2022 is definitely the year of our websites’ redesign: after the evolution of our services homepages, degooglisons-internet.org website and recently framasoft.org, it is now time for joinpeertube.org to get a makeover.

This website was launched on 28 February 2018 and redesigned once at the end of 2019. Its aim is to help those who have heard of PeerTube discover more about it and understand what it is. Indeed, it is not always easy for Internet users used to the web giants centralised video platforms to understand PeerTube specifics. The 2019 version of this website made possible to understand what PeerTube is for people with a good digital literacy. But we felt that was not always the case for a larger majority of Internet users.

In order to confirm this impression, we worked with the web agency La Coopérative des Internets, which conducted an audit of the website via user tests and suggested ways of improving it. The JoinPeerTube you are accessing today is the result of this collaborative work.

Let see what changed…

Less information, easier to understand

User testing revealed the homepage was too long and contained too much information, and that some informations were too technical. To give you an example, the tagline « free software to take back control of your videos » was not well understood. By using it, we assumed that people arriving on the website were familiar with the fact that software can provide online service (Software as a service mode). This is obviously not true for a large number of Internet users.

We have therefore simplified the wording: you will no longer find a mention of « software », PeerTube is now a tool that allows the creation of a video platform (and not an « instance », a term that only those in the know understood).

We have also simplified the texts so that they contain fewer explanations. This has greatly reduced the length of the homepage! And for those who would like to know more, we have added a section at the bottom of each page inviting you to consult the F.A.Q. (frequently asked questions). Very thorough and easy to use, the F.A.Q. is now directly accessible from the menu.

A new menu to differentiate use cases

On this updated JoinPeerTube, new pages have been created, others have been deleted or modified. The aim of this restructuring is to provide more support for users in their specific use cases (e.g. not offering information about publishing content to someone who just wants to watch videos).

The new homepage is now called What is PeerTube? because we have limited the information on it to the essentials. Useful for everyone, this page presents, in a few lines (and hopefully!), what PeerTube is. The section What do we find on PeerTube? encourages you to discover our own selection of quality content. By offering two different selections (one recommending PeerTube platforms, the other videos hosted on different platforms), we hope to provide a better understanding of the tool.

The new Browse Content page allows you to search through the 600,000 videos and 1,000 platforms in the PeerTube network.This integrated search engine uses SepiaSearch, the search engine we have been maintaining since September 2020. The results are now displayed according to their type (among videos, channels and playlists), which is really convenient.

The Publish videos page is intended for video makers. After explaining in a few lines the interest of distributing your videos via PeerTube when you are a content creator, we present the two ways to join PeerTube:

• by creating an account on an existing PeerTube platform
• by creating your own PeerTube platform

The first proposal takes you to the Find a PeerTube Platform page which displays a list of platforms based on several criteria: profile type (the videomaker profile only offers platforms open to registration), topic(s), sensitive videos mode and language.

The second proposal takes you to the PeerTube technical documentation site where those with technical skills will find everything they need to start hosting their own PeerTube platform.

The PeerTube news page is still accessible from the menu. If you want to know about the features of the latest versions, and suscribe to the PeerTube newsletter, it is just one click away!

Expanding Contribution

As you know, PeerTube is a free-libre tool to which you can contribute in many ways. The PeerTube community is already very active, whether it be suggesting new features or improvements, submitting bug reports, creating plugins and themes, translating interfaces, improving documentation, creating tutorials, or responding to those who have difficulty using the tool.

By clicking on the Contribute orange button in the menu, you can discover three easy ways to contribute to the project.

First way: suggest an idea or improvement on Let’s Improve PeerTube!, launched last July. We want to know what content creators, video-lovers and non-tech-savvy people miss from PeerTube or what changes/new experiences they would like to have. If you are not necessarily inspired, you can always vote for one of the 90+ ideas already posted. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank all the people who made these proposals and all those who voted.

Second way: participate in the funding of PeerTube. As you probably already know, PeerTube is a project financed by Framasoft, so funded by donations from our (mostly French and French-speaking) supporters. Framasoft is in charge of the financial management and the development of the project, among other things. The growing success of PeerTube means that we have to do more and more work to maintain and respond to the people who use it. Do you think we are going in the right direction? Then, if you have the desire and the means, we invite you to make a donation.

Third way: participate in PeerTube development. Whether you have programming skills or not, there will always be something to contribute. We have listed on a dedicated page how you can help. Don’t hesitate!

Making PeerTube easier to use

JoinPeerTube first versions highlighted how PeerTube is a great technical tool and allowed us to promote it to people with technical skills. Now that there are over 1000 PeerTube platforms, our new focus is to reach a wider, less digitally savvy audience to make it easy for them to understand what PeerTube is all about. We hope that this new version of the site will be useful and make PeerTube easier to use.

For those of you who are wondering where we are with PeerTube development, we remind you that a version 4.3 was released last September. You should also know that an RC (Release Candidate) version of V5 is now available. If all goes well, we will release the new major version of PeerTube within two or three weeks (time to fix the bugs that the RC will bring up). We will announce all the new features here very soon…

At the time of publishing, we are still missing 145 100 € to finance our yearly budget and make everything we want to do in 2023 happen. If you can (especially in these hard times) and if you want to, thanks for supporting our non-profit and our actions.

 🦆 Support Framasoft

Helpful links

• JoinPeerTube
• Sepia Search
• Let’s improve PeerTube!
• PeerTube Support Forum
• See the source code ofPeerTube
• See the source code of JoinPeerTube
• Support Framasoft

Mobilizon is the alternative we have been developing since 2019 so that everyone can emancipate their events and groups from Facebook. Except, unlike Facebook, Mobilizon is not a single platform. It is a software that specialists can install on a server to create multiple events and groups platforms (called « instances »), which can be linked together within a federation.

We do host Mobilizon.fr, but it is restricted to French speaking users (otherwise we wouldn’t be able to moderate). But we’ve got you covered : we propose a selection of other Mobilizon hosters on Mobilizon.org.

It has been just under a year since we published the second version (« v2 ») of Mobilizon. That release brings us updates (time zones adjustment, improvements on language display, etc.), new features (possibility to follow the public activities of a group without having to join, exporting the attendants list of my event, possibility to search among past events, etc.) and some small tweaks (emails design, cards presenting events or groups appearance, etc.).

