Come join fedibook.net
I've had an inspiring first week with Fedibook. Your feedback has been truly inspiring. It started as a provocation and an experiment — but I have decided to turn this into a proper open source project. My first ever!
If you tested on dev1.fedibook.dk — come to https://fedibook.net. The new showcase instance where we will run the latest released code. Or even better, run your own instance and friend request me @sindum@fedibook.net.
I'm heading off on holiday, but I wanted to share what I'm hoping we can build together: Your Friendly Neighborhood Social Network. One that is there for you when you want to take a moment to connect and follow up. That shows your feed from friends, follows and groups. Nothing more. With a UI that focuses on that rather than keeping your attention.
Jump over to my blog for this post with a little more detail.
The above was posted on Mastodon — if you came from there, here is some more background...
When I'm back, the first order of business is getting a roadmap in place and building a proper developer community around this. If that sounds like something you'd want to be part of, stay tuned.
I have worked professionally with software as a Product Owner and architect. I do coding in my everyday work as a Solution Architect working with IT network infrastructure, but I'm not a professional programmer — and running a git repo is new to me. So bear with me while I learn. The first pull, push and merge to the Codeberg repo has already been a learning process.
My hope for Fedibook is to build a way into the Fediverse and ActivityPub world that is attractive to those who don't care what it is — those who will only move from where they are if the better alternative is also easy, with a familiar look and feel. While building Fedibook I have already noticed that following Mastodon conventions gives a look and feel that is more Facebook than Twitter-like: comments below the post, and reposts as shares. I think that makes the Fediverse look more approachable.
And an important perspective: the goal is not to create a closed club. Fedibook should only be one way to access the Fediverse. For now, some group features may have to be Fedibook-only — that is not the goal, but a practical starting point. I do think that groups — in an easy, understandable way — are something that is missing for anyone thinking about leaving Facebook.
The code for Fedibook must be structured and easy to work with and review. I don't want a vibe-coded slop-swamp. But I also think that using AI for good is how the open source and open web can compete with Big Tech. So proper use of AI for writing code, doing reviews and writing documentation is fine by me — as long as it is pushed to the project by humans who understand what they are doing.
I also think another issue for succes is for fedibook to be very easly deployed. For now I created the project in a one-bundle docker-compose including the traefik reverse proxy as the proxy setup for AcitityPub to work is a little tricky.
We are starting small. If you want to push a fix, please reach out and explain what you did. If you want to contribute a feature, please reach out first — I am going to have a say in what features come to Fedibook.
And about dev1.fedibook.dk and dev2.fedibook.dk - This was by early dev env that was open just join and test. I'm not gonna do any more on them and one of these day I will close them. Just over to https://fedibook.net