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submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by Framasoft@lemmy.world to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

Bonjour, c/opensource@lemmy.ml!

Framasoft (that's us!) is a small French non-profit (10 employees + 25 volunteers), that has been promoting Free-Libre software and its culture to a French-speaking audience for 20+ years.

What does Framasoft do?

We strongly believe that Free-Libre software is one of the essential tools for achieving a Free-Libre society. That is why we maintain and contribute to lots of projects that aim to empower people to get more freedom in their digital lives.

Among those tools are:

  • 20 FOSS based web-services that we host (mainly for our French-speaking audience) on our Degooglify Internet website, including Framadate and Framaforms… ;
  • many talks, workshops, and participations to conventions ;
  • A blog, where we share our views and where a group of volunteers translate into French news from the English-speaking FLOSS world ;
  • Many, many ressources to help people and organizations in their transition to ethical digital tools (guides, documentation, even card games!) ;

Framasoft is funded by donations (94% of our 2024 budget), mainly grassroots donations (75% of the 2024 budget). As we mainly communicate in French, the overwhelming majority of our donations comes from the French-speaking audience. You can help us through joinpeertube.org/contribute.

We develop PeerTube

In the English-speaking community, we are mostly known for developing PeerTube, a self-hosted video and live-streaming free/libre platform, which has become the main alternative to Big Tech's video platforms.

From a student project to a software with international reach, our video platform solution is now, seven years later, used and acknowledged by many institutions!

The last major version of PeerTube, v7, has been released at the end of 2024, along with the first version of the official mobile app, available on both Android (Play Store, F-Droid) and iOS.

Now that the PeerTube platform has matured significantly over successive versions, we believe that the way to enable even more people to use PeerTube is to improve the mobile app so that it can be carried around in people's pockets.

Ask Us Anything!

Last month, we have published the roadmap for the project. This week, we also launched our new crowdfunding campaign which focuses on our mobile app. We want to give you the opportunity through this AMA to give us feedback on the product and the project and discuss the crowdfunding campaign and our next steps!

If you have any questions, please ask them below (and upvote those you want us to answer first).

We will answer them to the best of our abilities with the /u/Framasoft account, from May. 28th 2025 5pm CET (11 am EST) until we are too tired ;).

EDIT (8:16 pm CET): This wraps it for the day, thanks for all of your questions and feedback!

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[-] asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev 16 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Thank you for your amazing works.

Are you planning on implementing a privacy friendly recommendation algorithm? It would ideally run locally on the client's device.

edit: Oh and, if you haven't seen it yet, please see the PM I sent you.

[-] Framasoft@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago

We did not plan such a thing for now, but we know some people have been working on this, see for instance : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/peertube-picks/ https://github.com/solidheron/peertube_recomendation_algorythm/

If you have details on how it would work in your idea, feel free to share thoughts on https://ideas.joinpeertube.org/ if it's not already done.

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[-] grue@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago

Y'all hiring?

(Kinda joking 'cause I know you just said you're small, but I am genuinely interested in figuring out how to get a software dev job with a French company as an American looking to emigrate.)

[-] Framasoft@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

Hi!

We're not for now but we'd probably look for a full-stack dev in the future! Nothing sure yet!

Keep an eye on our social media if you're interested in this position!

[-] Ludrol@szmer.info 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Thanks for your work. I have two questions:

  1. Will the set-up wizzard include federation settings? (Federate by default or defederate by default)?

  2. What are current plans for FramaDate? That was the only usable project for scheduling TTRPG sessions that I have found, but it has a bunch of issues on mobile.

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[-] bistdunarrisch@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago

Thank you for your work.

As far as I understand it one of the big advantages is that every viewer simultaneously provides its download data for others to stream (peering). With this approach server capacity can be reduced but I wonder how well this works (If I even understood it correctly).

With this system could it be possible to host videos on an own server without having to pay huge sever costs?

Also what is a nice website to search through all videos, similar to the front page of YouTube?

[-] AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Not part of Framasoft, but I am administrating a PeerTube platform/instance myself, and can anecdotally say, that it works rather well. Another factor is, that as an admin, you can set up to automatically mirror videos on other instances, when they meet certain criteria.

For example, I have ~300GB set aside to mirror trending, new and most-watched videos of some instances, that I consider to have quality (EDIT: and reliably non-illegal) content regularily (e.g. spectra.video, makertube.net, peertube.wtf, etc.) That way, in addition to just users watching videos acting as a seeding peer ~~via webtorrent~~, my own dedicated server in Finland among other professional servers with large bandwith also add to the resilience of the network, even for smaller instances.

Anecdotally, I have also heard of some people running a PeerTube instance successfully from just a SBC, like a RaspPi or similar, from home, ~~utilising the WebTorrent integratio you mentioned~~ EDIT: As I have learned, while they are using P2P connections, it is no longer the WebTorrent protocol to their advantage. Here's a video I remember talking about this as an example.

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[-] Framasoft@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago

The P2P system in PeerTube works very well if you have many concurrent viewers. You can have more information in our blogpost that details a P2P stress test: https://joinpeertube.org/news/stress-test-2023 But if most of the time you don't have many concurrent viewers, you'll still have to pay the bandwidth. But as you can see in the blog post above, PeerTube is not very expensive to host (if you don't have to store many videos).

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[-] Blaze@piefed.social 15 points 1 week ago
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I love your guys work and fully support it. I think libre software is the only way foward if we don't want worse and worse platforms.

