Other names | StatusNet Laconica |
---|---|
Original author(s) | Evan Prodromou et al. |
Developer(s) | Diogo Cordeiro and GNU social Developers |
Final release | |
Preview release | |
Repository | |
Written in | PHP |
Operating system | Cross-platform |
Available in | More than 25 languages. [3] |
Type | Web application framework |
License | AGPL-3.0-or-later [4] |
Website | gnusocial |
GNU social (previously known as StatusNet and Laconica) is a free and open source microblogging server written in PHP that implemented the OStatus and ActivityPub standard for interoperability between installations. While offering functionality similar to Twitter, GNU social seeks to provide the potential for open and distributed communications between microblogging communities. Enterprises and individuals can install and control their own services and data. [5] [6]
At its peak, GNU social had been deployed on hundreds of interoperating servers, [7] however has since fallen into disuse as competing platforms like Mastodon have taken its position as the most popular federated microblogging server.
Later on in its lifespan, the project split into two separate branches, v2 and v3. As of August 15, 2022, there had been no new commits to the repository for the v2 branch, [8] while the v3 branch stopped receiving commits not long after, in November 25, 2022, [9] making the project essentially defunct.
GNU social was spun out of the GNU FM project's codebase, which included federation between other servers hosting GNU FM, as well as Last.fm. [10] The founder was Matt Lee and the early developers were fellow Free Software Foundation employees, Donald Robertson and Deborah Nicholson.
Version 0.9.0, released March 3, 2010, added support for OStatus, a new protocol superseding OpenMicroBlogging, the original protocol that StatusNet used. [11] [12]
A notable service that used GNU social was Identi.ca, which became one of the first popular examples of an open source social network. Hosted by the original StatusNet creators under StatusNet Inc., Identi.ca offered free accounts to the public and served as the flagship instance for StatusNet and the broader OStatus network. The site has since migrated to pump.io, and all registrations are now closed.
In June 8, 2013, it was announced StatusNet would be merged into the GNU social project, along with Free Social, another open souce social network service. [13]
The first name of the project, Laconica, was a reference to the Laconic phrase, a particularly concise or terse statement of a kind attributed to the leaders of Sparta (Laconia being the Greek region containing Sparta). In microblogging, all messages are forced to be very short due to the traditional ~140-character limit on message size.
Beginning with version 0.8.1, the name was changed to StatusNet. [14] The developers said that the new name "simply reflects what our software does: send status updates into your social network." [15]
The final name of the project, GNU social, refers to the GNU project.
GNU Hurd is a collection of microkernel servers written as part of GNU, for the GNU Mach microkernel. It has been under development since 1990 by the GNU Project of the Free Software Foundation, designed as a replacement for the Unix kernel, and released as free software under the GNU General Public License. When the Linux kernel proved to be a viable solution, development of GNU Hurd slowed, at times alternating between stasis and renewed activity and interest.
LILO is a boot loader for Linux and was the default boot loader for most Linux distributions in the years after the popularity of loadlin. Today, many distributions use GRUB as the default boot loader, but LILO and its variant ELILO are still in wide use. Further development of LILO was discontinued in December 2015 along with a request by Joachim Wiedorn for potential developers.
The GNU C Library, commonly known as glibc, is the GNU Project's implementation of the C standard library. It is a wrapper around the system calls of the Linux kernel for application use. Despite its name, it now also directly supports C++. It was started in the 1980s by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU operating system.
GnuTLS is a free software implementation of the TLS, SSL and DTLS protocols. It offers an application programming interface (API) for applications to enable secure communication over the network transport layer, as well as interfaces to access X.509, PKCS #12, OpenPGP and other structures.
ERC is an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client integrated into GNU Emacs. It is written in Emacs Lisp.
BitlBee is a cross-platform IRC instant messaging gateway, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
Gnash is a media player for playing SWF files. Gnash is available both as a standalone player for desktop computers and embedded devices, as well as a plugin for the browsers still supporting NPAPI. It is part of the GNU Project and is a free and open-source alternative to Adobe Flash Player. It was developed from the gameswf project.
Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a free and open-source virtualization module in the Linux kernel that allows the kernel to function as a hypervisor. It was merged into the mainline Linux kernel in version 2.6.20, which was released on February 5, 2007. KVM requires a processor with hardware virtualization extensions, such as Intel VT or AMD-V. KVM has also been ported to other operating systems such as FreeBSD and illumos in the form of loadable kernel modules.
Microblogging is a form of blogging using short posts without titles known as microposts. Microblogs "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links", which may be the major reason for their popularity. Some popular social networks such as Twitter, Threads, Mastodon, Tumblr, Koo, and Instagram can be viewed as collections of microblogs.
identi.ca was a free and open-source social networking and blogging service based on the pump.io software, using the Activity Streams protocol. Identi.ca stopped accepting new registrations in 2013, but continues to operate alongside several other pump.io-based hosts provided by E14N which continue to accept new registrations.
OpenMicroBlogging is a deprecated protocol that allows different microblogging services to inter-operate. It lets the user of one service subscribe to notices by a user of another service. This enables a federation of new communities, as potentially an organization of any size can host a service. OpenMicroBlogging utilizes the OAuth and Yadis protocols and does not depend on any central authority.
The tables below compare general and technical information for some notable active microblogging services, and also social network services that have status updates.
OStatus is an open standard for federated microblogging, allowing users on one website to send and receive status updates with users on another website. The standard describes how a suite of open protocols, including Atom, Activity Streams, WebSub, Salmon, and WebFinger, can be used together, which enables different microblogging server implementations to route status updates between their users back-and-forth, in near real-time.
GNU Health is a free/libre health and hospital information system with strong focus on public health and social medicine. Its functionality includes management of electronic health records and laboratory information management system.
Friendica is a free and open-source software distributed social network. It forms one part of the Fediverse, an interconnected and decentralized network of independently operated servers.
Evan S. Prodromou is a software developer and open source advocate. He is a co-editor of ActivityPub, the W3C standard for decentralized social networking used by platforms such as Mastodon.
Twister is a decentralized, experimental peer-to-peer microblogging program which uses end-to-end encryption to safeguard communications. Based on BitTorrent- and Bitcoin-like protocols, it has been likened to a distributed version of Twitter.
pump.io is a general-purpose activity streams engine that can be used as a federated social networking protocol which "does most of what people really want from a social network". Started by Evan Prodromou, it is a follow-up to GNU social, and is designed to be more lightweight and usable for general data instead of just microblogging. The largest StatusNet instance at the time, Identi.ca, which was the largest StatusNet service and ran by Prodromou, switched to pump.io in June 2013.
Movim is a distributed social network built on top of XMPP, a popular open standards communication protocol. Movim is a free and open source software licensed under the AGPL-3.0-or-later license. It can be accessed using existing XMPP clients and Jabber accounts.
The fediverse is a collection of social networking services that can communicate with each other using a common protocol. Users of different websites can send and receive status updates, multimedia files and other data across the network. The term "fediverse" is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".
...under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
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