As we announced at the time, we wanted to develop in 2022 features that would improve content discovery (events, groups, their public pages, public articles of these groups). This is the path we have followed (well, when we say « we », we mean mainly ONE paid developer who devotes a part of his time to the project).

Let’s look around and see what this new version brings us!

Mobilizon Search Index, a global search engine to explore events and groups

As we know it was not always easy to find events or groups on Mobilizon, we worked for most of the year on creating Mobilizon Search Index, a new gateway to Mobilizon.

What can Mobilizon Search Index do for you

This tool allows you to search and explore Mobilizon by different ways:

• if you are looking for a specific event or group, use the search bar
• if you want to discover events by subject, browse through categories cards
• if you want to find events nearby, geolocate yourself
• if you want to discover popular groups, there is a category for that!
• if you want to attend online events, we also highlight them

Mobilizon Search Index has been designed to inform you while respecting your attention:

• The results will be the same for everyone, based only on your search (and your browser’s language), and absolutely not pre-sorted according to a profile (because there is no profiling, here!).
• The results are presented in a clear and detailed way, to avoid the attention war leading to clickbait thumbnails and all caps over-the-top titles.
• Search filters give you the power to sort the results out and display those you really want.
• If you want to see in detail the content of an event or a group, Mobilizon Search Index will redirect you directly to the instance where it is hosted (since we have no interest in locking you into the search engine’s website). This is a way to help anyone experience and understand the notion of federation.

Let’s have a look at the new features of this search results page. First of all, you can choose the results display mode (list or map) by clicking on the top-right button.

Then you can filter the results according to several criteria. Look at the left-hand column to see which filters are already active and change them if needed:

• type of content (events, groups or both)
• online events
• event date
• distance
• categories
• event status (confirme, tentative or cancelled)
• language

You can also sort the results by using the top right button (only in the « List » mode display). If your results are events and groups, this feature does not apply, you must first filter by content type.

If your results are events, you can sort by 6 different criteria:

• best match (only relevant when using the search bar)
• event date (from earliest to latest)
• most recently published
• least recently published
• with the most participants

If your results are groups, you can sort by 2 different criteria:

• best match (only relevant when using the search bar)
• number of members (from largest to smallest)

Our gateway to explore Mobilizon contents

We know that by offering a single gateway to the Mobilizon federation, the structure that holds the keys to that gate gets great powers. They get the power to decide what will be accepted (or rejected) in the search directory. They get the power to record who searched for what, when, from where. And they get the power to intervene in the order and display of the results.

It is on such power mechanisms that Facebook has built its monopoly. Obviously, at Framasoft, we do not seek to be in a position of power… and even less to follow Meta’s (bad) example ! Nevertheless, we want to show the emancipating potential of this software which allows to reclaim the means to gather.

As we already did with Sepia Search (our search engine to explore contents upload on PeerTube), we take the responsibility of opening Mobilizon Search Index, our gateway to Mobilizon.

An a posteriori moderated search engine

Not all Mobilizon instances will be referenced on Mobilizon Search Index. This search engine will be based on the list of instances we maintain at https://instances.joinmobilizon.org. To date, this list consists of 83 instances, but we hope that more and more organizations will use Mobilizon.

This list is aligned with the policy for all of the services we offer:

• compliance with French law
• compliance with our Terms and Conditions of Use
• respect of our moderation policy (FR only, for now)

Thus, if we are notified of an instance where contents explicitly condone terrorism or promote historical revisionism, we will remove it from the index (non-compliance with French laws, which we insist on in our TOS). Such removal will eliminate all events and groups hosted by that instance from the search results.

On the other hand, if one or more people come to abuse the time of our moderators with inappropriate and abusive reports, their words will be discredited and ignored (as indicated in our moderation policy (FR)).

However, we hope not to have to moderate this list too much in order to offer everyone the opportunity to discover the multitude of events and groups created on Mobilizon.

A public indexing tool, reproducible and adaptable to your conditions

The source code, the « recipe » of Mobilizon Search Index, is transparent. We publish it on our software forge and we provides an API that other software (including Mobilizon instances) can use.

So anyone is free to set and host their own instance list, indexing engine and search site, by copying and adapting what we have created. It is up to you to take the power (and responsibilities) by hosting your own Mobilizon search engine, set up and moderated according to your culture, your indexing policy and your values!

A V3 to improve content discovery

A new design for the homepage and the search results page

This is the main new feature of this V3, as it was obvious to us that we would implement all the work done on Mobilizon Search Index in Mobilizon software. This V3 offers you new homepage and the search results page design.

On this new homepage, in addition to a total makeover of the graphic interface (do you like it?), we have changed the order in which the different contents are displayed:

• the search bar is now more visible and you can precise a localization
• you have 3 categories cards displayed (we highlight those with the most events)
• 2 sections highlight events nearby and popular groups nearby your location (if you use the Geolocate me button or if you precise in your account’s preferences a city or region)
• a new section is dedicated to upcoming online events
• a section for the last published events on your instance and its federation

Our goal is to increase your chances of discovering events and groups that you never knew existed, to make the diversity of content published on Mobilizon more visible.

When you use the homepage search bar, Mobilizon displays a new search results page using Mobilizon Search Index design on which you can find all the features detailed above (map/list vue, filter system, sorting sytem). You even have one more critera in the left-hand column: you can choose results in your instance’s network or on the Fediverse.

If you are a Mobilizon instance’s administrator, you can choose and set up which search engine you want to use by default.

Also, the section « These events may interest you », placed at the bottom of events, uses new criteria (categories, event language and distance if the event has a physical address) in addition to tags to recommend you more relevant events.

Necessary substantive changes

During this year, we have modified many elements of Mobilizon in order not to build up technical debt (switch to VueJS 3, migration of the CSS framework from Bulma to Tailwind, etc.). Those changes are not visible when using Mobilizon but are necessary. They already give you the possibility of using a dark theme and they will make it easier for us to offer you more features (e.g. a theme system) in the future.

And we now offer administrators the possibility to use metrics tools (Matomo and Plausible) on their Mobilizon instance that allow them to have additional data (e.g. number of views on a page or number of views of an event) in addition to the stats provided by the software itself.

Mobilizon is still financed thanks to your donations

This v3 of Mobilizon has been partly financed on our 2022 budget, so directly thanks to the donations of the people who support Framasoft, and partly by the NLnet Foundation.

