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GNU MediaGoblin – A decentralized alternative to Flickr, YouTube, SoundCloud

mediagoblin.org

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Re: GNU MediaGoblin – A decentralized alternative to Flickr, YouTube, SoundCloud

#31

Post by jimktrains2 »

paroneayea wrote: post #29
jimktrains2 wrote: post #27

I mean, it's not decentralized. It's simply hostable. Decentralized would be like GNUNet[1]. 1: https://gnunet.org/

We're working on federation support, and I think that would be pretty fair to call decentralized? Decentralized can have various definitions; GNUNet is definitely one definition, but you might consider that the web itself is supposed to be decentralized and is designed to be able to be that way, but is moving away from that as more and more of the web is being replaced by megasites like YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr. So, M…

Don't get me wrong, it's good to be able to run your own software and have more than one option out there.

I just think that it's unfair to call it decentralized if each instance of it is out there on its own.

Perhaps once federation is working it'd be a more fair comparison, because at least then all the servers can communicate and share with each other.

Don't take this as an attack on your software. It looks nice and I'm sure it works well (I haven't had a chance to use it).

Re: GNU MediaGoblin – A decentralized alternative to Flickr, YouTube, SoundCloud

#32

Post by wmf »

synctext wrote: post #7
qnrq wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's an excellent opportunity for up and coming designers to contribute to a promising open source project.

The architecture is also fundamentally flawed. How many people want to be the SysAdmin for all 2.0 services for their entire extended family? We need self-organizing systems, not federation.

How many people want to be the sysadmin for all the apps on their phone? Remember, phones are now running Unix.

It's possible to make installing this stuff easier.

Re: GNU MediaGoblin – A decentralized alternative to Flickr, YouTube, SoundCloud

#34

Post by nemo »

paroneayea wrote: post #30
nemo wrote: post #21

Nice idea, but I'd rename after something that isn't evil - subconscious suggestions of maliciousness might inadvertently repel some users. I'd suggest finding a design person who can lighten it up, pretty it up, and clean it up - the design has possibilities, but it's way too dark. Finally, many of the sample photos have really, really cold color temps (that cupcake photo's color temp is way too cold - it looks like…

Heya! So, we sometimes get comments about the branding choice of "goblins"... our goblins are actually not evil, though I agree that a lot of $STANDARD_FANTASY they're used as evil characters. Our goblins are more "build spaceships, be cute, and be awesome" goblins like http://mediagoblin.org/news/mediagoblin-0.3.2-goblinverse.ht... Curiously we've gotten a number of concerns about maybe the branding will push people…

I wasn't suggesting that there'd be anything conscious about the branding, but that it'd be subconscious, so you wouldn't be likely to hear feedback. It's a minor nit, really.

Glad to hear about theming. Flickr/500px/other sites chose to let users opt-in to black backgrounds, I think that is a nice approach - some media is better highlighted by a dark background, but not all. All the best to your project.

Re: GNU MediaGoblin – A decentralized alternative to Flickr, YouTube, SoundCloud

#35

Post by opendomain »

paroneayea wrote: post #29
jimktrains2 wrote: post #27

I mean, it's not decentralized. It's simply hostable. Decentralized would be like GNUNet[1]. 1: https://gnunet.org/

We're working on federation support, and I think that would be pretty fair to call decentralized? Decentralized can have various definitions; GNUNet is definitely one definition, but you might consider that the web itself is supposed to be decentralized and is designed to be able to be that way, but is moving away from that as more and more of the web is being replaced by megasites like YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr. So, M…

Look very interesting, but can you please make this more clear? I can host media files in Wordpress or Drupal - why would I use MediaGoblin? With your federation would allow my video files to be on other servers so if mine goes down, they will host the content? How does that work? Round robin DNS or just my file is copied to other servers. Can I track, update, change, or remove my media from other servers? If this easy to admin like Wordpress or does a user have to be a developer to understand the back-end processes of federating?

Re: GNU MediaGoblin – A decentralized alternative to Flickr, YouTube, SoundCloud

#36

Post by quadrangle »

lars wrote: post #14

This appears to be a photo gallery software, that also handles video and sound. That's fine, but there's no way that's a "decentralized alternative to Flickr, YouTube, SoundCloud". Am I missing something?

Federation is planned but not implemented yet.

Re: GNU MediaGoblin – A decentralized alternative to Flickr, YouTube, SoundCloud

#38

Post by amirouche »

paroneayea wrote: post #30
nemo wrote: post #21

Nice idea, but I'd rename after something that isn't evil - subconscious suggestions of maliciousness might inadvertently repel some users. I'd suggest finding a design person who can lighten it up, pretty it up, and clean it up - the design has possibilities, but it's way too dark. Finally, many of the sample photos have really, really cold color temps (that cupcake photo's color temp is way too cold - it looks like…

Heya! So, we sometimes get comments about the branding choice of "goblins"... our goblins are actually not evil, though I agree that a lot of $STANDARD_FANTASY they're used as evil characters. Our goblins are more "build spaceships, be cute, and be awesome" goblins like http://mediagoblin.org/news/mediagoblin-0.3.2-goblinverse.ht... Curiously we've gotten a number of concerns about maybe the branding will push people…

aren't goblins somewhat gnomes enemy?

Re: GNU MediaGoblin – A decentralized alternative to Flickr, YouTube, SoundCloud

#39

Post by amirouche »

paroneayea wrote: post #26
kfk wrote: post #8

Any reason why you guys went rambo building on top of werkzeug instead of, say, django or flask? Serious questions. I love the project.

Heya! Well, our architecture is very Flask-like, but yes it does not use Flask. There's kind of "historical reasons" for this; at the time that I started MediaGoblin Flask was fairly new, and we started out using MongoDB (so we couldn't make use of some of the nicer Django features anyway). I also really strongly prefer Jinja2 templates over Django's because of the ability to pass in arguments to functions, so eventu…

+1 for «it's not actually as much work as people think to hook together a WSGI application that uses the libraries you already know you want»

Also stop with the saying it's rambly please.

Re: GNU MediaGoblin – A decentralized alternative to Flickr, YouTube, SoundCloud

#40

Post by lotsofcows »

paroneayea wrote: post #17
apalmer wrote: post #11

My biggest critique is I don't understand what it really offers, I mean as far as distributed hosting of my files, isn't that just a web server? The commenting posting CMS stuff seems like a competitor to wordpress... so i am guessing its like a blogging engine focused on media instead of text?

Hi! Lead developer of MediaGoblin here. I agree, the frontpage of mediagoblin.org can use some improvement. We're working on that. If you want a fast summary of things, you can still watch the video from the crowdfunding campaign we ran last year with the FSF (hell, you can still donate too!). http://mediagoblin.org/pages/campaign.html We also have an intern helping us clean up the homepage. Things should be getting…

Is your landing page your primary marketing mechanism? I think it's great that your given an intern that level of responsibility...
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