This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/fossdroid by /u/NettoHikariDE on 2023-06-11 02:26:51+00:00.
~~Edit: There seems to be a problem with the federation feature. I can see incoming follow requests from other instances (Lemmy instances), but there are some errors I need to iron out. I'm working on it, expect the instance to reboot a couple times.~~ (resolved?)
~~Edit 2: Unfortunately, I'm facing some issues with KBin. It's probably due to the lack of sleep. If I don't get it working right now, I'll do it after I got some sleep, as it's been interrupted by my toddlers AND my cats last night.~~
Edit 3: After talking to some members of the community and a couple friends who are into FOSS, too, I decided to go for Lemmy instead of KBin. I know, there are a couple reasons to not use Lemmy, but you may read on why I changed my mind in this post: https://social.fossware.space/post/3
Also, even with Lemmy, there are some issues still. Those are going to be resolved within the next couple days. The following text still applies, but instead of KBin, we're using Lemmy.
Hello, fellow community members!
You might've noticed my post from earlier in which I informed you that we'll be participating in the planned outage starting from 12th July, due to Reddit's planned API restriction and the negative effects this is going to have.
What are we going to do?
In order to prevent some big company from restricting our community again in the future, I as this community's only somewhat active moderator, decided to do a thing...
Everyone is talking about Reddit alternatives on the Fediverse like Lemmy and KBin. I could just go ahead and create a Fossdroid community on one of the existing instances in the fediverse and call it a day.
But instead, I decided to spend some actual time and money to serve the broader FOSS community that has provided me with so many fun and useful pieces of software (and therefore FREEDOM) by spinning up an instance of KBin.
What the Heck is KBin?
KBin (and Lemmy) can be seen as FOSS, self-hostable and most importantly federated alternatives to Reddit. Administrators can spin up their own little instances, members can register accounts on them and create their own communities, called "Magazines" on KBin ("subreddits" on Reddit). Of course, moderators can be appointed to communities and so on and so forth.
Federation
The fact that KBin is federated means multiple things: Members of one instance can subscribe to and communicate with members of other instances. Members are also not restricted to one instance, so if you don't agree with the way one instance is run, you may just switch to another one.
Since KBin supports the ActivityPub protocol, it shouldn't matter if your buddy is on Lemmy, Mastodon, Pleroma or whatever: You should be able to interact with them to some degree.
Say "hello" to FOSSware
Since the idea of providing a space for FOSS folks (and everyone else) came from moderating / running this subreddit for quite some time, I decided to name our new community FOSSware. FOSS stands for free and open source software and to me personally, it means freedom in general.
Our KBin instance is mainly intended for communities that want to talk about FOSS, but it's not limited to that. Anyone may join and create Magazines.
You can find our KBin instance here: https://social.fossware.space
If you want to, register an account and check it out. You'll also find our fossdroid community there under /m/FOSSdroid. It's currently empty, but I'm sure you guys will soon start to fill it with content.
A welcome post with further explanation can be found right here and some FAQs are right here. Before registering, make sure to read the sitewide rules.
An important Note
Please keep in mind that KBin is far away from feature parity with Reddit. Many features you may know from Reddit are not available on KBin, as it's still in early development.
A mobile app is not yet available (but apparently in the works), so I personally recommend the use of an application such as Native Alpha to mimic an installed app. KBin seems to work fine on mobile browsers, as well.
Is this future-proof?
Honestly, you tell me. The more of us start to stand up aganst the sheer bullying that Reddit currently does to it's community (let me remind you that it's the community that actually generates content for Reddit, making Reddit profitable), the sooner Reddit will see that their way of handling this whole situation is wrong.
I'm going to leave this subreddit open after it comes back online after June 14th. However, I strongly encourage anyone to join FOSSware (or any other fediverse community).
If you're wondering whether or not such an instance is long-lived: Well, to tell you the truth... While I absolutely intend to run FOSSware as long as possible, I could - in theory - pull the plug at any time. But at this point you'll have to trust me when I say: I'm not going to do that. If I can't maintain FOSSware any more at any point in the future, I'll tell you and we'll find a way. Be it transfer of ownership or something else.
The beauty of the Fediverse is, though, that you can always switch to another instance and take at least some of your data with you (this is not yet implemented in KBin, unfortunately).
It doesn't stop at KBin
FOSSware is also going to provide multiple services based on FOSS software, such as a Matrix server (chat, etc.) and other things. However, that'll take some more days to properly set up.
Any questions? Just ask.
I'll stick around for a bit and then head to bed. I might've forgotten some things, as it's pretty late here.