We don’t yet know exactly what we’re going to do on Mobilizon in 2023, but we know you’d love us to develop a feature for events import, ability for event organizers to privately contact attendees, and ability to fill in arbitrary contact information for event location.

Our new campaign Collectivize Internet / Convivialize Internet (in French) is going to require a lot of our energy, but be sure that we will hear your feedback to take them into account. So if you can (at the period we are aware that it is particularly complicated), and if you want to, please support the actions of our association.

At the time of publishing, we are still missing 178 200 € to finance our yearly budget and make everything we want to do in 2023 happen.

If you can (especially in these hard times) and if you want to, thanks for supporting our non-profit and our actions.

Soutenir Framasoft

Helpful links

• Mobilizon official website
• Our French speaking instance Mobilizon.fr
• Discover the federation on Mobilizon.org
• See the source code of Mobilizon
• See the source code of Mobilizon Search Index
• Support Framasoft

What if Framasoft took a look at the free/libre collaborative software Nextcloud?

In our newsletter #28 (Autumn 2021), we talked about Romain, an intern at Framasoft, whose internship topic was related to Nextcloud.

A few weeks later, we invited  » socially committed  » structures using Nextcloud to answer a survey (now closed), created with the designer Marie-Cécile Godwin, and La Fabrique à Liens.

Then, once the results were analyzed (you will find an anonymized raw version and a synthetic analysis at the end of the article), we were able to identify a set of unmet user needs, on which Romain could work.

Nextcloud provides loads of features, but the one that remains the most central is probably the storage and sharing of files. However, browsing files in the web interface is quite tedious: a click each time you change folder, and thus a more or less fast reloading of the tree structure. And sometimes many clicks to go from one branch of the tree to another.

There was probably a way to make it more accessible and more intuitive.

Romain, who knew neither the PHP computer language nor the Nextcloud software solution when beginning his internship, indulged himself with the development of a prototype of a third-party application, which would not only allow to « open the file tree » within the same interface, but also to be able to make advanced searches.

Two months later, the « Sorts » plugin was born, and we would like to share its story below.

Hello Romain, can you introduce yourself?

My name is Romain and I am 24 years old. I grew up in Guadeloupe (French West Indies) before coming to study in Villeurbanne, at the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées in Lyon, where I will graduate in 2022 as a Telecom Engineer.

When I’m not busy with my studies, I spend a lot of time tinkering and repairing old machines, and getting involved in community projects! I am particularly involved in Karnaval Humanitaire, a student association that organizes a music festival for which I was the site manager in 2021 and 2022.

Picture of Romain, INSA Lyon intern at Framasoft from September 2021 to February 2022

Why did you choose Framasoft for your internship?

I wanted my internship to be in line with my values of free sharing of knowledge, and away from capitalism and big companies!

I already knew a bit about Framasoft’s projects, especially the online services and software development, and I knew I would find interesting projects in a great environment… and I was not disappointed!

Let’s come to the subject of your internship. What was the main goal?

My internship took place at the beginning of a larger project, codenamed « Framacloud » [Framasoft’s note: we’ll be telling you more about this ambitious project in the upcoming months], whose goal is to allow structures fighting for social progress and social justice to gain ownership, master and control over digital collaboration processes.

This Framasoft project is focused on an online collaboration and file sharing software solution: Nextcloud.

However, although it is one of the most successful and complete open source solutions in this field, it is primarily designed to meet the needs of customers of « Nextcloud GmbH« , the German company that publishes the software. These customers are large structures, public, university or private. As a result, there is a risk of differences between the expectations of small associations and the development priorities of Nextcloud GmbH.

The goal of my internship was therefore to find out how to improve this software in order to make it more useful and more accessible for alternative organisations.

OK, that’s a big topic! How did you manage about it?

Well, first of all, I had to learn about the development of Nextcloud, and we had to learn more about this software: how it works, its flaws and especially what was missing for the users we were targeting.

After several tests of the software and several hypotheses on how to improve it, we decided to get closer to our target users. So we set up a survey targeting people who were part of organisations committed to social progress and social justice and who were already using Nextcloud. This survey questioned their uses of collaborative computing within the collective, their uses of Nextcloud, their frustrations and expectations.

Thanks to the almost 200 answers of this survey we decided on the software developments to be achieved during this internship and that led to the creation of a Nextcloud plugin called « Sorts »!

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Let’s focus a moment on this survey work. What were the results?

The main concerns that came out of this survey were rather general concerns about the Nextcloud tool. But it allowed us to see what is important for the public we wanted to address.

Of the 20 or so topics I was able to identify in the responses, the first two were topics we couldn’t do much about: collaborative document editing and the general « slowness » of the tool.
On the other hand, among the following subjects we had more perspective to help change things in a few months of training: handling and ergonomics of the software, synchronization problems or help to users to find their way among the files of the collective.

It is this last concern: « finding one’s way in the tree of files more easily » that interested me the most, and that led me to the development of « Sorts ».

For those who want to have a look at the details of the survey, we have published the anonymized results, as well as a synthesis of the different subjects I have discussed in order to refine the subject of the workshop (it is probably easier to digest than the spreadsheet of raw results).

[Framasoft’s note: You can find the results of the survey at the end of the article]

So, you decided to create the Nextcloud application « Sorts ». But… what does this plugin actually do?

The idea behind Sorts is to help people find the files they are looking for and to understand how the folders and files have been organized by the collective they are part of.

To solve the first problem we took advantage of all the information about each file that Nextcloud was already storing (modification date, weight, « tagging » of the file by the user, …) and I coded an interface that allows users to perform a search mixing these different attributes. For example « Find me all the files in the folder « Grant » and its subfolders that are marked as important, and that are in PDF format ».

To solve the second problem we decided to present the folders, subfolders and files in a way that was not yet present in Nextcloud: in a tree list. That is to say that when you click on a folder, instead of « entering » this folder and seeing only its direct content, the folder is « expanded » and you see its content as well as the folders and files which are « next to » it. This tree-like list takes up more space than a simple list but it allows you to understand where you are in the folders, which helps you to understand how they are arranged.

Technically, did you encounter any issues?

