Federated Github? That's... git.
Federated browsers? Federated hosting providers?
I'm beginning to think you might not fully understand what federated means.
this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2025
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Maybe just decentralized i am guessing. Like that would just be open source browsers. Not sure for hosting though.
No dammit. I want my browsing activity mixed in with 5,000 other peoples. Am I logging in to my bank or yours? That's the fun! Nobody knows!
That's true anonymous browsing, not only does the browser not know who you are when you visit a website, but you also don't know what account you are logging into.
Sometimes I don't even know who I am while I'm browsing.
Federated Github? Thatβsβ¦ git.
Github is a forge with features like issues, pull requests, project planning, documentation, project sites, and automation, so not really.
You're right. I was thinking more along the distribution side only.
Why not give a crash course for OP? As I understand it, Federation is just one standard of protocol that can communicate across servers. I think OP is referring to Federated here as both the protocol and the movement away from platforms. I think this is a valid part of growing both Federated protocols, and protocols in general as an alternative to big-tech platforms. The major platforms DO offer hosting in a way. People host their photos libraries on Facebook and Instagram. So a non-platform alternative may interest some.
For hosting - get a private VPS and run your own cloud services. Explore RSS for news feeds, a super OG protocol that podcast feeds still use I think.
Web browsers shouldn't be federated because the idea there is privacy, security, and ad blocking.
You can probably host a feed reader & a few other things at home on old hardware & a budget. Paying $5 USD a month on hosting is too much for many people.
Web Browsers are all federated because they communicate with each other over a common standard.
What are some cool projects I need to know about?
Email, usenet
IRC
Internet is already federated, its just called peering instead?
Forgejo is working on federated github.
I think of sourcehut has already-federated git hosting because to send the equivalent of a pull request instead of making an account you send patches via email using git's built-in email workflow. Email is federated, therefore that is federated git collaboration.
The whole workflow and philosophy of sourcehut is so different than GitHub though. I think a lot more people would be interested in GitHub, but federated.
There's also this which some people may care about.
Federated browsers
That's literally just regular browsers, you can interact with any one of billions of webservers
Federated github
Git is federated by nature, you can add as many remotes as you wish and push/pull to all of them. Add in a mailing list for issue tracking and "pull requests" (patch submissions) and you're golden. You can look up sourcehut to self-host a well-integrated combination of the two.
Federated hosting providers
Not sure what exactly you mean by this but maybe take a look at IPFS, although it's more P2P then federation.
Federated internet
Internet is already fairly federated by nature - most commonly used protocols in the OSI stack are open and you can host your own components of critical infrastructure. Getting others to interact with them might be difficult due to security & privacy issues.
github is not just about git though.
Yep, but the rest can mostly be replaced with a mailing list. Or, if you're allergic to email, there's also https://forgejo.org/.
I'm not allergic to emails, I use them a lot, but I think a mailing list is not a federated github, but a mess.
Forgejo is a much better choice in my opinion.
I think Hyphanet is the closest you can get to federated hosting provider/Internet
There can be no federated browser though, since browser is just an app installed locally on your device which renders hypertext (HTML, CSS, JS and other tech) on your screen
Maybe search engines idk, something like Yucy?
How about a federated dildo.
Ew.
Peertube (Youtube-like) and Loops (Tiktok-like) and Pixelfed (Instagram-like Photosharing service) are growing.
We need a way to make self hosting super easy without needing additional infrastructure. Like use my account here with my broad spectrum of posts and comments as initial credentials for a distributed DNS name and certificate authority combined with a preconfigured ISO for a RΟ or similar hardware. The whole thing should not take manual intervention for automatically updating and should just run any federated services. Then places like LW are a bridge for people to migrate to their own distributed hosting even when they lack the interest or chops to self host. I don't see why we need to rely on the infrastructure of the old internet as a barrier to entry. I bet there are an order of magnitude more people that would toss a RΟ on their network and self host if it was made super easy, did not require manual intervention, and does not dump them into the spaghetti of networking, OS, and server configuration/security. Federated self hosting should be as simple as using a mobile app to save and view pictures or browse the internet.
