Group: GNU Social

This is the development, work-in-progress spec/ideas space for GNU Social, otherwise known as Daisychain.

Goals

• Privacy- users should be in control of their own data
• Distributed- anyone can set up their own server to become part of the network
• Portability- software should run on the widest array of hosts possible
• Simplicity- simple to set up; a simple base installation to serve as a platform for a wide array of extensions
• Extensibility- easy to implement and distribute new functionality
• Freedom (of course)

Ideas

• XMPP
  • "Message oriented middleware" -- should be useful for inter-server communication
  • Need to include an XMPP server in base install?
    • Is it possible to route what we need through an arbitrary XMPP server?
• FoAF + SSL?
• PHP for the front-end implementation language (portability; pretty much all hosting companies support it)
  • Back-end presents an issue; should be easy to install even on a third party host, if possible.
• Base system
  • Contacts + plugin API
  • Basic (removable) apps installed by default (messaging, etc.)
• Something on par with Facebook's news feed (which has recently been patented...)?
• How to authenticate users from remote servers?
  • OpenID?
  • Alternatives?
• Some thought could go into synchronizing several installs. All of these could be really easy if it's done right, right from the start:
  • Backups
  • Switching hosts
  • Having a local copy synchronized (both up -- posting a diary from the middle of a forest w/ no connection, appears once I connect -- and down -- finding a wi-fi hotspot and getting a week's load of updates before going off again to read them)
  • Maybe switching to different implementations of the protocol, for those that happen to dislike PHP, or there can be a proper desktop application