Yes, like in any development process. I think one of the big challenges was to find out which part of the Nextcloud APIs to use, what were its limitations and how to deal with it. The Nextcloud current search feature is designed around a « grouped » search (« unified search ») where the user searches for a string of characters, and Nextcloud returns everything that matches this string among the various resources (files, todos, events, emails, conversations, …). This is not at all what we wanted to do: search among files only according to several conditions, some of which are not strings (dates, numbers, …). But, fortunately for us, there was another search API specific to files. This other API looked very promising because it was already thought to allow combining search conditions on file-specific attributes. However, this API was quite old and not widely used, which sometimes gave me a bit of trouble.

Moreover, I realized quite lately that the API did not take into account two of the different file attributes: « tags » and file sharing information. This information is managed in totally separate APIs. So I faced this dilemma: either I rewrite an API that does the database queries itself with all the attributes, or I complete the existing API, or I cobble together something where I do 3 database queries per search and combine the results. The first solution would have taken too much time and the second solution would have been rejected by Nextcloud GmbH (you don’t change Nextcloud APIs so easily), so I cobbled something together, and so much for the performance of the application.

Did you have contacts with the Nextcloud community or its editor (Nextcloud Gmbh), and if so, how did it go ?

Yes of course, when we started to have a clear idea of what we wanted to do with Sorts I wrote a note of intent with a link to a prototype on the Nextcloud plugin development forum. This led to some exchanges with Nextcloud’s employed developers who were interested in the project and sent me some constructive feedback. We even had a video meeting with them to discuss the plugin but also the wider project, but with everyone’s schedules this meeting took place quite late in the development of Sorts and it didn’t impact the plugin much.

And now, the nagging question: is Sorts really working?

Well YES ! 🎉 Sorts offers an « unfolding » file tree view and already allows combined searches on a good variety of characteristics that files can have!

However, this is a Beta version and it has some limitations… I had to make some accommodations with the technical issues mentioned in the previous question, and while the current version works on small Nextcloud instances, it will likely have trouble to scale when working with real instances counting hundreds of users and thousands of files.

Nextcloud Sorts 0.1.0-beta feature demo video (source)

Features of Nextcloud Sorts 0.1.0-beta (source)

What’s next? What do you think is next, and when?

Sorts is available on https://packages.framasoft.org and on the Nextcloud app store in beta version !

We want to continue to maintain this application and to process and accept all possible contributions, but neither I nor Framasoft have plans to develop it full time at the moment. Sorts is now entering the world of community/voluntary development, which means that the developments carried by Framasoft and myself will be done according to our desires and availabilities, without any particular agenda (which also means that we won’t announce any « release date »).

We are coming to the end of this interview. Would you like to share with us a feeling about the work done during this workshop?

Summarize an internship in one emotion? That’s a tough one! Developing a program goes from frustration when it doesn’t work, to the excitement of investigating why it doesn’t work, to the satisfaction of seeing the feature work when you’ve found it.

No, more seriously, there were some frustrations like not having much time to develop or not finding as much time and motivation as I would have liked to complete the project after the internship, but I am satisfied. Satisfied to have made something that works but especially to have been able to design this plugin from almost the beginning to almost the end, taking the time to identify what could be useful, to think about what it should look like, and then to think about how to realize it technically.

Last question, recurrent in our interviews: what is the question you would have liked to be asked, and what would be your answer?

Why didn’t you publish Sorts earlier?

That’s my big regret! And I think that the people who were interested in the application during the note of intent also asked themselves that question. But my associative and personal life was quite busy after the internship and didn’t leave me much time to take care of Sorts, that’s also what volunteer development is about.

Thank you Romain! And to all the people who made this work possible, especially by answering the questionnaire!

Reminder of the different links mentioned in the article :

• Results of the anonymized survey (raw format .csv or LibreOffice Calc format .ods)
• Quick analysis of the survey, in french, by Romain (.pdf format)
• Romain’s internship report (in english. Also available in french)
• Source code on Framagit
• Download and install Sorts application on the Nextcloud App store (Warning: beta version, use at your own risk. However, the risks are limited because the Sorts application does not make any modification on your files)

Customization, content discovery, empowering through more control… Here is an overview of the new version of our software solution to create alternative platforms to YouTube and federate them together.

PeerTube is a free software that, once installed on a server, generates a video hosting platform. This platform can be federated, to share its video catalog with other PeerTube platforms. It also provides a resilient video broadcasting system, which combines peer-to-peer and traditional streaming.

Today, PeerTube is a whole ecosystem: with an index of nearly 900 public « instances » (that’s how a PeerTube server is called), a search engine, dozens of plugins to adapt one’s instance to the needs of the content creators they hosts… But also tens of thousands of lines of code and hundreds of thousands of videos.

A year of work since adding live streams

Last January, the 3rd version (v3) of PeerTube was released. The big new feature was the ability to stream live videos in peer-to-peer.

Late March 2021, version 3.1 was released, with improved video transcoding, interface, subscriptions…

Version 3.2 of PeerTube was released by the end of May. It allows content creators to customize their channels. Viewers also get better control of their viewing (automatic recover of views of downloads when interrupted, improvement on the video player contextual menu…).

Late July, version 3.3 offers administrators of a PeerTube instance homepage customization: add text, banners, highlight videos, channels, playlists. In addition, playlists now appear in search results, we have also shortened the web addresses of videos, channels and accounts, and the display of languages that read from right to left is now fully supported.

In early September, PeerTube version 3.4 was released. The video player became more convenient and fluid. Instance administrators can now federate only to an account or a channel (without having to federate with the whole instance that hosts them). But above all, it is now possible to filter videos on a page that displays several videos. For example, on the page of a channel you can display only the videos that are in French and that talk about cooking.

A v4 by 2022, to give you even more control

The fourth version of PeerTube is scheduled for late 2021/early 2022. But as of today, we are publishing the Release Candidate of this v4, that is to say, the almost finished version that we will test for bugs and unexpected behavior. So we can already tell you about the new features!

The big new feature of this v4 is the table view of all the videos of an instance. It will facilitate instances administration and moderation by allowing you to select a batch of videos to apply the same action in bulk: delete them, block them, transcode them to or delete a certain video format, etc.

The advanced filter features make this bulk processing easier, by distinguishing between local videos (hosted on one’s own server) and remote videos (hosted on servers with which one has federated), or by sorting by publication date, for example.

Content creators will also be able to benefit from features to better manage all the videos on their PeerTube channels or view their subscribers. For now, this subscriber view is basic and doesn’t allow for (much) action, but it’s a foundation we’ll be able to build on to meet many needs.

