtering videos on pages, advanced administration and moderation tools, new video management tool, and a big code cleaning session (PeerTube v4, Dec. 2021)
• A video editing tool, improved video statistics and metrics display, replay feature for permanent livestreams, latency settings for lives, an improved video player (for mobile displays), a more powerful plugin system, more customization options, more video filtering options, a new and user friendly feedback tool and a renewed presentation website (PeerTube v5, Dec. 2022)
• Account request moderation, « back to live » button, remote transcoding (to deport CPU hungry task on a dedicated server). storyboard (previews in the progress bar), video chapters, improved accessibility, upload a new version of a video, and password-protected videos. (PeerTube v6, Nov. 2023)

And that is just when you only consider the software development part of PeerTube. In order to support and promote this software, we had to build a whole ecosystem.

PeerTube is also an ecosystem

PeerTube, nowadays, is also a coding community. On the project forge (online space to contribute on developments), we’ve had more than 400 contributors, 4,300 issues (features and support requests) closed over 6 years and 500 still open, and 12,400 contributions integrated upstream.

As not anyone can familiarize themselves with more than 275 000 lines of code, an easy way to contribute to PeerTube is by developing plugins : there are hundreds of them ! Among them, there are the live chat (to get a chat during livestreams), plugins to authenticate against external authentication platforms, annotations to add in the video player, a transcription plugin to automatically create subtitles for your videos or plugins to add monetization to PeerTube videos.

Contributors have also helped by translating PeerTube into more than 36 languages (join them here), by providing answers on our forum, by updating our official documentation, or by sharing ideas on our Let’s Improve PeerTube feedback tool.

There are now more than a thousand PeerTube platforms all over the world (that we know of ^^), hosting almost a million videos. We have created an instances index that feeds content to SepiaSearch, our search engine for PeerTube videos, channels and playlists. We moderate it according to our terms and conditions, but anyone is free to use the code we develop to create their own index and search engine.

Fortunately, others are working towards promoting and moderating PeerTube content, by creating directories [FR] , recommendations threads, moderation tools, Firefox extensions, and all kinds of amazing content.

We promote PeerTube with an official website Joinpeertube.org, where the latest news are shared on the blog and the newsletter. There is also a mastodon account (and an -almost abandoned- account on Twitter). We also spend lots of hours talking to medias, researchers, innovators, communities, contributors, etc.

Fighting dragons with toothpicks

So, how can we estimate the cost of those 6 years of work ? Should we just consider development time and the management of the development community (issues, code review, support) ?

Should we also count the work done on blogposts, illustrations and promotion material, establishing roadmaps, working with designers, exchanging experience with researchers, videomakers, and amazing projects, some of which we have supported with funds ? What about the time for moderating our search engine or cleaning after spammers on our feedback tool ?

Even though we cannot pinpoint the exact budget Framasoft spent on PeerTube since 2017, our conservative estimate would be around 500 000 €. Over six years. As we got two grants from the European commission (through the NGI0 Search & Discovery and Entrust programs) totaling 132 000 €, it means that 73,6 % of PeerTube budget came from donations.

Now let’s overestimate the cost of PeerTube to 600 000 € over 6 years, to make sure we have covered every expense.

Even then, PeerTube total cost would represent 22 millionth (0.0022 %) of YouTube’s ad revenues last year. Yes, we did the math.

(source – 29.243 B USD // 632 853 USD)

We are – figuratively – fighting dragons with toothpicks. That’s why we think that PeerTube cannot and will not rival YouTube nor Twitch (and even less TikTok that presents a whole other experience).

But, as an alternative, PeerTube is already successful.

Click to support Sepia against the Videoraptor – illustration David Revoy – Licence : CC-By 4.0

A success in our eyes

Today, we know of more than 1000 instances (servers on which PeerTube is installed and running), sharing almost a million videos.

As it is not limited by the captology mechanics of an ad-and-attention-based model, PeerTube offers features not available from tech giants :

• compatibility with other social tools via ActivityPub (Imagine you could tweet a comment to a YouTube video : with Mastodon and PeerTube, you can.)
• share a video from a start timecode to a stop timecode (YouTube has caught up with us, since)
• untempered chronological access to your suscriptions feed (no need to « click the bell » in addition to subscribing)
• password-protected videos (unavailable in YouTube, paid in Vimeo)
• replace a video by an updated version

We intended to make PeerTube specifically for people that need (and want) to share their videos outside of the surveillance capitalism model. Obviously we all know (and like) some YouTubers and Twitch-streamers, but they are the visible part of the iceberg of online video sharing.

Institutions, Educators, Independent medias, Citizens, and even creators should have the freedom to share videos online without contributing to a company’s monopoly, having to accept forced advertisement, or sacrificing on their audience’s data and privacy. The great news is, some of them have already found such freedom, and it makes us proud :

• Institutions
  • European commission
  • Netherlands Institute for sound and vision
• Educators
  • French Ministry of Education FOSS-based platform
  • University of Philippines Diliman’s digital learning programs
• Independent medias
  • Blast (French independent left-wing online media)
  • Howlround (Theater Commons media based in the Emerson College, Boston)
• Citizens
  • Urbanists.video (videos about walkable, livable places)
  • S2S (safe space for deaf and hearing impaired people, videos about/in French Sign Language)
  • Live it live (live music concerts)
• Creators
  • Skeptikon (French collective, videos about critical thinking and scepticism)
  • TILvids (Til = Today I Learned, edutainment videos in English, with authorized and official YouTube mirroring)
  • Bunseed (French initiative, FOSS-based alternative to Patreon, by and for creators, built upon PeerTube)

We want to build on the recognition PeerTube is getting, that’s why we have planned a lot of work for 2024 !

PeerTube’s roadmap for v7, in 2024

The features we have planned for the next year of development on PeerTube all have the same goal : facilite adoption by improving ease-of-use in several ways. As for version 6, most of those features has been chosen from the ideas you shared and voted for on our feedback tool.

We plan to :

• Add a data export/import system (with or without video files), so users can easily change their instance.
• Get a full accessibility audit, to facilitate use for people with specific needs, and complete the work done this year (see version 6 release). If we have time left on integrating the report’s recommandations, we will see if and how we could add speech-to-text transcription
• Add a comment moderation tool usable for both instance administrators and video uploaders.
• Create a new moderation tool to sort content according to preset keywords lists ( « far-right dogwhistling words in German », « queerphobic idioms in English », etc). This tool will present corresponding content to instance administrators and moderators, that will then determine if it fits their moderation policy.
• (Technical) separation of audio and video streams. Such improvement will unlock the possibility, in the future, to develop and get multi-audio track videos (e.g. multiple langages), or multi-videos track with the same audio stream (e.g. multiple angles)
• Add a new « audio-only » resolution (in the « 720p », « 1080p », etc. menu) for our HLS player. It will enable users to only get the audio track streamed to them, improving sustainability when they only want to listen to a video and look at other tabs.
• Rethink the sensitive content characterization. At the moment, you can only tag videos as « Safe For Work » / « Not Safe For Work ». But « sensitive content » can imply lots of cases : violence, nudity, strong langage, etc. We will work with designers to think about the appropriate way to characterize and treat such cases.
• Revamp the video management space. We have added lots of new features along the years (live and replay, studio editor, etc.)… it’s great, but tabs and menus accumulated. We will work with designers to rethink it from the ground up and make it easy-to-use.
• Get a complete review and implement a redesign of the experience and interface of PeerTube. Even though we’ve had lots of help along the way, PeerTube has not benefited of guidance in design from the get-go. We want to think this work as a reboot, where everything (even the orange ?) is on the table, if it helps with adoption and ease of use.

Hep us push back against the Videoraptor- Illustration CC-By David Revoy

Doubling the dev team for resilience…

OK, when you go from one to two developers, « doubling » is easier… but it was still a big deal to us.

First, because Framasoft is a not-for-profit funded mainly by donations. So far, we’ve had the honor and privilege to get enough support to fund our expenses, the main being our 10 employees. But donation-based economics models are, by definition, highly unpredictable. That is especially true in an economy where inflation, energy costs, etc. make most of our supporters rethink their budget.

Another reason lies within our core values : we believe in decentralization and networks of small actors (over growing into giants and monopolies). We also believe that prioritizing humans and care implies to stay in a small team configuration, where we truly know each other.

And we think that the way we have applied those values into our not-for-profit is key to the efficiency, the creativity and the talents expressed by our members (both volunteers and employees). That’s why we have worked on limiting Framasoft’s growth, and have set the symbolic limit of « ten employees tops ».

During 2022 and 2023, there were lots of discussions on this topic within Framasoft. On one hand, we can’t keep on developing PeerTube with only one developer (even though someone as talented as Chocobozzz), who could win the lottery, leave, or just change careers. On the other hand, if we hired a new developer, what would be their profile ? How can we make sure they would fit in ? Can we secure a long lasting job for them ?

In late 2022, Chocobozzz asked us to post an internship offer. It was both to test if, after 5 years coding solo on PeerTube, teamwork came back easily (it did) ; but also to train someone on PeerTube’s code core, see how it can be apprehended by newcomers, and how to improve its documentation.

Wicklow joined us for an internship between February and August 2023, and produced the « password protected video features » released in version 6 of PeerTube. We hadn’t plan to hire him : we had, then, other profiles in mind, and thought we wouldn’t be able to start a hiring process before 2024. We specifically told him so, as not to give him false hope… But as we benefited from a grant extension from NGI0 program, we also realized that he was a perfect fit in the project, for the team and in our not-for-profit.

Long story short : we hired Wicklow in September 2023, just as he graduated, on a one-year contract (that we hope to secure with your help !).

…and to create an iOS/Android mobile app !

This new hire has two goals. First and foremost, we want another developer to become familiar with PeerTube’s core code, and lessen the « bus factor« . Wicklow should also become gradually able to help Chocobozzz in managing the code community.

As the community grows (and we are very thankful), so does the managing workload : answering to issues and support requests on our forum, reviewing code contributions, etc. Even though being present for the community is important, it’s taking up to half of Chocobozzz’s time, and that means even less time to develop new features.

The second and main goal for Wicklow in 2024 would be, with the help of designers, to create and publish an official PeerTube mobile app. Mobile viewing has become the main way to watch videos. Even though there are already mobile apps that can play videos on PeerTube, we feel that an official app could help with PeerTube’s adoption and attractiveness.

For 2024, the app would be limited to finding and watching videos. We want users to be able to use a federated search engine, watch videos and livestreams, log in to their account on their PeerTube instance, access their notifications, subscriptions, playlists, etc. If successful, this first version of the app could be extended to other use-cases and features in the future.

Our plan is to publish this app both on iOS (pending Apple’s review, that can be tricky) and Android… and, as an extended goal (so « if all goes well »), on Android TV as well.

Sepia, PeerTube’s mascot, strong from your support – illustration David Revoy – Licence : CC-By 4.0

Promoting the PeerTube Ecosystem

PeerTube is more than code, and we want to shed a light on the incredible community that is thriving around this project.

We often see amazing plugins, interesting instances and channels, new initiatives and experiments… that we would like to share. But we seldom have and take time to do so.

In the meantime, we also witness many people wondering if PeerTube allows livestream (it does !) if there is a chat for lives (yes : it’s a great plugin !), or if there are websites to find content on PeerTube (yes again !)

We plan to work on promoting PeerTube’s ecosystem, through the blog and newsletter on our website Joinpeertube, our Mastodon account, and by working on a showcase Peer.tube instance.

