Bonjour,
On April 23rd, fedeproxy must be pitched during a videoconference: this is a requirement associated with the DAPSI grant. It’s an opportunity to make a video (1 minute) that we could keep. The alternative being to improvise something at the last minute, which would be good enough but not something that can be reused.
Based on the recent User Research interviews I’m under the impression that the following scenario could work. Note that it targets the general public and differs from the full description available on this forum which targets Free Software developers
- From its inception in the 80’, the idea that software belongs to humanity is growing. Once the doing of a few hundred people, hundred of thousands of developers create it all over the world on a daily basis. Once mocked by the software giants, it is now embedded in almost everything, including Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android.
- These giant made their fortune controlling software and how it is used and the battle to somehow own Free Software is raging. Software patents are very effective. Scaring developers away from fighting for the rights they have under copyright is another smart move on their part. And they recently discovered that being in control of a Free Software production factory (also called forge) is a powerful leverage to control the developers who use it. Microsoft paid 7.5 billions to acquire GitHub, the largest Free Software forge with over 50 million users and hosting hundred of thousand active development projects.
- Enumerate the problems from the fedeproxy description ( Censorship, Lock-in, Exclusion, Vulnerability): that’s an essential part of what their value for money.
- The most efficient counter attack is interoperability and that’s what fedeproxy is about. One should be able to use any software forge they want and participate in the development of Free Software projects that are hosted on other forges. In the same way someone can send mail from Windows and the receiver can read it on MacOS. But when it comes to software forges, it does not work like that: if a project is hosted on GitHub, the only way to work on it is by agreeing to the TOS of GitHub.
- Fedeproxy is a “federation proxy” and creates interoperability for GitHub, without asking permission to Microsoft. It is a bridge (a proxy) between GitHub and other forges and will eventually allow all developers to break free.
What do you think?