Another new low-tech feature in PeerTube is the introduction of 144p video resolution. This is very low bandwidth-friendly, and can be very useful for weak connections, audio broadcasts, or videos where you don’t need to see very fine details.

Finally, the release of this v4 is the occasion of a big spring winter cleaning. The configuration, the code, but also the API (that allows other software to interact with PeerTube) have been reviewed, modified and improved.

Our contributions to the PeerTube ecosystem

Indeed, PeerTube is now an ecosystem of instances, content creators, third party clients, plugins, contributors… An ecosystem of which we are but one member.

Throughout the year, we have improved the JoinPeertube FAQ, moderated our search engine index, responded to issues (software feedback) and reviewed pull requests (code contributions). After a recent audit offered by NGI, we worked on the code of the official JoinPeertube website to improve its accessibility.

We also funded and supported two external developments that greatly improve the live experience. On one hand, we helped the PeerTube Live Chat plugin. It allows instances adminnistrators to add chat functionality to their content creators’ live streams. On the other hand, the PeerTube Live App, which allows anyone with a PeerTube account to broadcast lives from their Android smartphones (available here on Fdroid and here on the Google Playstore).

One of the recent evolutions of the PeerTube ecosystem is the multiplication of large instances, which host many videos. This creates new uses and new expectations that we try to meet.

For example, we communicate with one team of the French Ministry of Education, that works on apps.education.fr, a tool where teachers in France can find many freeèlibre services, including PeerTube hosting. Our goal is to get a better understanding of their needs and use cases, and to find ways to facilitate their contribution to the PeerTube community.

Any plans for PeerTube in 2022…?

The first project is to test this v4 Release Candidate, collect feedback, apply fixes to release a stable v4 by the end of 2021 / early 2022. After that, it will probably be necessary to take some time to rest, and prepare a roadmap for the upcoming year.

Even if we don’t know yet what form PeerTube v5 will take, we can already tell you about our intuitions, and especially the points that caught our attention:

• Eliminate frustration points and improve usability;
• Work on giving even more control to instance managers as well as to video makers (mass processing of videos, acting on subscriber lists, etc.);
• Improve the transcoding and its displaying (display of the time remaining before publishing the video, why not work on deporting transcoding tasks to a remote server…);
• Add light-weight editing tools for videos (cut the beginning/end of a video, etc.);
• Work on automatic import of channels and videos hosted on other mainstream platforms;
• Basic import/export tools for a PeerTube account to facilitate migration between two instances.

The list is far from complete and we’ll keep listening to your ideas (for example on our forum)… But we already know that we won’t be able to do everything, not by ourselves.

Support Framasoft to support PeerTube

In 2021, we received a 50 000 € grant from NLnet (from European funds) for our work on PeerTube. This external funding allowed us to avoid having to prioritize « sexier » features in order to get a successful crowdfunding. So it’s thanks to this support from NLnet that we were able to make significant improvements that are not super-bankable, but necessary when you want a mature software.

The growing success of PeerTube implies an increasing amount of work to maintain and respond to the people who use it: understanding and solving bug reports, reviewing and integration of code contributions (commits), answering questions and requests on the forum, on the chat and on the software forge (already 3100 issues processed for about 400 pending)… All this work, not very visible, is mainly done by Framasoft.

We estimate (roughly) that the NLnet grant will have financed two thirds of the total cost of this project in 2021. This means that we have taken 25 000 € from the annual budget of the Framasoft association, so from the donations of the people who support us. We did not ask NLnet for 2022 funding on PeerTube (because we did it for another of our projects: Mobilizon).

However, Framasoft is (and wishes to remain) a small not-for-profit association https://framasoft.org/en/association , with about 40 members, including 10 employees. We maintain many actions (summarized in a deck of cards to flip on our donation page), and only one of our developers can devote about three quarters of his time to PeerTube.

If you would like to support the funding of PeerTube in 2022, please donate to Framasoft. By the way, in France, the Framasoft association is recognized as being of general interest and thus gives rights to tax deductions (so that a donation of 100 € will be – after tax deduction – 34 € for French taxpayers).

Thus, in addition to supporting PeerTube, you will finance many actions to facilitate digital emancipation, and emancipation through digital.

We count on your contribution!

Support Framasoft

Helpful links

• PeerTube official website
• Discover videos on the search engine Sepia Search
• See PeerTubube source code
• Support Framasoft

Mobilizon is our answer to the question: « How can we make it so that Climate Walks and demonstrations are not organized on Facebook? » This tool allows you to create groups, pages and events, without having to offer your data, update your status, tag your friends, share your photos…

First, you will need to find where to register on Mobilizon. We do host Mobilizon.fr, but it is restricted to French speaking users (otherwise we wouldn’t be able to moderate). But we’ve got you covered: we propose a selection of other Mobilizon hosters on Mobilizon.org.

Come again: what is Mobilizon?

Mobilizon is first and foremost a software, that web-hosters can install on a server, in order to create a platform, a Mobilizon web site. This Mobilizon web site can federate and thus synchronize its data with other Mobilizon web sites.

Imagine if Facebook were a network with several entry points, like emails. You would have the choice to sign up with this or that Facebook provider (just like you have the choice of your email provider). You’d choose such hoster because you feel you can trust them with your data, or to enforce a fair moderation. However, your Facebook provider would give you access to as many events and groups in the network as possible, because it would federate with the other hosts (just as you can receive emails from anyone, regardless of their provider).

That’s what Mobilizon is: a federated tool to publish your events, your pages, your information… and to focus on organizing your group.

One year of updates from your feedbacks

It’s been a little over a year since we published the first version (v1) of Mobilizon. Let’s admit that proposing a tool to organize and gather your group in the midst of confinements and curfews was not such a smart idea!

Yet Mobilizon is a promising software, with more than 75 public hosts (we’re calling them instances) and an already international scope. It must be said that for the past year, we have been updating the software to provide you with much needed features.

Last March, we released version 1.1, which added a history of activities, the ability to display events by geographic proximity and access to RSS feeds (to subscribe to news feeds and not miss anything).