To kick off this work, we will go live and answer all your questions about PeerTube during a livestream hosted by Laurens from the Fediverse Report blog and newsletter, on our Peer.Tube channel ! You can already go on Mastodon and ask your questions with the #PeerTubeAMA hashtag.

This AMA (« Ask Me Anything ») will take place tomorrow, Dec 13th, from 6 to 8pm (CET), on this link.

Click on the image to get to the livestream

(and if all goes well, we’ll publish the replay on the same channel)

Funded by you… and Europa !

As we stated sooner in this (long) blogpost, we were fortunate enough to get grants from the European Commission program NGI, through the NLnet foundation (many thanks to them !). The previous grants helped us fund a quarter of our six years of work on PeerTube. We are glad to announce that we got another grant for 2024, that will cover planned development costs.

It means that, as it was for 75 % of the work until now, funding the rest of our plans relies on donations. Communicating about PeerTube and its ecosystem, sharing experience with diverse actors, design costs, community support and management, etc. All those costs will be, as usual, funded by… some of you !

Our current donation campaign will determine Framasoft budget for 2024, and from its success we will know if we can secure a stable job for our second developer, while keep on all the other projects and actions that we take on.

Once again this year we need you, your support, your sharing, to help us regain ground on the toxic GAFAM web and multiply ethical digital spaces.

So we’ve asked David Revoy to help us present this on our « Support Framasoft » page, which we invite you to visit (because it’s beautiful) and above all to share as widely as possible :

If we are to balance our budget for 2024, we have three weeks to raise €138,659 : we can’t do it without your help !

Support Framasoft

5 years after its announcement, Mobilizon, our free, federated alternative to Facebook groups and events, is reaching maturity. We take this opportunity to look back on its history and future.

Five years of Mobilizon

As this is the last major version of Mobilizon to be ported by Framasoft (yes, we’re teasing you a bit 😅 ), we’d like to start with a reminder of the various stages that led us to this v4.

2018 : an intention and attentions

Remember : in December 2018 (5 years ago already !), we announced (in French) our intention to develop Mobilizon. Our aim was to offer an alternative to Facebook groups and events, which had become the de facto dominant tool as a platform for mobilisation, whether it was organising a birthday party, a free software conference or a climate protest.

To do this, we decided to do things in the right order, starting by asking different audiences about their real needs and expectations (not those we assumed). The aim was to create a tool that was not only practical and welcoming, but also empowering. For example, we decided to reject any form of social gamification (in Mobilizon you follow groups rather than individuals, we banned infinite scrolling in favour of simple pagination, etc.).

Click to support us and push back Face Ghoûl – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

2019 : Crowdfunding and first beta version

In May 2019, we launched an appeal for donations to fund the development of a first version. Thanks to the mobilisation and generosity of over 1,000 donors, it was a success, with almost €60,000 raised. Less than 6 months later, we announced a beta version of the software.

This version provided a good foundation for creating and publishing events. However, it still lacked « core » functionalities, such as the ability to register anonymously for an event, or federation (i.e. the ability of a Mobilizon instance (in French) to easily exchange data with other Mobilizon instances, or even Mastodon instances).

2020 : a pandemic and a V1

In October 2020, after a few months delay due to a worldwide pandemic, the first stable version (« v1 ») of Mobilizon was released !

This v1 already offered what was to become the core of the software : groups (the central element of Mobilizon), articles, resources linked to a group, the possibility of having several profiles for the same account, the possibility of participating in an event without registering, and… the federation.

Click to support us and help Rose, the Mobilizon mascot – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

2021 : notifications and an app

At the end of 2021, we announced version 2 of Mobilizon. One of the main new features was the eagerly awaited integration of a notification system. But also on the menu : time zone management, « RTL » management (for languages written from right to left, such as Arabic or Hebrew), provision of RSS feeds, the addition of sorting filters, the ability to define an event as « online » (without geographical location), public group tracking, etc. There was even the release of a smartphone application developed by Tom79 (thanks again to him !).

2022 : Engines and search

The third major version of Mobilizon was released with the regularity of a Swiss watch, one year after v2.

Its main focus was search. It introduced the possibility of federated searches : a search from the « SOMETHING » instance could return results from events hosted on the Mobilizon « ELSE » instance. As with PeerTube’s SepiaSearch metasearch engine, we designed and implemented a Mobilizon-specific engine that allows searches across multiple instances : https://search.joinmobilizon.org

With this release, we have also redesigned the front page of the software. Our aim is to give you more opportunities to discover events and groups you may not have known existed, and to make the diversity of content published on Mobilizon more visible.

Rose search – Illustration by David Revoy – Licence : CC-By 4.0

2023 : waiting for v4…

During 2023 we also quietly released two minor versions. These added anti-spam tools, the ability to manage arbitrary addresses (because an address database can never be perfectly up to date), the ability to use external authentication systems, and the ability to define an external website for people who want to manage registrations outside Mobilizon.

They were also the occasion for bug hunting and improvements to the Mobilizon API, paving the way for one of the most eagerly awaited features of v4 (yes, the teasing is unsustainable ;) ).

Rose fights SPAM – Illustration by David Revoy – Licence : CC-By 4.0

What’s new in Mobilizon v4 ?

We’ve done it ! Version 4 is finally here :) And we’re very proud of the new features it brings !

Private Announcements and Conversations

Event organisers can now send private announcements to attendees. This has been a long awaited feature !

Group or event administrators or moderators can now contact people registered in a group or event directly. You can then write to all these people, or select sub-groups, for example only those who have confirmed their attendance, or conversely those who have not confirmed (or declined). It’s even possible to contact people who have registered without creating a Mobilizon account. This opens up some very interesting possibilities, such as the possibility of communicating important information : a change of location or date, for example.

Please note that this is an announcement system and registrants cannot reply (although moderators can add messages). This is not a forum, but a channel for sharing important information in a more top-down way.

As well as this announcement mechanism, we’ve added a conversation system.

This allows you to contact a group or specific people and chat with them live.

For example, an outsider to an event can contact the group administrator from the event page and exchange messages with them. Think of this conversation system as the « DM » (direct message) or « MP » (private message) system you know from other social platforms.

For those who have a Mastodon account (or equivalent), the magic of Fédivers means that you can even use this conversation feature to send private messages from Mastodon, while the person you are contacting can reply from Mobilizon !

Import and synchronise events from other platforms (Facebook, Meetup, etc.)

Once again, this was one of the most eagerly awaited features of Mobilizon.

But it was also one of the most complicated for us to implement in the software. Because these external platforms (yes, Facebook, we’re looking at you !) are the despots of kingdoms of which you are merely the vassal. If they want to raise the drawbridge over which your data passes, they can do so with the snap of a finger, and there is nothing you or we can do about it.

That’s why we’re announcing this feature as present, BUT with a great deal of reserve and caution.

Nevertheless, we’re excited to introduce this new Mobilizon feature to you !

How does it work ?

First of all, please understand that everything that follows takes place… outside of Mobilizon. In an external tool modestly called « Mobilizon Import System » (note that we’ve kept it simple 😅 ).

From this tool, you’ll be able to connect to your Mobilizon account and define your profiles or groups on which you authorise external platforms (such as Meetup or EventBrite) to post. These profiles and groups then become « Destinations ».

Then, simply go to the page of the event you want to synchronise (e.g. https://www.eventbrite.fr/e/billets-street-art-feminisme-743545834607), copy and paste this address into Mobilizon’s import system, and the event will be imported.

In addition to the classic import, it is also possible (depending on the platform) to set up the synchronisation of one or more events. Once synchronised, the new events will be published on your selected Mobilizon profile/group. Event updates on the source (for example, if you change the description on Meetup) will automatically update the event republished on Mobilizon (note that deletions are not currently handled).

Important note : iCal (.ics) event feeds are supported ! This means you can have events in Framagenda (or Google Calendar, we won’t judge you (too much)) and synchronise them in Mobilizon ! Nice, isn’t it ?

In addition to the iCal format, the platforms currently supported are Eventbrite, Meetup…

Yes, we can see you now, screaming in your head :

« What about Facebook ? 🥺 « 

So Facebook, « It’s complicated » ©

We did all the work on our end and… it works (Yaaaaaaaaay ! 🥳)… but only with our « App Developer » account (Oooooooohhh ! 😦).

We still have to go through several validation steps, and… we have absolutely no hand in it. It’s Facebook’s kingdom, so Facebook decides. Maybe it’ll work for 5 years, 5 months, 5 days. Maybe it won’t work at all. 🤷

Technically, another feature – reserved for developers – that we’ve added is the ability to add « webhooks« , which are internal calls that can also act as « destinations » for sources. Events can then be sent to these webhooks, which will do… well, whatever you want them to do ! This might be useful for our friends at Transiscope, for example, so that their tool can also import events from other platforms.

The « Mobilizon Import System » was deliberately developed outside the Mobilizon core. It is therefore a separate piece of software. In fact, we think that this software is likely to need a lot of modifications (for example, to correct bugs or to add new platforms such as Démosphère or Agenda Militant) and that there might be an interest in hosting this application outside Mobilizon instances (for example, to share functionality between several instances, or to manage the legal risks imposed on us by third party platforms). So we’ve made it a separate software project, but of course free and self-hosting.

Other Mobilizon v4 improvements

Don’t go away ! We’ve got more great features to share with you !

First of all, we’ve improved compatibility for tracking other federated event instances (one of the most interesting projects is « Event Federation for WordPress« , which would eventually allow the famous WordPress website/blog engine to be used as an event platform. We talked to the people coordinating this project to share our experiences and incorporated their requests in the form of developments in Mobilizon (which they confirmed in their latest blog post).

Secondly, we have improved the formatting of event descriptions when exporting events and in ICS feeds (which now take into account the status « tentative », « confirmed » or « cancelled »).

Also, we changed email registration confirmations for attendees without an account to now include an unsubscribe link.

Finally, Mobilizon is now available on more operating systems and architectures (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, arm64, etc.).

Mission accomplished, Framasoft is ready to pass the baton !

Framasoft had announced in March 2023 in the Mobilizon roadmap that this v4 would be the last we would develop.

We still strongly believe in the future of this project.

But we’ve reached our goal : we announced an intention and a vision in 2018 and… we’ve fulfilled our mission !

Of course, software is far from bug-free. But anyone involved in software development knows that there will always be things to fix, features to add… It’s never-ending. And we sincerely believe that it’s also important to be able to step back, say to yourself that you’ve kept your commitment, and hand over a project.

The Framasoft team is small : Mobilizon is a salaried developer (yes, only one !), and not even full-time… He is certainly supported by the rest of the association in terms of communication, project management, fundraising, etc. But after five years, we consider the project a success. But after 5 years, we feel that Mobilizon is stable enough for him to redirect his energy and skills to other projects and missions.

We’re not putting Mobilizon on the shelf !

First of all, Framasoft is committed to maintain this v4 for the next few months (and as long as we can), especially in case of security updates or blocking bugs. We’ll also maintain our public, French-language forum https://mobilizon.fr.

But we won’t be developing any new features.

Secondly, another team (the Kaihuri association, well known to the Mobilizon community as the maintainers of the Keskonfai instance) already has a take-over and contribution project to improve Mobilizon’s handling. They present their project and their ambitions on our forum dedicated to Mobilizon : don’t hesitate to give them your feedback and encouragement (or disagreement, for that matter), but also your desire and ability to contribute.