Exactly! I don't see why we have to rely on the old internet infrastructure for a completely differently conceived type of distributing content!
There's stuff like ipfs, and I'm sure there are many ways to make self hosting easier..
We normalize everyone has a modem/router/access point at home: we should normalize everyone having his own server hosted, bitcoin node, ipfs node etc etc..
And your right, these services have to be super easy to deploy.. I think containerization might be helping with this.. Think about docker or Nixos.. Make a nice GUI and simplify docker even more and you get packages that can run on any distro in any OS, that even a complete noob could spin up! Maybe paired with repos that host most of the self hostable stuff.
But yeah I think the whole structure might be have to be rethought, from the way we host to the way we can connect to each other.. We got to give everyone the possibility to decide which web they want to be part of, and federation definitely allows this!
Fully agree, but part of the problem is that the fundamentals that our technology relies on to communicate is arcane (DNS, IP, etc.). The other problem is that were often trying to translate human experiences and needs to a binary and technological format, which cannot be done in simple terms and creates complexity.
I don't expect us being able to move away from current jank-stack technologies anytime soon.
Thereβs only like 20 some federated projects. I recommend you read into FOSS, self hosting, and Linux as this is what most of us are into and is along the same lines
Federated wikipedia : Ibis.
A few I've been interested in.
- I just saw this project literally today, a federated search engine using web rings - https://gitlab.com/Doomsdayrs/mengzi
- Ibis is a federated wiki by the Lemmy dev - https://github.com/Nutomic/ibis
- WriteFreely is a simple federated blog designed around writing - https://github.com/writefreely/writefreely
- Funkwhale for music hosting (I'm sure I heard rumours about it stopping development but it still seems active?) - https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale/funkwhale
One I'm surprised I haven't seen (although might inappropriate for the standard, no idea) is an activitypub messenging service like Matrix
The developer of Pixelfed - an Instagram-alike (and now Loops.video - a TikTok like platform) announced that he is working on an ActivityPub messaging service called "Sup." There's nothing else really known about it except that he's developing it. AP would actually work fairly well as a messaging protocol aside from the lack of end-to-end encryption, but that too is being worked on.
AP would actually work fairly well as a messaging protocol
except when a temporary disruption in the connection results in new posts/comments/etc to not get delivered
But that's true of any network connected messaging protocol, making sure a message is delivered could be implemented client side. The issue with AP objects not making it to other clients / servers is more about federation discovery.
no, it isn't for
- matrix, because if the servers ever connect again, the message will get through. this is what's called an "eventually consistent" system
- any mainstream and semi-mainstream messengers, where there is a single server (from the users' point of view), and the message just can't get lost (randomly)
the client shouldn't be dealing with issues between servers. that's the servers responsibility. if the server has told the client that it got the message, what is there anymore for the client to do?
The issue with AP objects not making it to other clients / servers is more about federation discovery.
I don't think so. if you know the recipient, you know it's servername too. and then your server can forward it to theirs.
I think the problem here is that messages are not always delivered.
I thought I had heard about him making that before but no amount of searching seemed to find it... I guess thats why, I was thinking I had just made it up or something.
I know how that is! Seems like I'm constantly wondering if I just made this or that up. π€·π»ββοΈ
federated browser
Do you mean something like CENO Browser and TOR Browser?
Didn't know about CENO, it looks super cool! Might have to dig more into TOR as well
We have federated countries
(well... its more like... confederated rather than federated Β―_(γ)_/Β―)
And there's Brair there are Brair Public Forums. There is no censorship. But activity is quite dead. Expect to see a post every month, or longer.
I was interested, but I can't click to visit any of the forums.
You have to create a Briar profile in the app, then go to "Request Forums" on the webpage copy paste their link and add them, and you also have to copy paste your link and put it on the webpage in the blank space where is says "Enter your Briar Link"
Since Git can already be federated (no MS GitHub required), take a look at Darcs & Pijul for a better version control model based on Patch Theory. Tooling needs help, but fundamentals are sound.
Everything in the XMPP world is worth checking out. Movim is one of the more interesting projects bring a social media option to the platform & pushing boundaries for clients that is cool to seeβas well as Libervia for setting up communities.