In late June, we released version 1.2, which includes a notification system (useful for informing participants of your event), and a clear improvement of the interface (more pleasant on mobile)

In mid-August, we released version 1.3 of Mobilizon. It allows a better management of groups, whose administrators or moderators can edit events or blog posts. Moreover, you can now add many metadata to events: accessibility level, Twitter account, live stream address…

Finally, we worked in partnership with Koena Connect (a French accessibility company) to improve the accessibility of Mobilizon. Koena Connect provided a direct feedback channel to the persons who find accessibility issues with our software.

Mobilizon v2, a tool designed to serve you

Since this summer, we have been working hard (with our team of ONE paid developer who devotes 75% of his time to the project) to implement features inspired by your comments and requests.

From now on, it is possible for one of your Mobilizon profiles to follow the public activities of a group without having to join. You will have these events on your « My Events » page (now with a new filter system to display events). They will also appear on your home page and in your emails notifications (that you can turn off), as soon as this group publishes a public event.

People who organize events can now export a list of attendants, for example to check who has signed up and who comes. This list is downloadable in the most common formats (csv, odf, pdf), and for now only contains the names of profiles who have clicked « Participate » (and messages from anonymous accounts). But this is the beginning of a work that could be expanded, depending on your expectations.

Mobilizon v2 solves a real headache (and it was one to develop :p!): dealing with time zones. Now, if you organize an event in London, the time of your event will be associated with the British time zone by default.

Mobilizon will then convert the time for people who want to register from France, by displaying the time of the event on Paris time, for example. For this, Mobilizon looks at the time zone declared by your web browser (and you can control this setting in your account). This also allows Mobilizon to send you « the event starts in an hour » reminder emails at the right time, i.e.: yours (what a pleasure!)

A lot of work has been done to correctly display right to left languages; we had to adapt the interface itself. The tricky part was to adapt to « bidirectional » cases, where two languages with different reading directions are mixed, for example Mobilizon’s interface in French and an event described in Arabic.

You have asked for it (a lot), and it is even more relevant in times of pandemic, you now have the possibility to define an event as online, without geographical location. We’ve also added a new filter to the Mobilizon search, so you can see only « online » events among your results.

About the search engine, it is now possible to search among past events, just to find the ones that you liked.

We have implemented an automatic detection of the language of the events. When you write your event title and description, Mobilizon will assign a language to it. This allows for better accessibility for people who use a screen reader, but also improves on displaying the time of your event in its social media preview.

Finally, there are many, many tweaks that may seem small but are life changing. We worked on the emails look, on the cards presenting events or groups, and improved on the public view of groups (the alternative to Facebook « pages »). We also made progress in digital accessibility thanks to our exchanges with Koena.

Mobilizon can now easily run on ARM machines, which will facilitate self-hosting on nanocomputers (like Raspberry Pi) or with Yunohost, for example.

Join the Mobilizon Community

Mobilizon is still in the early stages of its life, with a very motivated community. There are lively discussions in our Matrix Room! The contributors who translate Mobilizon are amazingly efficient (thanks and lots of datalove to them!)

We don’t know exactly yet how we’ll improve on Mobilizon in 2022. Our intuitions tell us that we will have to work on making this solution better known to the people it could appeal to.

One way to manage it would be to improve content discovery (events, groups, their public page, the public articles of these groups) notably by working on search tools, filters, and so on.

But nothing is decided yet and we are eager to hear your feedback (on our forum or our Matrix lounge, for example) to know what direction to give to Mobilizon.

As soon as we have a clearer roadmap proposal, we’ll be sure to let you know in the Mobilizon newsletter (so be sure to sign up here).

By coincidence, today the documentary Disappear – Under the Radar of Algorithms is released by ArteTV. Directed by Marc Meillassoux, this documentary features a performer trying to escape from the clutches of Facebook, and Mobilizon seems to play an important role in it…

Mobilizon is financed thanks to your donations

We remind you that this v2 of Mobilizon has been financed on our 2021 budget, so directly thanks to the donations of the people who support Framasoft. Indeed, Framasoft is a not-for-profit organization financed at 93% by your donations.

Because Framasoft is recognized as being of general interest by French authorities, donations to our association are tax deductible for French taxpayers. Thus, a donation of 100 € to Framasoft is, after deduction of income tax, 34 €.

We have explained, in this series of articles in French on the Framablog , all the actions that are financed by a donation to Framasoft. They are summarized in a set of (multilingual !) cards to click, flip and color on our support Framasoft page.

Thank you in advance for visiting and sharing this page. For those of you who can, please consider giving colors to our actions by making a donation to Framasoft.

Support Framasoft

Helpful links

• Mobilizon official website
• Our French speaking instance Mobilizon.fr
• Discover the federation on Mobilizon.org
• See the source code of Mobilizon
• Support Framasoft

After several years, Framasoft has decided to stop the developments of its software Framaforms, which provides you the same name service. And to avoid any confusion between the software’s name and the service named Framaforms (which remains open, don’t worry), we have decided to give it a new name: Yakforms. Let’s see what motivated this decision.

Framaforms, its life, its work

Officially released on October 5, 2016 as an alternative to Google Forms, Framaforms is an online service that allows internet users to simply create forms, by dragging and dropping elements (text fields, checkboxes, drop-down menu, etc.), to share them and analyze the answers.

Unlike most of the services presented in the De-google-ify internet campaign, Framaforms is based on a software developed by one of the association’s employees. Framasoft has always preferred to offer and promote existing free-libre softwares that have their own community, rather than developing homemade solutions that need to be maintained and developed, not to mention user support. But no satisfying software was found to provide an alternative to Google Forms: most of the existing free-libre softwares were not online services, or were pretty hard to use or too expensive.

Also, Pyg, the general director of Framasoft at the time, decided to develop a simple and user-friendly tool. Considering his technical skills, he chose a solution using Drupal (one of the most intalled free-libre Content Management Software – or CMS – in the world) and the Webform module (for creating forms). Feel free to read his interview published at the time where he talked about his choices.

Four years and a half later, Framaforms is one of the most used services of Framasoft. In 2020, framaforms.org represented more than 36 million page views (a 250% increase compared to 2019). In the last twelve months (May 2020 to April 2021) alone, almost 100,000 forms were created on Framaforms where they collected over 2 million responses. Every week more than 1,000 of you create more than 3,000 forms. That’s really impressive!

Sometimes, we wonder why this service is so successfull! Of course, we did our best to promote it. Of course, internet users are more and more aware of the need to change their digital practices to protect their privacy. Of course, we know that asking for sensitive information, such as gender identity or sexual orientation, via a Google Forms is less and less common and acceptable.