So, if the community doesn’t mind, in the next few weeks we’ll be handing over all the Mobilizon « keys » to this community (they already have maintainer access to the source code repository, but this also applies to the joinmobilizon.org, mobilizon.org, search.joinmobilizon.org websites, tools, social media accounts, etc.).

Mobilizon seems to have a bright future ahead !

For five years, thanks to your donations, Rose has been training to fight Faceghoul – Illustration by David Revoy – Licence : CC-By 4.0

Five years of Mobilizon, thanks to you (and your donations) !

Although we’ll be handing over the keys to the project in a few weeks time, all the work done throughout 2023 has come at a significant cost.

If you like this version 4, and it’s possible for you to do so, we encourage you to support Framasoft as a token of our gratitude for all the work we’ve done this year, but also for honouring our original moral contract : to provide you with a free, federated alternative to Facebook groups and events.

Once again this year we need you, your support, your sharing, to help us regain ground on the toxic GAFAM web and multiply ethical digital spaces.

So we’ve asked David Revoy to help us present this on our « Support Framasoft » page, which we invite you to visit (because it’s beautiful) and above all to share as widely as possible :

If we are to balance our budget for 2024, we have five weeks to raise €162,716 : we can’t do it without your help !

Support Framasoft

It’s #givingtuesday, so we’re giving you PeerTube v6 today ! PeerTube is the software we develop for creators, media, institutions, educators… to manage their own video platform, as an alternative to YouTube and Twitch.

The sixth major version is being released today and we are very proud ! It is the most ambitious one since we added peer-to-peer livestreaming. There is a good reason for that : we packed this v6 with features inspired by your ideas !

We are so eager to present all the work we achieved that we’ll get right into it. But stay tuned : in two weeks, we’ll take more time to talk about PeerTube’s history, the state of this project and the great plans we have for its future !

Click to support us and help push back Videoraptor – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

This year : two minor updates and a major achievement

In 2023, and before preparing this major update, we released only two minor versions… but one of them brought to the table a major technical feature that will help democratize video hosting even more.

March 2023 : PeerTube v5.1

You’ll get more details in the news dedicated to the 5.1 release, so to keep it short, this version brought :

• an « asking for an account » feature, where instance moderators can manage and moderate news account requests ;
• a back-to-live button, so in case you lag behind during a livestream, you can go back to the direct
• Improvements on the authentication plugin, to facilitate signing on with external credentials

June 2023 : PeerTube 5.2…

As you’ll find out in our 5.2 release blogpost, there were some smaller but important new features such as :

• Adapting RSS feeds to podcast standards, so any podcast client could be able to read a PeerTube channel, for example
• The option to set the privacy of a livestream replay, that way streamers can choose beforehand if the replay of their live will be Public, Unlisted, Private or Internal
• Improved mouse-free navigation : for those who prefer or need to navigate using their keyboard
• And upgrades in our documentation (it’s quite thorough : check it out !)

…with a major feature : Remote Transcoding

But the game changer in this 5.2 release was the new remote transcoding feature.

When a creator uploads a video (or when they are streaming live), PeerTube needs to transform their video file into an efficient format. This task is called video transcoding, and it consumes lots of CPU power. PeerTube admins used to need (costly) big-CPU servers for a task that wasn’t permanent… until remote transcoding.

Remote transcoding allows PeerTube admins to deport some or all of their transcoding tasks to another, more powerful server, one that can be shared with other admins, for example.

It makes the whole PeerTube administration cheaper, more resilient, more power-efficient… and opens a way of sharing resources between communities !

We want, once again to thank the NGI Entrust program and the NLnet foundation for the grant that helped us achieve such a technical improvement !

Click to support us and help Sepia reach their potential – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

PeerTube v6 is Based… (on your ideas)

Enough with the past, let’s detail the features of this new major version. Note that, for this whole 2023 roadmap, we developed features suggested and upvoted by… you ! Or at least by those of you who shared your ideas on our feedback website.

Protect your videos with passwords !

That was a very awaited feature. Password-protected videos can be used in lots of situations : to create exclusive content, mark a step in an educational plan, share videos with people trusted by the ones you trust…

On their PeerTube account, creators can now set a single password when they upload, import or update the settings of their videos.

But with our REST API, admins and developers can take it a step further. They can set and store as many passwords as they want, thus easily give and revoke access to videos.

This feature was the work of Wicklow, during his internship with us.

Video storyboard : preview what’s coming !

If you like to peruse your videos online, you might be used to hover the progress bar with your mouse or finger. Usually, a preview of the frame appears as a thumbnail : that’s called a storyboard feature, and that’s now available in PeerTube !

Please note that as Storyboards are only generated when uploading (or importing) a video, they will only be available for new videos of instances that upgraded to v6…

Or you can ask, very kindly, to your admin(s) that they use the magical npm run create-generate-storyboard-job command (warning : this task might need some CPU power), and generate storyboards for older videos.

Upload a new version of your video !

Sometimes, video creators want to update a video, to correct a mistake, offer new information… or just to propose a better cut of their work !

Now, with PeerTube, they can upload and replace an older version of their video. Though the older video file will be permanently erased (no backsies !), creators will keep the same URL, title and infos, comments, stats, etc.

Obviously, such a feature requires trust between videomakers and admins, who don’t want to be responsible for a cute kitten video being « updated » into an awful advertisement for cat-hating groups.

That’s why such a feature will only be available if admins choose to enable it on their PeerTube platforms, and will display a « Video re-upload » tag on updated videos.

Get chapters in your videos !

Creators can now add chapters to their videos on PeerTube. In a video settings page, they’ll get a new « chapters » tab where they’ll only need to specify the timecode and title of each chapter for PeerTube to add it.

If they import their video from another platform (cough YouTube cough), PeerTube should automatically recognize and import chapters set on this distant video.

When chapters are set, markers will appear and segment the progress bar. Chapter titles will be displayed when you hover or touch one of those chapters segments.

Stress tests, performance and config recommandations

Last year, thanks to French indie journalist David Dufresne’s Au Poste ! livestream show and his hoster Octopuce, we got a livestream stress test with more than 400 simultaneous viewers : see the report here on Octopuce’s blog[FR].

Such tests are really helpful to understand where we can improve PeerTube to reduce bottlenecks, improve performance, and give advice on the best configuration for a PeerTube server if an admin plans on getting a lot of traffic.

That’s why this year, we have decided to realize more tests, with a thousand simultaneous users simulated both in livestream and classic video streaming conditions. Lots of thanks and datalove to Octopuce for helping us deploy our test infrastructure.

We will soon publish a report with our conclusions and recommended server configurations depending on usecases (late 2023, early 2024). In the meantime, early tests motivated us to add many performances improvements into this v6, such as (brace yourselves for the technical terms) :

• Process unicast HTTP job in worker threads
• Sign ActivityPub requests in worker threads
• Optimize recommended videos HTTP request
• Optimize videos SQL queries when filtering on lives or tags
• Optimize /videos/{id}/views endpoint with many viewers
• Add ability to disable PeerTube HTTP logs

…and there’s always more !

A new major version always comes with its lot of changes, improvements, bugfixes, etc. You can read the complete log here, but here are the highlights :

• We needed to settle a technical debt : v6 removes support for WebTorrent to focus on HLS (with WebRTC P2P). Both are technical bricks used to get peer-to-peer streaming in web browsers, but HLS is more fitted to what we are doing (and plan to do) with PeerTube
• The video player is more efficient
  • It is not being rebuilt anymore every time the video changes
  • It keeps your watching settings (speed, fullscreen, etc.) when the video changes
  • It automatically adjust its size to match the video ratio
• We have improved SEO, to help videos hosted on a PeerTube platform appear higher in the search results of search engines
• We worked a lot on improving PeerTube’s accessibility on many levels, to streamline the experience of people with disabilities.

Click to support us and help push Yetube back – CC-By Illustration David Revoy

What about PeerTube’s future ?

With YouTube waging war against adblockers, Twitch increasingly exploiting streamers, and everyone becoming more and more aware of the toxicity of this system… PeerTube is getting traction, recognition and a growing community.

We have so many announcements to make about the future we plan for PeerTube, that we will publish a separate news, in two weeks. We are also planning on hosting an « Ask Us Anything » livestream, to answer the questions you’d have about PeerTube.

Please stay tuned by subscribing to PeerTube’s Newsletter, following PeerTube’s Mastodon account or keeping an eye on the Framablog.

Click to support us and help Sepia push back Videoraptor – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

Thank you for supporting PeerTube and Framasoft

In the meantime, we want to remind you that all these developments were achieved by only one full-time payed developer, an intern, and a fabulous community (lots of datalove to Chocobozzz, Wicklow, and the many, many contributors : y’all are amazing !)

Framasoft being a French not-for-profit mainly funded by grassroots donations (75 % of our yearly income comes from people like you and us), PeerTube development has been funded by two main sources :

• French-speaking FOSS enthusiasts
• Grants from the NGI initiative, through NLnet (in 2021 & 2023)

If you are a non-French-speaking PeerTube aficionado, please consider supporting our work by making a donation to Framasoft. It will greatly help us fund our many, many projects, and balance our 2024 budget.

Once again this year we need you, your support, your sharing to help us regain ground on the toxic GAFAM web and multiply the number of ethical digital spaces. So we’ve asked David Revoy to help us present this on our support Framasoft page, which we invite you to visit (because it’s beautiful) and above all to share as widely as possible :

If we are to balance our budget for 2024, we have five weeks to raise €176,425 : we can’t do it without your help !

Support Framasoft

Thanks again for supporting PeerTube,
Framasoft’s team.

The aim of this long article is to take stock of the Framaspace project (an associative cloud based on Nextcloud) a little over a year after its announcement.

Once upon a time there was Frama.space

Remember, a year ago we announced (in French, sorry !) one of Framasoft’s most ambitious projects : Frama.space.

For those of you who weren’t there, or who don’t remember, the desire to set up Frama.space was based on three things.

The first is that things are fucked. Politically, socially, geopolitically, ecologically and so on. Of course, you may think otherwise, but we don’t think the world is going very well…

The second observation is that civil society, caricatured here as associations and trade unions, is under attack from all sides. The pressure to depoliticise associations, the reduction of their funding in favour of « impact companies » or the start-up nation, the attacks on freedom of association… All this is eroding the capacity of the voluntary sector to respond to needs that the market cannot meet. It is becoming increasingly difficult to balance a social contract that is being undermined by both business and government.

Finally, closer to Framasoft, digital technology has become a tool for organising people, but also for taking action. However, this rather positive observation is countered by two more negative observations. Firstly, digital technology is a tool for surveillance and alienation. And secondly, associations are lagging behind both in terms of use and consistency (The report in the link is in French, sorry !). Associations working for an ecological transition, for example, will use the tools and services of GAFAM, which play a large part in the problem they are trying to solve.

Frama.space : (Next)cloud for non-profit organisations

A year ago we announced a new Framasoft service : Frama.space.

Its mission ? To equip the ‘contributing society’. In other words, to digitally equip « off-market » associations and groups. Whether it’s the AMAP in FarFarAway-town, the community café in Bernache-sur-Yvette or the queer theatre collective in Cygne-lès-Lavaur.

We believe that these associations and collectives need (and even want) to rediscover the coherence between their values, their actions and their tools. It seems contradictory to us, for example, to be an association committed to « zero waste » and still use Google or Microsoft tools.