Question: Do you think Peertube will likely ever have a the diversity of content that YouTube has or with different motives for making content it may never reach that scale?

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[-] pedroapero@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 week ago

You have my unconditional respect I donated a couple of times already. I wish you the best, keep on going!

[-] Mazesecle@lemm.ee 14 points 1 week ago

We strongly believe that Free-Libre software is one of the essential tools for achieving a Free-Libre society.

French-speaking audience

Why is your user target group mainly a French-speaking audience? It seems like hosting services in English would be more in-line with having a "Free-Libre society"; instead it is "Free-Libre society but only in French-speaking regions"

(I'm not from USA), but online I still prefer to use a language that almost everyone speaks, instead of creating content only few peopke can enjoy

(Μπορώ να γράψω την ερώτηση και στα ελληνικά άμα θέλετε να την καταλάβετε καλύτερα)

Nevertheless, I really am grateful for your work in Peertube and your other projects!

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[-] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 week ago

I have access to ~20Gb/s worth of extra bandwidth. Is there any way I can "donate" it to different Peertube instances? Right now I just use it to seed things and run XMR/I2P nodes

[-] spv@lemmy.spv.sh 8 points 1 week ago

GIGABIT per SECOND?!?!!! i will blow you to mirror my videos once i set up an instance

eye contact too

[-] lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago

That's a pretty fat pipe, cool

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[-] keepthepace@slrpnk.net 12 points 1 week ago

Not much to say, I love your work! Thank you for what you do and for existing!

Ah yes, maybe something: I think the fediverse suffers from a lack of recommendation/search system. We are a bit burned out from the terrible consequences of the for profit recommendations of Youtube and Twitter, but I think a system that would be actually controlled by the user would be a very precious discovery and adoption tool. Is there something like that being worked on somewhere?

It's barebones and very much a WIP - and not official - but for PeerTube, there is PeerTube Picks, a Firefox add-on, that tries to provide a very simple "algorithm" experience, which may grow to become what you are looking for.

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[-] neblem@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

Do larger one-time or smaller monthly donations help your organization more?

[-] Framasoft@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

We prefer monthly donations because they help us maintain financial stability throughout the year, whereas one-time donations tend to come in mainly when we run fundraising campaigns like this one (which means that some months our cash flow is low).

Thank you for your support!

[-] Marty_TF@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 week ago

will you try to modernize the office suit (framacalc etc) like you did peertube?

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[-] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I want to run a PT instance that just mirrors 100% of the CC-licensed videos on YouTube, so folks using Tor and VPNs can access it.

I'm not looking to make money, but I do need to cover the monthly costs of the server. What methods are available to monetize the site? Is there some plugin that can simply inject (privacy friendly) pre-watch ads?

[-] Framasoft@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

For now, it's mostly only the possibility writing in the "About" page of the server ways to support it, possibly with a banner above videos to encourage people to give money. Creators can also add a "Support" button below videos to tell viewers how to support them.

But I think some people are working on requiring people to login and have a subscription to view videos.

I don't know of an existing plugin that injects pre-roll ads, but it could probably already be developed with the current available APIs.

[-] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago

Love your work on Peertube!

Why doesn’t the penguin have a snorkel? Why does he need to bring the animals under the water? Why is the elephant on the other side?

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[-] lambipapp@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago

Thank you! Would you ever consider employing developers elsewhere in EU to work on the apps & services?

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[-] plule@jlai.lu 10 points 1 week ago

I may still have a pdf listing free software (or just games?) somewhere that you were writing from nearly two decades ago, and still today you provide so many great resources. Thank you!!

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[-] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 9 points 1 week ago

Just came to say Thank You!

I've been using FramaGit ever since Github went Microsoft.

[-] iddqd404@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 week ago

(Not a question) I have used services hosted by Framasoft many times, but I wasn't aware that you were also the developers of PeerTube! I have almost stopped using Y*utube and I've been trying to use PeerTube more and more. The main hurdle is finding content, which I'm sure will get easier and easier as the platform gets adopted and known in the fediverse and beyond. Congratulations for you efforts promoting Free and Libre software, keep up the good work!

[-] medem@lemmy.wtf 9 points 1 week ago

What is the authoritative source of information for learning how to run an instance of peertube and how difficult is it for a moderately skilled sysadmin to do so?

[-] Framasoft@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

The main thing is our documentation https://docs.joinpeertube.org/. Basic install should be really fine.

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[-] liaizon@social.wake.st 9 points 1 week ago

@Framasoft would be really nice to work more on compatibility with other fediverse software. There have been a lot of quirks with how comments on peertube render across fediverse platforms, like the way your @mentions don't render as links when the posts feterate out to many other places etc. What can we do to iron out these type of issues other then just filing bug reports?

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[-] pseudo@jlai.lu 8 points 1 week ago

Do you think that the ability to browse content without an account is a differentiating factor to the fediverse?
Would a content creator be able to attract lurking non-fedi user using that capacity?

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[-] wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I've been following all of your projects for two decades. I just want to say: un énorme merci!

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[-] defolos_tech@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

Merci pour votre travail, c'est génial ! 👏💪

Have you ever thought about offering compute capabilities (with OpenLambda for ex) or hosting web services ? I'd personnally pay for that, and there's a need for European cloud alternatives !

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this post was submitted on 28 May 2025
976 points (99.3% liked)

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