But it seems that the main reason why you use Framaforms is just because one day, you were asked to submit a form hosted on framaforms.org and therefore you discovered the tool. Form creators indirectly become self-prescribers of the service to their audience. Submitting to a form gives you an active experience of the tool and then allows you to become a creator more easily. That confirms that Framaforms is a tool with a future.

The issue with Framaforms

However, since its development in 2016, Framaforms is a tool that hasn’t much evolved. As you can notice on the software’s repository, the team has regularly updated Drupal and the modules used, improved performances (especially by switching to php7 and changing servers), fixed identified bugs but added very few features (some in 2017).

Besides, since 2016, Framasoft is the new editor of two softwares: PeerTube and Mobilizon. With Framadate and Framaforms, Framasoft finds itself managing 4 different softwares, not to mention all the existing projects to which our association contributes. And it’s a lot for a small not-for-profit like ours. We decided that our capacity to develop should be focused on PeerTube and Mobilizon, at the cost of the two other tools.

Finally, because of its technical bases, Framaforms software wasn’t suitable for installation by other hosting companies: the process was arduous. This explains why Framaforms didn’t become much of a « swarm », unlike other successful softwares currently supported by a large community. So far, very few instances are installed, which increases the pressure on the Framaforms service that has to take care of all users’ burden.

That’s one of the main reasons why we welcomed Théo as an intern from February to July 2020. His main missions were to:

• improve the software to make it more functional;
• reduce the support load by actively participating in it;
• simplify the installation process, in order to increase Framaforms instances’ number.

Théo worked very hard on new features. Among the most important ones:

• creation of a direct contact form so that users can directly contact the form creator without using Framasoft support
• design of an « Overview » page allowing Framaforms administrators to easily access statistics (total number of forms and users, « abusive » forms, etc.)
• forms automatic deletion after an expiration period.

Concerning the software installation process, Théo has created a Drupal installation profile for Framaforms offering instance administrators Framaforms module (enriched), and webform modules on which the software is based. Framaforms can now be installed directly via the Drupal interface rather than by manipulating files via a terminal. This simplifies the installation process, with the significant advantage that it’s very similar to the Drupal installation process.

Despite these improvements, Framasoft knows that, as long as the software has the same name than the associated service, people would always think that Framasoft is responsible for developing and maintaining the software.

Even though we don’t consider closing down the framaforms.org service, we don’t want to dedicate as much energy developing this tool. At least, we don’t want to be the only ones to do it, therefore we would like a development community to emerge who will take over Framaforms software to bring it new features.

Framaforms-the-software is dead, long live Yakforms!

The emergence of this community is needed to keep the software alive. Framaforms needs, at least, interventions on security flaws and functional bugs that may appear. And this software would also deserve new features, interface and ergonomy improvements, etc.

In order to prepare this community, we offered Théo to join the salaried team for a few months. His missions: to work on the internationalization (making the software translatable), to provide instances customization (allowing administrators to configure some elements such as the instance name, its formatting or its limitations) and to develop new features (limiting the number of answers per form and the number of forms per account). He also had to create a presentation website where everything about the software would be accessible, whether you are a simple user, an administrator or a developer.

The other important thing for us was to rename Framaforms to avoid any confusion with the framaforms.org service. After many brainstormings, we chose the name Yakforms to replace Framaforms. Why Yakforms? Well… this choice is both a combination of bad puns and the desire to have a mascot. So why a yak? The mystery remains, and we are committed to inventing a different answer every time we are asked. Because the only answer that matters, is the one given by the future development community created around this software (or that will copy it, « fork » it to give it a brand new direction, and a new name).

Théo also did his best to create a community around Yakforms. Therefore he thought a lot about different online spaces that would allow a community to exchange and pull together. He created a dedicated category on the Framacolibri forum and a website presenting the software: its main features, how to install an instance and how to contribute to its development.

We hope that many of you will browse through it to learn more about the main features, to find out how to install it or participate in its development. Because this software won’t evolve without you. Joining the Yakforms community means participating in the software development: improving its code, rethinking its ergonomics, translating its interfaces or documenting its use.

So get hold of Yakforms! Install it, translate it, fork it, challenge it or offer feedback on the forum, etc. By releasing this project from Framasoft’s control, we hope that a diverse and strong community will take it further than we did. Yakforms is in your hands, and we look forward to seeing what you will do with it!

• The presentation website: http://yakforms.org/
• The forum: https://framacolibri.org/c/yakforms/
• The software documentation https://docs.yakforms.org/
• The FAQ: https://yakforms.org/pages/faq.html
• The code repository: https://framagit.org/yakforms/yakforms

And a huge thanks to the #MemesTeam for their creativity!

Interested in contributing to the contents production of a MOOC about FLOSS contribution? You already have a contribution experience and think it can be useful to new contributors? Join us!

Leading Internet users into the world of contribution

Last September we were so delighted to learn that Marc Jeanmougin, a research engineer at Télécom Paris, wanted Framasoft to be associated with his online course projet on FLOSS contributions that had just been funded by the Institut Mines-Télécom.

We have been dreaming about it: a MOOC to learn how to contribute to free-libre software

Developing digital tools that facilitate individuals’ contributions is one of the lines of our Contributopia campaign. On this subject we already have set up Contribateliers (and their online version Confinateliers): workshops to discover how each of us can contribute to free-libre software. Implemented in 2018 in Lyon, those interventions now take place in cities (Lyon, Paris, Toulouse, Grenoble and Nantes) allowing people to contribute to the free-libre software and free culture in a user-friendly way.

This is also the case with the Contribulle project we are hosting: a platform where projects with the same free-libre software values are connected with those without enough skills and contributors who could give them a hand. This nice initiative is slowly taking shape and we think it will be a great success in the coming months.

Finally, the aim with this Contributing to FLOSS MOOC is to allow developers to get both a theoretical (what is it about?) and practical introduction (how to contact somebody? and how to contribute?) to the world of FLOSS contribution.

All these initiatives allow users of free-libre services to learn how to contribute and to stop using a software only as if it were a finished product.

Contributing to develop the Contributing to FLOSS MOOC

After a first day in October, talking about pedagogical sequencing in a small committee, the prefiguration team decided that given the MOOC subject, it would not be totally far-fetched to allow people who want to co-produce contents with us to do so.