Please note that this is not a value judgement on our part. We fully understand that there may be contradictions and legitimate objections (it is perfectly possible to be concerned about the fate of the planet and still drive your children to a weekly sports activity 20km away).

However, we believe it is important that these structures have the choice to have easy access to tools that are not based on the mechanisms of surveillance capitalism.

Framaspace interface (« Files » application)

Nextcloud : an imperfect solution (but a solution nonetheless)

Framaspace includes the collaborative online office suites Collabora Online and OnlyOffice. Here is a screenshot of a spreadsheet being edited directly in the browser.

 

The software has a lot of room for improvement (in terms of UX, technical debt, performance, etc.), but… it’s still the best horse in the stable.

What’s more, its community is large (over 60 million users worldwide) and quite active, which gives us hope for the future.

We have therefore decided to base our Framaspace offering on this software, proposing a technically ambitious offering capable of eventually hosting up to 10,000 Framaspace spaces (and therefore as many instances of the Nextcloud software). To achieve this, we have built a substantial technical infrastructure (the video link is in French, sorry !) and developed homemade software tools (free of charge, of course) to validate registration requests and automatically provision new spaces very quickly, with just a few clicks.

Commented interface for CHARON, the software developed by Framasoft that allows us to manage Framaspace applications. (Commentary in French, but if you want more information on this point, ask us in the comments section bellow !)

 

But enough of reminiscing : if you want to know more about the ambitions behind Framaspace, you can watch two videos :

• The political presentation of the project (in French), by Pierre-Yves Gosset, project coordinator, at the Capitole du Libre (November 2022) ;
• The technical presentation of the project (in French), by Luc Didry and Thomas Citharel, technical managers of the project, at the ESUP Nextcloud Day (June 2023).

Taking stock, calmly

Frama.space becomes Framaspace.org

First of all, we already had to change the name because the .space extension increased the likelihood that emails containing frama.space addresses would be considered spam. This was obviously the fault of the email giants (article in French, sorry !), but we couldn’t accept a solution that would interfere with the normal use of the platform. So we decided to use a domain name with a more traditional but longer extension : framaspace.org.The transition is underway and will take place in stages as there is no rush.We also announced that we have four objectives :

1. Facilitate access to Nextcloud/Framaspace
2. Raise awareness of Nextcloud/Framaspace
3. Contribute to the creation of a French-speaking Nextcloud/Framaspace community
4. Use Nextcloud/Framaspace as an empowerment tool

This first anniversary is therefore a good time to take stock of each of these objectives.

Functional assessment : does it work or not ?

Yes, it does !

While you are reading these lines, more than 700 spaces are active. This means that Framasoft provides tools to 700 associations and groups. And the feedback is very positive !

We have been able to carry out complex operations without too much difficulty. For example, we’ve carried out major upgrades of Nextcloud (from version 25 to version 26) with very limited downtime (less than 2 minutes per space).

As far as the technical infrastructure is concerned, there are occasional potholes, but the infrastructure is holding up !

For example, at the end of 2022 we noticed that there was a problem with our office suite management system. With the year-end holidays just around the corner, followed by intense preparations for the Framasoft AGM, we decided to suspend registration and take the time needed to develop a long-term solution. We reopened the registration in March 2023. So, in case you missed the news : it’s perfectly possible to register your association or collective on https://framaspace.org !

The fact that it’s Framasoft that manages the technical aspects can have certain disadvantages (we limit the number of accounts, disk space or Nextcloud plugins you can use). However, this outsourcing makes life much easier for the users (who, in most cases, would find it very difficult to maintain over time an instance of Nextcloud software that they would have installed ‘manually’).

In one year, we have gone from 0 to more than 700 spaces managed by Framasoft. We therefore consider this functional assessment to be more than satisfactory.

Click to support us and push Demon Drive away – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

Public awareness

One of Framaspace’s objectives is also to raise awareness of Nextcloud and the Framaspace offer (or similar offers elsewhere, in particular at CHATONS).

To this end, in 2023 we will :

• 3 conferences : Capitole du Libre 2022, Capitole du Libre 2023, OSXP ;
• 2 interviews : NextINpact, Techologie ;
• published 3 articles about Framaspace : Association Mode d’Emploi, NextINpact, ZDNet ;
• participated in 1 workshop/webinar : « Collaborate effectively with Nextcloud« , at Solidatech, in partnership with Arawa ;
• 1 newsletter distributed : Lettre d’information Framaspace #1.

On a report card, we could write : « Not bad, but can do better ».

« Community » review

This concerns our desire to build a community of French-speaking Nextcloud users in the long term.

To this end, we have :

• Opened a community-based help forum : 148 accounts created and 542 messages exchanged
• published a series of tutorials on the forum
• carried out a survey on satisfaction and expectations about Framaspace (presented at the CHATONS camp and results to be published soon).

This part of the project got off to a rather slow start, but that’s quite logical, because for various reasons we were not able to devote as much time to this part of the project in 2023 as we would have liked.

Empowerment assessment

This part of the project is planned for 2025. There were no plans to work on it in 2023. So it’s logical that we haven’t made any progress on it.

The 5 key points of this « empowerment » slide : Disseminating information / Working together to identify needs / Transforming uses / Federation / Pooling funding for certain functionalities

Project stats

Here are some numbers to give you a more objective view of the first year. If you’re not interested, you can skip to the « Review of the review » section :-)

Typology of the structures

Breakdown by type of structure

Breakdown of spaces by type of structure (Colours explained below)

 

Description :

• 72 % associations under the law of 1901(yellow) ;
• 22 % informal groups (pink) ;
• 5 % trade unions (green) ;
• 1 % associations under the 1907 law (mixed/cultural associations) (blue).

Breakdown by activity

Description (note : organisations could choose more than one topic) :

• A first « block » of more than 250 organisations in the following sectors or themes Education/training, environment, culture, social affairs ;
• a second « block » of more than 100 organisations claiming to be active in the following sectors or themes : Friendship/Mutual Aid, Leisure, Defence of Fundamental Rights, Political Activities, Economy and Social Affairs : Amicale / Entraide, Loisirs, Défense des droits fondamentaux, Activités politiques, Économie ;
• a final « block » of less than 100 organisations claiming to be active in the following sectors or themes : Sport, Health, Research, Justice, Spiritual or philosophical activities, Tourism.

Breakdown by year in which the structure was created

Description : 50 % of the 700 spaces correspond to structures created in 2017 or later. Even if a dozen structures existed before 1950, we can deduce that the Framaspace public as a whole represents rather recent structures.

Breakdown by number of persons employed

Description and comments : 500 of the spaces (71 % of the total) are structures with no employees. There are a few structures with more than 20 employees, but these are often « anomalies » (for example, the space is created for a local trade union group, which indicates the number of employees of the national trade union).

Breakdown by number of members

Description : Half of the spaces represent organisations with less than 30 members. 75 % say they have 100 members or less.

Breakdown by number of beneficiaries

Description : Half of the spaces represent organisations claiming to reach 100 people or more. There are a few organisations claiming to reach more than 25,000 people, but these are often « anomalies » (for example, the space is created for a local trade union group, which indicates the number of beneficiaries of the national trade union).

Breakdown by annual budget

Description : 150 organisations did not wish to answer this question. Of the remaining 550 organisations, half said they had an annual budget of less than €4,000 (around a hundred organisations even said they had a budget of €0). About 25 % of the organisations reported having a budget between €4,000 and €50,000 (which can be correlated with organisations having at least one⋅e employee⋅e). A handful of organisations report a budget of more than €50,000/year, but again these are mostly ‘statistical anomalies’.

Examples of structures

NB : These associations have presented themselves publicly on the Framaspace forum, so we have no problem with their identity or purpose being made public.

For example :

« Hello. We’re the « Les petits pois sont verts » association in Clamart. Our aim is to imagine and build a way of life based on solidarity and respect for the environment by .. :

• Bringing together people in Clamart who share the same motivations,
• encouraging local dynamism
• supporting projects,
• gathering and disseminating information.

We are only a few years old and we advocate the use of free and sober digital technology.

We use the following Framasoft tools Framapad, Framadate and recently Frama.space. »

Or again :

« The Association des Cavaliers Au Long Cours (CALC) is a French-speaking association with about 200 members from all over the world (our most distant member is in Kyrgyzstan !), but mainly from Western European countries. Our aim is to develop long-distance travel with a mounted and/or covered animal (horse, donkey, mule, etc.). We also help would-be travellers with their organisation and provide assistance to travellers in difficulty ».

Other examples :

• Plan B – Breton Pop Education Association (Rennes)
• AMAP of St Vallier de Thiey (Alpes Maritimes)
• La Gonette – local currency for citizens (Lyon)
• Les amis du Portique – Journal of Philosophy and Human Sciences
• Les Pieds à Terre – environmental education (Haute-Loire)
• Family planning in the Aude
• …

Use of structures

Office suites used

Distribution of Framaspaces between Collabora Online and OnlyOffice

 

NB : The overrepresentation of Collabora Online is due to the fact that it is the office suite offered by default. The administrator of the instance can switch to OnlyOffice if they wish, but very few do.

Usage stats

• Number of active
  • Active : 700
  • Rejected : 14
  • Deactivated (by their administrators) 10
• Accounts (admins + users) : 3,356
  • Average : 4.8 accounts ; Median : 2 accounts
• Hosted user files : 760,939 for 860 GB (excluding revisions and recycle bin)
  • 131 GB in recycle bin
  • 99 % of spaces have created at least one file
• Connections :
  • 198 rooms connected in the last 3 days
  • 390 rooms connected in the last 15 days

Number of accounts

Description : almost 300 rooms have only one account (necessarily the « admin » account). This means that 40 % of the spaces have no collaborative use with other users. However, we did find cases where the space admin did have collaborative uses with other people in his or her association (for example, by using shared folders, with or without passwords). This means – all the same – that 60 % of the spaces have several users. 42 % even have 5 or more users.

Used disk space

Description : almost all spaces have used their file space (only 2 % have never created a file). It is interesting to note that less than 20 % of the spaces use more than 1 GB (out of a maximum of 40 GB per space).

Number of files

Description : 50 % of the rooms have more than 250 user files. This is a good « surprise » in our opinion : it means that Framaspace is quite useful (either for storing or sharing files).

 

Balance sheet

Expenses

At present, the technical infrastructure (computer servers) of Framaspace costs us about 1,200 € per month (i.e. about 15,000 € per year). The cost of the work, estimated by the very inaccurate LaLouche Institute, is around €20,000 of investment before the launch of the project. Since the start of the project, we’ve been able to estimate this figure at around €2,000 per month (3 people involved, working very, very part-time on this project). So, roughly speaking, Framaspace has cost Framasoft around €60,000.

Income

The income side is a bit more complex.

Framaspace is a project reserved for small associations and solidarity groups, and it is deliberately free. We don’t want the price to be a barrier to access. And we don’t want to set a « free price », because a price means a service sold, a service provided, an invoice and obligations (contractual, accounting and fiscal). We voluntarily choose to donate without expecting any financial compensation (which does not mean that we cannot hope for it 😉 ).

It is likely that some members of the associations we host have made a donation to Framasoft. However, we do not want to earmark donations for Framasoft projects. For accounting purposes, a donation earmarked for a project must go into a dedicated fund that must be used for that project. However, we would like donations to Framasoft to be able to finance « loss-making » projects, which is exactly what Framaspace is doing in this first year.

For the sake of simplicity we can say that the income is… €0 ! 😱

Cost per space

From the above data, we can deduce that the cost of a space (so far) is €86 per year (or €7 per month, of which €1.8 per month is infrastructure costs).

However, the infrastructure costs are not expected to change too much and the labour costs are expected to increase slightly by 2024, while the number of spaces could triple or quadruple. Let us assume a total cost of €60,000 (for 2023) + €15,000 for the servers in 2024 + €36,000 in labour costs. This gives a total of €111,000 by the end of 2024. Assuming 2,500 active spaces at the end of 2024, the total cost would be €45 per space per year (i.e. €3.7 per month, including €1/month for infrastructure costs). These costs could fall further in 2025.

It’s a significant cost, and few associations can afford this type of project, which does not aim to be profitable or even break even.

However, we believe that the political importance of this project means that we have to take this risk. We hope (more from experience than naivety) that the associations that can afford it will support Framasoft (and indirectly Framaspace) financially.

Review of the review

The news is pretty good !

Framaspace meme using biologist Richard Dawkins’ famous line about science, « It works, Bitches ». (context ; PeerTube video)

 

First of all, Framaspace works :)
Managing 700 Nextcloud instances in one year isn’t bad, is it ? Especially since outsourcing is going pretty well (for now !).

Secondly, we’ve managed to reach the audience we wanted to reach : associations (registered or de facto) that are fairly small, with small budgets. Most of them focus on education, the environment, social or cultural issues. Which is hardly surprising given Framasoft’s target audience.

Finally, Framaspace is used. More than half the spaces have regular connections. And people handle quite a lot of files (rather small files, which explains why very few spaces use more than one GB of the maximum 40 GB allowed).

We feel that our 2023 goals have been more than adequately met in terms of actions 🎉 We could even say that it’s a success given the resources we’ve invested.

Offering « locked » spaces (for example, you can’t install the Nextcloud plugins of your choice on Framaspace, and only small associations or collectives can open a Framaspace) has had the expected frustrating effect. In fact, we have regularly referred people frustrated by these limitations to friendly structures such as Zaclys, IndieHosters, Cloud Girofle, Paquerette, Arawa, etc. This shows that we’re not taking a « slice of the cake », but helping to make it bigger.

Click on Li, Framaspace’s unicorn mascot, to support Framasoft. – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

Framaspace in 2024 (and 2025)

As you may have read in our ‘assessment of the assessment’, Framaspace is meeting a need, and Framasoft believes the response is pretty good. It’s far from perfect, of course, but for a small association that wants to get out of the box and align its values with its digital tools, Framaspace could be the answer.

But we’re not going to stop there ! Framaspace is still in beta testing (and will probably be until the end of 2025 !) and many improvements are still to come 😀.

Support

First of all, we’re going to keep hosting spaces. Now that Framaspace is more stable, we think we can pick up the pace and host 2,500 spaces by the end of 2024 (i.e. more than triple the current number. Don’t worry !).

Next, we’ll continue our outsourcing initiatives. For example, by moving from Nextcloud 26 to Nextcloud 27 in late 2023 or early 2024. Each version brings a host of new features (see our friends at Arawa who give a summary presentation here and here).

On the support side, we want to produce a bit of a special tutorial. In fact, many tutorials already exist (we highlight the Coopaname one, produced by La Dérivation). But this type of tutorial doesn’t meet everyone’s needs. That’s why we want to produce a more narrative and immersive tutorial. A « tutorial in which you are the hero » (or « tricks in which you are the heroine », if you prefer). Inspired by « Books in which you are the hero« , the user⋅ice will embody a character who has to carry out various missions with his or her Framaspace room. The special feature is that certain « quests » can either be bypassed (for example, if the user⋅ice already knows how to create a user⋅ice account) or explored in more depth (for example, on file sharing).

Scenario under construction for a « tutorial in which you are the hero ». Sorry, the translator didn’t have the courage to translate every box !

 

We also want to provide documentation (and facilitation tools) to facilitate migration from OneDrive, Dropbox or GoogleDrive, and to simplify import/export between Nextcloud instances. For example, an association that has reached the 50 account limit on its Framaspace space and wants to migrate to a more powerful Nextcloud with our friends at IndieHosters would be able to transfer its data – files, calendars, contacts, etc. – in a more automated way.

Finally, we are aware that one of the major weaknesses of Nextcloud (and by extension Framaspace) is the difficulty of « onboarding » novices to a (too ?) rich and sometimes (very ?) confusing interface. That’s why we want to integrate the free IntroJS tool into Nextcloud to highlight certain parts of the software and make it easier to learn. See the video below.

 

Video demonstration of how IntroJS has been integrated into Nextcloud to make it easier to learn.

Still on the subject of getting started, we’re working with designer Marie-Cécile Godwin, who teaches at the Strate design school, to get her students thinking about how Nextcloud could be improved from a UX and UI perspective.

Raising awareness of Nextcloud

In 2024, we will of course continue our efforts to make Nextcloud better known in the French-speaking world.

For example, we have already subtitled a number of Nextcloud presentation videos in French. But we’d like to go further. For example, we’d like to redo the voice-overs or translate the documentation (flyers, brochures, etc.).

 

Video of a Nextcloud promotional video, originally in English only and subtitled by Framasoft.

Framasoft will also continue to promote Nextcloud and Framaspace through conferences, webinars, interviews, etc.

We will also continue to share our experience and feedback with the CHATONS community, many of whose members offer services based on Nextcloud. We think we’ve acquired a certain amount of knowledge and know-how around Nextcloud, but above all we know that we still have a lot to learn.

Finally, we’re going to start getting in touch with the heads of associative networks (Collectif Associations Citoyennes, Mouvement Associatif, popular education networks, but also networks such as Associations Mode d’Emploi, Solidatech, Associathèque, etc.) to present Framaspace, and highlight what Nextcloud can do (or can’t do !) in terms of collaborative ethical digital technology. The ultimate aim is to assess its relevance as a « digital commons of general interest » for associations.

Framaspace & Nextcloud user community

In 2024, we will continue our work to promote, animate and coordinate a community of Nextcloud software users on the Framaspace forum.

We will also publish a website for the OPEN-L Observatory (« Observatory of Free Digital Practices and Experiences »), which will publicly host the various surveys (and their results !) that Framasoft will have conducted among its audiences. This site will be open to other organisations wishing to share their feedback. The aim is not to reinvent the wheel, but to make it easier to objectify the needs (and frustrations) of users.

Of course, we will continue to improve both Framaspace and Nextcloud. We’re lucky (and happy) to have Thomas, one of the world’s leading contributors from outside Nextcloud GmbH, on our staff.

• His contributions to the heart of Nextcloud
• Its contributions to the Nextcloud calendar app
• The applications that Framasoft maintains for the Nextcloud community :
  • https://github.com/nextcloud/registration/
  • https://framagit.org/framasoft/nextcloud/csp_editor
  • https://framagit.org/framasoft/nextcloud/login-notes
  • https://framagit.org/framasoft/nextcloud/drop_account
  • https://framagit.org/framasoft/nextcloud/holiday_calendars (now abandoned as it has been integrated into the calendar app)

This means that Framasoft (through Framadrive, Framagenda and now Framaspace) is taking a very active part in this digital commons that is the Nextcloud software.

On a more ‘internal’ note, in the coming months we should be increasing our capacity to work on the Framaspace project within Framasoft : Thomas, currently the lead developer on Mobilizon, will shift up to 50 % of his time to Framaspace, and Pierre-Yves, currently co-director of Framasoft, will leave this role to concentrate on the association’s digital services (including Framaspace, of course).

Empowering ‘off-market’ structures

We have many policy ambitions for the Framaspace project (see our launch article – only in French, sorry !).

To achieve this, we will use surveys to gather information about the needs (both functional and more political) of the structures we host. Depending on the results, and if resources allow, we will be able to adapt Framaspace to the needs of its users.

We have noticed that in the associations we support, the issue of digital tools often lies with one or two volunteers, who sometimes struggle to implement a change management policy or convince their board. So we also want to produce « practical information sheets » to make life easier for these key people. « For example, we’ll look at how to carry out a digital diagnosis of my association, or how to convince my board to switch from Gdrive or Dropbox to Framaspace.

Finally, and we are aware of the high demand for this item, we would like to pool funding for new features in Framaspace.

We will focus on :

• The possibility of managing your members in Framaspace (members, categories, identity card, subscriptions, membership reminders, etc.) using the (fabulous) free association management software Paheko ;
• The possibility of managing your association’s accounts (data entry, balance sheet, profit and loss, choice of chart of accounts, etc.), again thanks to Paheko ;
• the possibility of quickly creating visual communication tools using the Aktivisda software (see the example of the Alternatiba association) ;
• allow associations that wish to do so to publish pages presenting their structure and activities. To do this, we want to make it possible to publish a mini-website presenting the organisation (written in Framaspace’s « Collectives » application).

Help Li, Framaspace’s unicorn mascot, Push back Demondrive by supporting Framasoft ! – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

Click to support us – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

If we are to balance our budget for 2024, we have six weeks to raise €183,478 : we can’t do it without your help !

Support Framasoft

A year ago, we launched our 2022-2025 roadmap, « Collectivising the Internet, Convivialising the Internet ». The aim : to encourage the adoption of user-friendly web tools by groups that share the values of Free/Libre culture.

One year on, we are proud and delighted to present this first full update on our activities, funded (as always) by your donations.

Click on Coin-Coin to support Framasoft – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

Changing the world, one web corner at a time

Click to support us and push Datavöre away – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

The actions of Collectivise / Convivialise Internet (« Collectivisons Internet / Convivialisons Internet » aka « Coin-coin » (qwack qwack, in French), hence the mascot) complement and add to the maintenance of our historical actions : online services and software tools, sharing experience, various contributions and collaborations.

As we wrote last year on this blog, the goal remains the same : to ensure that there are more and more bubbles of ethical web, in order to regain ground on the toxic digital world occupied by the tech giants.

This blogpost is a very quick summary of our end-of-year campaign. It aims to give you a general idea of what your donations are going towards. If you’re interested, we’ll be posting details of the key actions in this report on this blog every Tuesday (if everything goes well©) until the end of the year.

Support Framasoft

Framaspace, solidarity collectives get to grips with this convivial cloud

We said it back in 2022 : Framaspace is our most ambitious project in this new roadmap. By the end of 2025, we aim to provide up to 10,000 collaborative cloud spaces based on Nextcloud software for small groups of people to work together.

We’ll be covering Framaspace news in detail during the week of Nov. 21st :

Push back Demondrive by supporting Framasoft – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

• The first year of Framaspace
  • A high demand, already almost 700 Framaspaces open ;
  • …and even more if you ask here for one for your (French-speaking only) collective ;
  • Lessons learned from this beta release ;
  • the first needs expressed by the beneficiaries ;
  • technical improvements, updates, maintenance, etc.
• In the pipeline for next year(s)
  • Preparation of tools to make it easier for newcomers to use the system ;
  • Ideas for « tutorials where you are the hero » (or « schemes where you are the heroine » ?) ;
  • future explorations : the possibility of publishing websites, or even managing members and accounts ?

Support Framasoft

PeerTube : a v6 based on your ideas

We’ve been developing this software for six years, and once it’s installed on a server, it can be used to create an ethical alternative to YouTube, Twitch, Vimeo and so on.

The technical possibilities offered by PeerTube all serve the same purpose : to allow you to host and distribute your videos and live streams, even (and especially) if you don’t have the money of Google or the server farms of Amazon.