That’s why we have created a project on the Gitlab software forge. For now, few contents have been published on this contribution space. But you can still read the general outline of this future course.

We also have created a dedicated Matrix chatroom in order to have a daily and more informal exchange with you. Do not hesitate to join us there to learn more about this project.

We invite you to exchange in video conference on this project on February, 10th at 6:30pm. At the same time we will present you the general organization of the MOOC and the choices we have made both educationally (what angle on FLOSS we will try to take) and technically. We will also discuss how we envisage contributions to contents production.

If after this first exchange you want to help us with contents preparation, you can participate in 6 other online brainstorming sessions, each one dedicated to the contents of one week of the MOOC. They will take place on Mondays and Thursdays between 6:30pm and 8pm from February 11th to March 1st (details of access and contents will be published on the gitlab issues with each session).

We hope we will see many of you at those different events. But as we know it’s not always easy to be available on a set time slot, we offer to collect your reactions, feedbacks or comments before each session on our repository. Do not hesitate to write down whatever comes to your mind!

Today we are releasing a major new version of PeerTube, our alternative to centralized video platforms like YouTube.

Wait… What is PeerTube?

PeerTube is not a platform, it is a software.

Hosters can install this software on their servers and create a « PeerTube website » (an instance) where users can view and upload videos as an alternative to YouTube.

Unlike YouTube, PeerTube instances are :

• Free: everyone has the right to use PeerTube software, you can look « under the hood » to see if the code is clean, you can even tweak it to your liking and share it!
• Federated: each PeerTube site can synchronize with another to show their videos without hosting them on the server’s hard drive.
• Decentralized: the videos use peer-to-peer streaming (from PeerTube to the internet user, but also from internet users to other internet users), to improve fluidity.

A v3 funded by your solidarity

In June 2020, we announced the steps of our roadmap for the next 6 months, up to PeerTube v3.

On this occasion, we launched a fundraising campaign, with the aim of financing the €60,000 that this development would cost us. Your have been very generous, as more than €68,000 have been raised.

We would like to thank you for this generosity especially in a difficult time for everyone. Thanks also to the sponsors of this v3, Octopuce (which proposes hosting and managed services of free-libre softwares, including PeerTube) and Code Lutin (development company specialising in free-libre software). But also the Debian project (one of the best known and most used free-libre GNU-Linux distributions) which, by their donation and their press release, gave PeerTube an international recognition.

Research, moderation, facilitation: key steps

The transition from v2.2 (June 2020 version) to v3 of PeerTube has been done in steps, with many minor improvements and at least one major development each time.

The global search of version 2.3, released during the summer, allows you to find videos in the whole federation (and not just in the federation-bubble of the PeerTube instance you are visiting).

The version 2.4 of September has improved the moderation tools, the display of playlists on external sites and the plugin system.

At the end of September, we unveiled SepiaSearch, the PeerTube videos and channels search engine based on the global search feature. That feature was not intended to be a separate search engine, with its web interface and indexed PeerTube instance list. The constraint was to make it free and affordable, so that others could host their own PeerTube search engine, with their own rules. Your feedback helped us understand that this was expected and necessary, so we added this step to our roadmap.

From October onwards, development focused on live and peer-to-peer video streaming. It was a big undertaking. The fact that it happened in a difficult 2020 year (for everyone) didn’t help, but we managed to complete the challenge with almost no delay! (or very little? :p)

A minimalist and efficient peer-to-peer live stream

The great feature of this v3 is live streaming, and we are proud to say that it works very well! 🎉🎉🎉

Here is a link to the release, we hope that PeerTube Instances admin will apply the update soon!

We have detailed how it all works in the announcement of the publication of version 3 RC (for « release candidate ») which has been tested in the last few weeks.

The main points to remember :

• The lag (between video maker and audience) varies between 30 seconds and 1mn, as expected ;
• Depending on the power of the server and its load (number of simultaneous live shows, transcoding, etc.), PeerTube can provide hundreds of simultaneous views (but we’re not sure that it will scale to thousands… at least not yet!);
• Administration options are included for people hosting the instance;
• The features are minimalist by design, and we have documented our recommendations for creating a live ;
• The live can be done with most video streaming tool (we recommend the free-libre software OBS), with two options:
  • An « short-lived » live, with a unique identifier, will offer the possibility to save the video and display a replay on the same link;
  • A « permanent » live stream, which will work more like a Twitch channel, but without the replay option.

There is more than live in life

This v3 comes with many changes and improvements, thanks to the UX design work we did with Marie Cécile Godwin Paccard. Menus, notifications, administration and moderation tools have been redesigned.

This work on the menus is just one of the most visible examples of the many improvements that have been made to PeerTube to make its use more enjoyable. We are very pleased with the initial results and we are looking forward to continue this work.

« PeerTube, Backstage »

During the fundraising for this v3, a certain TomToom offered us an original contribution. Video director for Kintésens prod, he wanted to offer us a short behind-the-scenes movie about PeerTube. The challenge? To show the reality lived by our very small team, with our artisanal methods (we proudly claim the term), while respecting the will of Chocobozzz (the only paid developer on the project) not to show up on the screen and to devote his time to develop this v3.

The result? Here it is.

PeerTube’s future

The next step? Getting some rest! In the meantime, don’t hesitate to give us as much feedback as possible on these new features, specifically on the live. It’s by reading your contributions on our forum that we can understand what is expected, what we need to prioritize, what needs to be corrected or improved.

We do not foresee any crowdfunding in 2021, nor to finance the future v4 of PeerTube. These fundraising put us in a paradoxical situation: we want to raise awareness about the software to raise funds, so people are interested in it, so they want to contribute, but we have little time to welcome them, because our very small team has to work hard to develop the features promised in the fundraising.

So we haven’t drawn up a strict roadmap for 2021, in order to keep ourselves available and react to the needs we perceive. We just know that the main theme of PeerTube v4 will be customization.

Centralized platforms give little power over the display of videos (newest, most viewed, just that category, etc.), the look of their platform, or even customization of the channels. Giving these capabilities back to the people seems to us to be an interesting and fun way to go.

If you wish to help us in this approach, do not hesitate to promote PeerTube around you (with the JoinPeertube website) or to financially support our not-for-profit.

Visit JoinPeertube.org Support Framasoft