The features that we will describe in detail during the week of Nov. 28th have been selected from your ideas :

Click to support us and push Videoraptor away – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

• Version 5.1 (March 2023)
  • Moderation of account requests ;
  • Back to live.
• Version 5.2 (June 2023)
  • Major work on transcoding that can be offloaded to a remote server ;
  • Replay visibility ;
  • RSS feed adapted for podcasts.
• Version 6 (end of November 2023)
  • Improved accessibility ;
  • Image preview in progress bar ;
  • Videos chapters ;
  • Uploading a new version of a video ;
  • Password protection for videos ;
  • Live load & stress tests (report to be published later).

Support Framasoft

Mobilizon, the final countdown of the battle…

…for Framasoft !

After 4 years of development, we feel we’ve completed our vision for Mobilizon. Once this v4 is released, we hope that your groups will have the features they need to organise themselves around their events, and emancipate themselves from Facebook or Meetup.

That’s why during the week of Dec. 5th, we’ll be talking in detail about :

Click to support us and push Face Ghoûl away – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

• Version 3.1 (March 2023)
  • Ability to enter an unlisted address ;
  • Anti-spam tools.
• Version 4 (December 2023)
  • Import events from other platforms (MeetUp, Facebook, etc.) ;
  • Message from organisers to participants.
• The future
  • We will provide security updates ;
  • We will maintain the French-speaking instance Mobilizon.fr ;
  • Other groups already have plans to develop Mobilizon with new ambitions…
  • …and there is always room for your own vision !

Support Framasoft

PeerTube (yes, again ! but…) in 2024 : we’re betting big on its success

The toxicity of YouTube, Twitch and the like is becoming increasingly visible… More and more groups, institutions and content creators discover and use PeerTube. In 2023, we’ve been working hard internally to better support this burgeoning success and give PeerTube every chance to succeed.

That’s why, during the week of Dec. 12th, we’ll be talking specifically about :

Click to support us and push Yetube away – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

• The roadmap to PeerTube v7 (end 2024)
  • Export and import tool for your account ;
  • Accessibility audit and recommendations integration ;
  • Comment moderation tool (for admins and video-makers) ;
  • Keyword list moderation tool ;
  • Separation of audio and video streams (opens up future possibilities) ;
  • Addition of « zero pixel » resolution (receive audio only) ;
  • Recategorisation of sensitive content (more detailed than SFW/NSFW) ;
  • Redesign of the video management area ;
  • Redesigning the interface following a user experience (UX) audit.
• Investing even more in PeerTube to give it a better chance of growing its audience, starting in 2024
  • Promote the PeerTube ecosystem (newsletter, social media, etc.) ;
  • Work on a « showcase » instance of PeerTube ;
  • Hire a second developer (from September 2023) ;
    • Threefold goal : master 270,000 lines of code, encourage contributions, but above all…
• …Official PeerTube mobile application (end of 2024)
  • Based on design work (survey, mock-ups, etc.) ;
  • For Android, iOS (🤞)… and ideally AndroidTV ;
  • First version : discover and watch videos (search, playlists, subscriptions, notifications).

Support Framasoft

Émancip’Asso : professional training, MOOC, website…

Conceived in partnership with Animafac, the Émancip’Asso project aims to train service providers to understand and support associations in their transition to ethical web tools.

A lot of work has already been done this year and we’ll be talking about it during the week of Dec. 19th :

Click to support us and push Toxicloud away – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

• Organisation of face-to-face professional training (January 2023)
• Publication of the MOOC « Developing a range of services to support associations in their ethical digital transition », the extended version of the face-to-face professional training course, aimed at anyone wishing to start or improve their support skills.
  • MOOC with free and independent participation ;
  • Understand the non-profit sector and its digital applications ;
  • To master the support methods used by non-profit organisations ;
  • Design and promote a range of services tailored to this ecosystem ;
  • Not forgetting networking in order to work together more effectively.
• Design and publication of the Émancip’Asso website
  • A list of service providers who can support associations in their transition process ;
  • A space for associations to help each other ;
  • Access to additional resources ;
• What’s next for 2024
  • To increase the number of support services listed ;
  • A campaign to promote the system to associations ;
  • Active community management.

Support Framasoft

Digital empowerment with practical tools

To end the year on a high note, we’d like to talk about the hard work we’re doing on the practical, concrete tools we offer.

Whether it’s our « De-google-ify internet » services or our historical directory of free software, these tools enable more than 1.5 million people every month to break free from the tech giants and their toxic tools.

During the week of Dec. 26th, if you’ve been good (or naughty), we’ll announce :

Click to support us and push MS Blue Scream away – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

• Framalibre, the free software directory
  • Complete overhaul of the directory following design surveys ;
  • Still collaborative, with a priori moderation (to fight spam) ;
  • (under the hood) New static engine, easy to use entries ;
  • Fluid and simplified interface, adapted to mobile phones ;
  • Simple search (search bar, tags) ;
  • Software recommendations ;
  • « Small sites » tool : create your own pages to recommend your favorite FOSSes.
  

  Click to support us and push Hydroffice away – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

• « De-google-ify internet » services
  • Almost 10 years of existence !
  • Our annual usage statistics ;
  • Maintenance, backups, updates ;
  • Huge work to fight spam ;
  • The success of Framagroupes…
  • …and the campaign to renew the services (we have lots of ideas !)

Support Framasoft

All the work we can’t describe in 7 weeks…

If you’ve read through the 94 pages of our 2022 Activity Report (FR), you’ve already guessed : it’s very difficult to summarize everything our small association is doing.

But just because we won’t be devoting a week to each of the following projects doesn’t mean that nothing has happened…

So here’s what we won’t have time to go into until the end of the year :

• CHATONS Collective (ethical web service providers)
  • Framasoft has been dedicating paid time to the collective for 6 years now ;
  • Organisation of the CHATONS camp (August 2023) ;
  • This is our last year of coordinating the collective ;
  • Major transmission and support work, allowing it to become autonomous ;
  • Self-managed internal debates have already taken place ;
  • Framasoft remains a member of the collective, we just stop coordinating it.
• ECHO Network (European exchange project on ethical digital support for citizens)
  • Co-organisation of the inaugural seminar in Paris (January 2023) ;
  • Study visit to Berlin (March 2023) ;
  • Brussels study visit (June 2023) ;
  • Rome study visit (September 2023) ;
  • Zagreb study visit planned for early December 2023 ;
  • In 2024, pooling shared experiences into practical tools.
• Peer.Tube (showcase of quality content broadcast on PeerTube)
  • Prioritized the development of PeerTube in 2023 ;
  • Work planned for 2024 (content promotion, showcase, community of curators, etc.).

Support Framasoft

« Coin-Coin VS Datavöre » – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

Seven weeks to balance our budget for 2024

If Framasoft is able to employ not 10 but 11 people, to rent nearly 57 servers, to travel all over France (and beyond), and to finance everything it does in the digital commons… It is all thanks to your donations.

Your donations are and will remain our main source of funding, allowing us to act freely and in complete independence.

This year again, we need you, your support, your sharing, to help us regain ground on the toxic GAFAM web, and multiply ethical digital spaces.

So we’ve asked David Revoy to help us present this off on our « Support Framasoft » page, which we invite you to visit (because it’s beautiful) and above all to share as widely as possible :

Click to support us – Illustration CC-By David Revoy

If we want to complete our budget for 2024, we have seven weeks left to raise 200 000 € : we won’t make it without your help !

Support Framasoft

We sincerely hope that this report and outlook will inspire you and (if you can) make you proud to support Framasoft.

Report on the week in Brussels.

Cliquez ici pour lire l’article en français.

Brussels’ Grand Place under the sun

TLDR (too long, I didn’t read it) : It was just too much fun ! You can feel that the bonds between participants are getting stronger, and that the methods of popular/permanent/active/new education (place the term of your choice before education) are bearing fruit !

That week, from June 12 to 17, 2023, Brussels was bathed in sunshine.

A crosswalk in LGBT+ colors leading to parliament.

We were two Framasoft members : Fred and Booteille.

In ECHO Network meetings, Mondays and Fridays are dedicated to travel, since the various people are more or less far from the meeting place.

But our Belgian pals had planned a debate evening for Monday evening, so we had to arrive not too late.

Luckily, we both had trains that allowed us to arrive around noon, so we met up at the Gare du… Midi and set off together to explore the city center of the European capital in search of our hotel.

Smurf ceiling in Brussels. Comics are everywhere.

Once we’d packed up, we took a quick stroll to find a place to eat.

Brussels is a great city, where you can go from an upmarket district to a working-class one just by crossing the street. I’m sure that’s true elsewhere, but it struck us. Fred’s tip : if you want to be offered something to smoke, walk around with a guy who looks like Bob Marley.

After that, Fred wandered off while Booteille recuperated from his three nights of 3-4h in a row (he’d just come from another association’s AGM and a few parties).

So we met up directly at the DK workshop, a very nice association bar, where we were going to discuss what Framasoft is with a few dozen members of the public. The invitation had been extended by Tactic (which supports and hosts ethical digital services) and Neutrinet (a Belgian non-profit ISP) ; Tactic being one of the Belgian partners who co-organized some of the activities during our stay in Brussels.

The time, the people and the place were really nice. We were made to feel very welcome, and it was a pleasure to be with so many allies we didn’t know.

A journalist was at the party for a documentary he’s preparing on privacy. He wants to sell it to RTBF. He took video captures of the discussion.

Gerben, who works for NLnet, was there. NLNet is a foundation that funds a lot of digital projects that contribute to improving our society. PeerTube is one of these projects.

On the first evening, we had a meal downtown with the ECHO partners. For Booteille, who was bursting with fatigue, it was particularly difficult to start exchanging in English that evening.

On Tuesday, we kicked off the first day of activities at Maxima, a very nice third-party association.

Everyone had arrived, despite a few people’s transport problems. There were members of Solidar Foundation, CÉMÉA Italy, CÉMÉA France, Willi Eichler Akademy, La Ligue des Familles in Belgium, Tactic, Framasoft…

It’s important to note that the theme of the week was « active education practices to raise awareness of ethical tools ».

So we started by doing some activities to get us into the spirit of the week, to start building links between participants, based – as will be the case for almost all activities – on active/permanent/popular/new education methods ; choose your favorite term among these. While not everyone agreed on the name (and some didn’t necessarily mean the same thing as others), everyone validated their interest, and that’s the important thing !

Next, we got into groups to discuss what we thought active education and popular education were and were not. We had to draw our interpretations on panels. In a few years’ time, our work may be found again, and the world may mistake it for a painting by Leonardo da Vinci. Expect the foundations of what we call « art » to change after that. There will have been a before and an after. :)

After the small-group discussions, we watched a video on Joseph Jacotot, « Peut-on enseigner sans savoir ? » (Can we teach without knowing ?).

We then presented our panels and had a large-group discussion.

In the afternoon, we did an activity based on key digital figures : money, quantity of data, pollution, place the figures given opposite the right question. Not an easy task, even for geeks. Quite a few people made corrections to the figures given after the activity, as the cards were three or four years old. This highlighted the speed at which digital technology is evolving, which is quite staggering.

Then we had a meeting with people from Code du Numérique. An ultra-cool project. They are working to build coherent legislative proposals to put to elected representatives – particularly on issues of inclusion. These proposals are developed through workshops with a wide range of people, both those who are comfortable with digital technology and those who are not. You don’t like legal issues : go and talk to these people !

There are some great videos on their website, which we recommend !

We also suggested that they be interviewed on the Framablog, because we were so enthusiastic about it.

The day ended with a review of the activities carried out. As always with popular education, you get the impression that the hours have just flown by and that you haven’t made any effort, but when you look back you realise how rich the exchanges have been and how much work has been done.

We then went for a drink and a bite to eat with some of the group. And to answer the question on your lips, yes, some people had chips !

The next day, we had a date at another venue, the PianoFabriek, in Saint-Gilles.

We had a beautiful (dance) hall with an outdoor area.

In the morning, Cécile and Annie, from the Ligue des Familles, suggested « the hidden side of clicking » as a theme, where we would discuss the attention economy.

But before that, we played a little presentation game, where each pair had to find something in common that the others didn’t have. Contrary to what you might think, many people have been on roadtrips to Spain and would like to listen to opera.

Annie and Cécile then asked us to answer 12 yes or no questions. These 12 statements are designed to help identify an addiction (see an example here) and have been adapted for use with smartphones. For example : « I feel nervous or anxious if I’ve left my smartphone at home ».

Several people in the group were a little « shocked » by the results of their answers.

Answering two (2 !) of the statements with « yes » underlines addictive behaviour. Suffice it to say that the geeks have hit the roof.

In Belgium, Fred’s addiction to Speculoos is reawakening.

We then watched the Dopamine episode on Facebook, which many people were just discovering, and discussed it with our respective small groups.

The next activity was cognitive bias bingo. The names of several biases and their descriptions were posted around the room, and a randomly selected pair of us were asked to write down the name of the bias for each description on an index card.

After this activity, we discovered Ardoino’s grid in which we had to place, first on our own and then with our groups, solutions to the problems raised by digital technology.

Were these solutions of an individual, interpersonal, group, organizational or institutional nature ? Let’s think about it !

The aim was to highlight the fact that many impactful actions are not just individual matters (you know, peeing, showering, etc.).

We ended our activities at PianoFabriek with a moving debate.

Individually, we wrote answers to « For me, active pedagogy is… » and « For me, active pedagogy is not… » on sticky notes.

After which, Alain, from CÉMÉA Belgium (who co-hosted most of the week with Sarah, also from CÉMÉA Belgium), chose a few answers and had us move around the space to indicate « I agree » or « I disagree ».

Once positioned, we were able to speak up and discuss the reasons for our position. At any moment, we could change our position, physically showing the evolution of our thinking.

We really enjoyed this form of debate.

Incidentally, we haven’t noted it yet, but it’s important to know that we mainly exchanged ideas in English, and translated into English what people who spoke in French were saying. Most people seemed to understand enough English not to translate systematically from English into French, and would indicate when there was a need for translation in that direction.

The translation work was a considerable effort, but for the people in charge of the animation, it was even more exhausting. At the ECHO Network session in Paris, those able to express themselves in English had formed a group which spent the whole week exchanging in that language. In Brussels, this was not possible. European project, European constraints !

After the PianoFabriek, we joined members of EDRI and Technopolice Brussels for an exploratory walk in public spaces (notably the Gare du Midi) in search of CCTV cameras.

These two people helped us to better understand the thinking behind the installation of cameras : « Which locations with which lenses ? » In the Gare du Midi, for example, each door is necessarily equipped with a dedicated camera. There’s also a camera in front of every staircase leading up to the platforms, so that faces can be clearly identified. Not to mention the store, where a camera is also pointed… at the cashier’s hands !

We noticed that there are far more cameras in the poorer neighborhoods (including Molenbeek-Saint-Jean)  than in the richer ones. One fact that impressed us : a camera was located in front of a subway station in a working-class neighborhood. Residents didn’t like it, and it was damaged. Another camera was placed much further down the street, but it monitored the same subway exit. These cameras have an impressive zoom capability.

The cost of installing a camera is estimated at €20,000, and cities are installing hundreds of them, although their effectiveness in combating crime has not been proven in the slightest.

The premises of the Belgian Cyber Security Center are packed with surveillance cameras. No, nothing. All is well.

Ha, I think it’s time to ask this but… HOW IS IT THAT IN BRUSSELS YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR BOTTLED WATER IN ALL RESTAURANTS ! NO FREE TAP WATER ! JUST WATER ! RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH ! LET’S BURN CAPITALISM !

A poster « Are you a communist ? Join us ! » we came across while wandering around Brussels.

Sorry for the outburst, it’s okay now.

For the last day, we were back at Maxima, where a number of digital, image (video) and radio players presented their projects to us, including RadioPanik, a free radio station (which makes fascinating impossible programs) and ZinTV, an organization close to social movements.

After the presentation of their projects, we had a large-group discussion on the difficulties of migrating to open-source solutions for certain structures.

During the day, we had to join either ZinTV to learn how to make video recordings, or RadioPanik to learn how to make radio.

We learned how an ultra-light portable radio transmitter works, or how to use OBS to broadcast live TV.

At the end of the day, there was a PeerTube presentation from someone who learned a little late that she had to do it, poor thing. Luckily, Booteille was on hand to answer any questions.

After that, the ECHO Network core group and I took stock of the week.

The results were really positive. The partners who didn’t really see the value of popular education methods during the first session in Paris are now convinced. The links between the different members and structures were further strengthened.

We had the feeling that we were really starting to form a body, a real group, and that we were all really moving in the same direction, which for a pan-European project like this is really motivating.

In the evening, before dinner, we attended a conference on Tyler Reigeluth‘s book, « The Intelligence of Cities, Critique of Endless Transparency ».

Before the conference, Booteille spoke on behalf of Framasoft alongside Morgane (co-organizer of the ECHO project, member of CÉMÉA France), Sarah (who was co-organizing the trip to Belgium) and Célo (member of Tactic and Neutrinet, who played an important part in organizing the activities), into the microphone of RadioPanik, which was broadcasting live.

We gave a brief presentation of our structures and the ECHO Network project.

The conference then got under way, and to be honest, we weren’t very good at it. Our ECHO Network accomplices, who had learned how to make radio and TV that very afternoon, were broadcasting the conference over the airwaves, and we couldn’t help but give them a helping hand. The PeerTube streaming of the rebroadcast had a problem, and Booteille had to get his hands dirty (Booteille’s note : In truth, they managed just fine without me, haha !).

Right after the conference, we went out to eat, drink and chat until late.

Antonio, our Croatian colleague (from Center for Peace Studies), hosted the evening. He’ll be part of the host team in Zagreb, and he’s quite a character !

Ce graffiti « Montrez-moi le budget » près de la Gare du Midi est la preuve indiscutable que pyg est passé à Bruxelles.

This « Show Me The Budget » graffiti near the Gare du Midi is indisputable proof that pyg has been to Brussels.

It’s a chilly spring in Berlin !

After a brief meeting with the first participants the day before, Tuesday will continue with the aim of getting to know each other (arrivals will continue throughout the day due to changes in the itinerary caused by the strike the day before).

Tuesday morning will begin with a visit to the Jewish Cemetery of Berlin-Weißensee, the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe. Nature takes over in this historic place.

Weißensee Jewish cemetery, between nature and history

In the afternoon we visit a former Stasi prison, Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. This visit made a particularly strong impression on us : the site was created by former prisoners, the prison wasn’t closed until 1990, and many of the people who tortured prisoners were never brought to justice. In short, a dark page of history, but one that needs to be shared (we recommend the visit !)…

The day will end with a convivial meal in a traditional restaurant.

From Wednesday, we were welcomed at the Brillat-Savarin cookery school for our exchanges, workshops and talks.

The chandelier in the entrance hall of the cookery school is just right !

The first workshop was a round-table discussion in which each participant shared his or her use of and views on social networks, and in particular TikTok, the medium that will be used in the following workshop.

To summarise :

This time of exchange therefore allowed us to see that we share the same values, difficulties and desires when it comes to social media. However, we felt that the ‘one at a time’ format lacked some dynamism in the exchanges and the opportunity for several people to discuss.

Alongside our morning discussions on social media, 2 groups of students from the Brillat-Savarin school worked on a video project. They had to produce a TikTok video (one per group) to show the impact of the European Union (1st group) and climate change (2nd group) on their work as chefs. The videos were shown to us (incredible quality in 2 hours of work !) and then we exchanged views on the topic.

What we took away from this workshop :

It was an interesting experiment, even if the plenary discussions did not allow everyone to participate.

Photo of the ECHO Network group and some of the school’s students

Funded to the tune of €500,000 by Marshall Plan leftovers, Reflect EU&US is a 2-year project (2022-2024) by the Willi Eichler Academy. Its aim ? To organise discussions between students outside the university environment, remotely and anonymously.

Reflect EU&US project logo

Points to remember :

From a technical point of view, the platform is based on the OpenTalk tool and was chosen to provide this space for free exchange, with the creation of coloured cards as avatars, making it possible to guarantee the anonymity of the participants. The choice of open source technologies was made specifically with the aim of reassuring participants so that they could exchange in complete peace of mind. This was followed by a live test of the platform with the students (in German, which didn’t allow us to understand everything !).

The afternoon continued with a talk by Peer Heinlein, director of OpenTalk, on « True digital independence and sovereignty are impossible without open source ». You can imagine that we at Framasoft have an opinion on this, even if we don’t feel strongly about it… Discussions with the audience followed on open source software, privacy and data encryption.

The next speaker was Maik Außendorf, representative of the Green Party in the European Parliament. Among other things, we discussed how digital technology can help the ecological transition. We learnt that German parliamentarians do not have a choice when it comes to using digital tools, and that national coherence is difficult to achieve with the decentralised organisation of Germany into Länder.

The study visit ended in a restaurant, where we had the opportunity to talk with a SeaWatch activist, highlighting the common values and reflections of the different organisations (precariousness of associations, the need to propose alternatives to the capitalist world, the need for free and emancipatory digital technologies).

This chandelier will have inspired⋅es (can you see the artistic side too ?).

Although the majority of the week was built around plenary workshops, which did not always encourage exchange between participants or spontaneous speaking, the informal times (meals, coffee breaks, walks) made it possible to create these essential moments.

What next for the ECHO network ? The second study visit took place in Brussels from 12 to 16 June. A summary article will follow on the Framablog (but as always, we’ll take our time !).

We couldn’t go to Berlin without visiting the murals on the Berlin Wall : here’s a photo of the trip to round off this article.

For further information :

• CEMÉA report on the exchange
• Framablog post « Feedback on the ECHO Network opening seminar, January 2023, Paris »

From January 14 to 16, 2023, the Ceméa France and Framasoft held the opening seminar of the ECHO Network project. Here is a report of this weekend of international exchanges and discoveries.

A two-year European project

Presented on the Framablog last October, ECHO Network is one of the four flagship projects of our roadmap Collectivisons Internet, Convivialisons Internet.

Ethical, Commons, Humans, Open-Source Network is a project, but also an associative network on a European scale. Led by the new education association Ceméa France, this network is composed of 7 structures from 5 European countries :

• Ceméa France
• Ceméa Federzione Italia
• Ceméa Belgique (Belgium)
• Willi Eichler Academy (Germany)
• Solidar Foundation (European network)
• Centar Za Mirovne Studije (Croatia)
• Framasoft (France)

These structures share an intent to accompany citizens (via popular education, news, activism, etc.), and to exchange on the digital uses specific to their country, their culture, their language.

Study trips are therefore planned in 2023 in each of the countries to facilitate these exchanges and the understanding of the context of each one, so that in 2024 we can produce commons that can be used by other associations in Europe.

ECHO Network – Illustration by David Revoy – Licence : CC-By 4.0

The opening seminar in Paris

The first meeting with all the actors took place from Saturday 13 to Monday 16 January in Saint Ouen, north of Paris, France.

This opening seminar was co-organized by Ceméa France and Framasoft. While we didn’t hesitate to get involved and contribute as much as we could, we have to admit that members of the Ceméa have a precious experience in setting up these events, and that they did a great job overall on organizing this seminar.

In addition to the thirty or so participants representing the partners of the ECHO Network project, we were able to invite more than twenty people from networks interested in new education, digital mediation, the commons and free software to contribute to these first discussions on ethical digital support for citizens.

Thus, this opening seminar was designed to find out how to talk about the same thing when we don’t speak the same languages, even though our contexts are different and our digital cultures varied.

Imagine a large room, about twenty people are sitting on chairs in tight rows. In front of them, a person seems to give them instructions. That’s what it looked like.

Understanding each other through « new education »

These three days were conceived beforehand using the methods of « new education » dear to the Ceméa.

The 55 people were divided into 3 reference groups, in order to share knowledge together. The concept was simple : rather than having poor interactions with 55 people, spend more quality time with a smaller group of 15 of them.

These groups were led by a team of three people (2 members of Ceméa, 1 member of Framasoft). Some periods were also reserved to be spent in micro groups (of 2-4 people) and to realize « mini projects ». Of course, all the participants gathered for the meals and conviviality times in the canteen.

Let’s take a moment to greet and thank the team managing the place, Mains d’œuvres, in Saint-Ouen, for their wonderful welcome and their delicious food. This space dedicated to culture and integrated into the life of the neighborhood was ideal to discover the flavor of Paris that’s lived by the locals. https://www.mainsdoeuvres.org/

The three days were divided into six half-days : the first one to meet each other, then 4 half-days dedicated to exchange on the notion of Ethics, Commons, Humanization and Openness in the digital world (yes, these are the words of the ECHO acronym ;)).

The last half-day of Monday afternoon allowed each group to present to the others a report of the exchanges, to put all this together and to say goodbye.

Conviviality as a political tool

The objective was to meet and to understand what brings us together in our political actions (which aim at organizing the society in a different way), and for that, the Ceméa and Framasoft relied on conviviality and exchange.

The participants had different sensitivities about digital uses. Most of them knew Mastodon but not all of them. Most of them had an idea of what free software is but not all of them. The activities allowed them to share their knowledge of the different themes.

The workshops took several very imaginative formats, such as :

• inventing one’s own social network (with its codes, terms of use, and functioning), and imagining how one would moderate the posts of other communities
• imagining what would be acceptable or unthinkable to put or remove in a « lifephone », a low-tech phone that everyone would keep all their life
• Use the Métacartes Numérique Éthique to explore one to three topics in a small group and then present these topics to the rest of the group and facilitate the discussion
• a moving debate where you position yourself in the room (near the « agree » wall or on the other side near the « disagree » wall) around assertions concerning ethics and digital technology
• and many other animations, which are documented in the article written by the Ceméa

The « Life Phone » workshop.

During the time devoted to these mini-projects, we were able to observe some beautiful initiatives :

• Imagining an adaptation of the « Métacartes Numérique Éthique » to make them more accessible to a young audience
• A writing workshop on what a desirable digital world could look like. You can read the results on Chosto’s blog (FR), from the Picasoft association
• Digging into the question of digital support for associations with a turnkey kit
• Laying down the principles that would help to create an ethical and collaborative video game
• Chatting about how to introduce the societal issues of digital technology in higher technical education.

In short, collective intelligence has shown again, during these three days, its wonderful power.

Recipe cards, a tool idea that makes you drool !

Study visits to follow

If we already know that these will not necessarily resemble this seminar (where we have chosen new education methods as a tool for meeting and exchange), the next study visits have already been scheduled. In fact, as we finish writing these lines, all the partners are in Berlin for another meeting.

The main themes for those visits are, in our opinion, quite attractive :

• Germany (March 2023) – Centralized social networks among young people, a tool for emancipation or alienation ?
• Belgium (June 2023) – New Education practices to raise awareness on ethical tools
• Italy (September 2023) – Between face-to-face and distance learning, which use of digital technology ?
• Croatia (December 2023) – Inclusivity and accessibility in the Digital world

Of course, we will continue to report here about our experiences within these meetings and this project. All the articles can be found in the ECHO Network category on the Framablog… To be continued, then !

The picture is blurry, but you can see the main thing : the « Star Trek » room we used during the plenary sessions.

Late 2017, we announced our desire to create a free, decentralised and federated alternative to YouTube.

Five years later, we are releasing PeerTube v5, a tool used by hundreds of thousands people on a thousand interconnected platforms to share over 850,000 videos.

Illustration CC BY David Revoy

Five years of shaping PeerTube by hand

For the past 5 years, our only developer dedicated to PeerTube (and to other tasks in Framasoft) has released one new major version per year :

• • PeerTube v1 (Oct. 2018) allows you to create a video platform with federation, peer-to-peer streaming, redundancy, search tools and multilingual interface.
  • PeerTube v2 (Nov 2019) brings notifications, playlists and plugins.
  • PeerTube v3 (Jan. 2021) adds federated search, live and peer-to-peer streaming.
  • PeerTube v4 (Dec. 2021) allows to customise each platform’s homepage, to sort and filter displayed videos, and to manage them more easily.

Throughout these years, this developer has taken care to improve moderation and federation tools, the video player, the interface, the code and the accessibility and also to fix bugs while answering community questions and needs.

PeerTube ecosytem

PeerTube is an artisanal work, in the noble sense of the word. It is a handcrafted tool that now serves a large alternative ecosystem for online video.

• SepiaSearch, a Search Engine of PeerTube content
• Communication tools :
  • a support forum
  • a newsletter (also published on JoinPeerTube)
  • a Twitter account
  • a Mastodon account
  • a monitoring on reddit
• 2 crowdfundings to avoid PeerTube to be only financed by donations from French speaking people
• Let’s Improve PeerTube, a website to suggest or vote for ideas or improvements

Once again, we would like to remind you that our small non-profit creates and maintains all this with only one developer on the project, helped by :

• Framasoft employees and volunteers for communication, strategy, administration ;
• PeerTube community which regularly contributes to code, plugins, translations, suggestions, sharing and donations (thanks and lots of datalove to you <3) ;
• Service providers in specialized areas (UX or UI design, accessibility, creation of mobile applications, etc.).

However PeerTube is only one of dozens of projects we maintain at Framasoft, even though it is one of the largest.

Like every thing we do, PeerTube is mainly funded by your donations (and donations from foundations like NLnet).

 Support PeerTube by donating to Framasoft

A year of work to make PeerTube easier to use

Since the beginning of 2022, we have been working on PeerTube to make it easier and easier to use for videomakers and their communities.

In February, version 4.1 brings several expected improvements : of the interface, of the video player on mobile devices, of the plugin system, of the search filters or of the instance customization.

In June, version 4.2 introduces two major new features : the Studio, for light video editing directly from PeerTube ; and replay publication for « Twitch-like » live streams. Other new features include detailed video statistics, latency management for live streaming and subtitle editing directly from the interface.

In September, with version 4.3, you can now automate video import from a YouTube (or Vimeo) channel. We have also completely reworked the interface for creating a PeerTube account and improved the live streams display on external website.

PeerTube Studio

PeerTube v5 : improving and securing to empower yourself better

It’s now December 2022, and PeerTube v5 is now available ! This version enhances security in several ways.

The file system has been redesigned to secure internal and private videos. This was a fairly complex work that lays a basis for some much asked future features.

Another very emancipating technical improvement is the possibility of storing live streams in the cloud, with « object storage » system. This means that PeerTube platforms hosted on a server with limited disk storage and bandwidth are no longer limited in their ability to offer live streams.

It is now possible to use two-factor authentication to connect to a PeerTube platform. We use the OTP (One Time Password) method which allows, via an external application, to generate a unique code to validate the connection to its account.

This new version also comes with a lot of bug fixes and improvements. For example, we have added more possibilities to the API, so that PeerTube contributors can develop even more powerful plugins.

Also, the PeerTube interface has received many changes. For example, in the My Videos menu now displays channels, and a mention of the playlist in which a video has been added to.

Finally, we have now a detailed OpenTelemetry documentation (feature released in version 4.2) which brings advanced statistics and observability.

Support, intern, technical challenges and questions on our horizon

Right now, we only have a clear vision for the near future of PeerTube.

Illustration : David Revoy (CC-By)

This year again, we have supported John Livingston‘s work on PeerTube Live Chat plugin, and we can announce that the easy plugin set-up is coming very soon !

In early 2023, we plan to work on a rather technical but very exciting feature, which should reduce the servers’ load and thus to lower the power needed to create a PeerTube platform : we’ll tell you more as soon as we’ve made progress.

Also in 2023, we will welcome a developer intern. We want more and more people to become familiar with PeerTube core code. We want to expermient with temporarily expanding the team working on it.

Finally, the day after this article is published, we will answer all your questions on reddit. Join us on December 14th at 4pm (CEST) on r/opensource for an AMA (Ask Me Anything) about PeerTube and Framasoft !

 Support PeerTube by donating to Framasoft

Share your ideas for PeerTube v6 !

These few points aside… we have no idea what the PeerTube roadmap will be in 2023. We need you to help us define it !

Please go to Let’s Improve PeerTube and publish your ideas (and vote for the ones you’re excited about). We want to know what the PeerTube community needs and wants, especially the « non-geek » audience who doesn’ t care about words like « server » or « instance » and just want to watch and share videos.

More than 90 ideas have been already published on Let’s improve Peertube

In early 2023, we will go through the most popular suggestions and select those that fit our vision for PeerTube and our development capabilities, in order to build the PeerTube v6 roadmap.

So it’s up to you to tell us what future you want for PeerTube !

An international tool…

This year, we were lucky enough to have two development contracts that helped us to fund some of our work on PeerTube.

The French Ministry of Education funded the Studio (a tool for editing videos) to be implemented on its platform apps.education.fr (a free-libre service platform provided by the Ministry to all teachers and staff).

Howlround, a Boston-based open platform for theatremakers worldwide, funded detailed video and live stats, but also replay feature for permanent lives.

Finally, we received an exceptional grant from the Dutch foundation NLnet to work on PeerTube v5.

…funded by French-speaking donations

Put together, these amounts represent a small half of our annual budget dedicated to PeerTube (which we estimate at 70 000 €). The other part comes from Framasoft’s budget, i.e. from the donations that our non profit receives from its mainly French-speaking community. To us, it seems almost unfair that it is mainly French speakers who finance a tool that has a truly international scope…

But here’s the thing : we’re already not very good at « selling ourselves », promoting our work and getting donations, so if we have to do international marketing, we’re not out of the woods !

We don’t have a marketing department : we only have you.

So we need your help. Spread the word about our donation campaign around you, especially outside the French-speaking world.

Do not hesitate to share the address support.joinpeertube.org around you, on your PeerTube platforms, in your communities that benefit from this alternative.

At the time of publishing, we are still missing 115 000 € to finance our yearly budget and make everything we want to do in 2023 happen.

If you can (especially in these hard times) and if you want to, thanks for supporting our non-profit and our actions.

 🦆 Support Framasoft