nutomic

I want to announce a new version of the activitypub-federation crate. Over the last weeks I worked on major improvements to the usability and documentation. It now includes an extensive guide on getting started to implement federation from scratch, and also an example project which can directly be deployed to a server and federate with projects like Mastodon.

The library takes care of basic functionality like HTTP Signatures, activity sending, and fetching data from other servers. Application developers can focus on the main logic, and treat federation as another form of API. There is no restriction to the content being federated: you can implement a microblogging platform, link aggregator, video hosting site or any other type of social media. The goal is to encapsulate all basic functionality, so that developers can easily implement federation without any prior knowledge.

Using this library can help to share core Activitypub logic between different projects, so that the same code doesn’t have to be implemented and maintained separately by each project. This way improvements can benefit everyone. It also encourages the use of effective patterns to make Rust and Activitypub work together. All of this has been proven to work in Lemmy which uses this library and is the biggest Activitypub project written in Rust.

https://docs.rs/activitypub_federation

There have been some requests to make it possible for Mastodon users to create threads on Lemmy. At the moment this is not possible because Mastodon cant set the title field which is mandatory in Lemmy. The same problem affects other projects like Pleroma or Friendica (where title is optional).

It is unlikely that Mastodon would make any change in this regard, so a workaround in Lemmy would be necessary. I implemented such a workaround which makes the title optional when receiving a federated post, and uses the first line of the content instead. This workaround could also be made configurable per instance or per community.

But to be honest I am not sure the workaround is a good idea in general, as it could result in bad titles, and generally more low-quality posts. Thats why I want to know what the community thinks about it.

We are looking for someone who would be willing to provide a build server for Lemmy's continuous integration. This is used to ensure that new changes and pull requests pass all the checks, and that the code is written well. At the moment we are using a small VPS for this purpose (2 vCPU, 2 GB RAM). This works but is quite slow, and can slow down the development process with unnecessary waiting times.

For this reason we are looking for a community member with a spare server or computer, who would be willing to provide it as a build server. There are no specific hardware requirements, but the faster the better. The build server has to run 24/7 and run the Drone Docker Runner. The setup is very easy, especially if your machine is already running docker. If you have such a server and are willing to provide it, please comment below with the specs.

Additionally we are also looking for an ARM builder, so that we can provide official releases for this platform as well. Note that some Raspberry Pi models seem unable to build Lemmy (our 4GB memory builder failed), so please try if the compilation works on your device. If you can provide an ARM builder, also comment below with the specs.

Its a very interesting feeling. On one hand Im proud because Lemmy has come so far. Two years ago there was only one instance dev.lemmy.ml and no federation. On the other hand disappointed, because some people are unable to appreciate how much time and work I put into this project. Its especially ironic that these attacks are coming from people who pretend to represent the working class.

I have finished writing instructions for deploying lemmyBB on a production server, which you can follow at the link above. Right now the project is still in a very early stage, nevertheless main funcionality is already working. This includes browsing communities, posts and comments, writing posts/comments and registration/login. Before developing the project further, I would like to get some feedback from users and admins.

If you are interested, you can follow the instructions to install lemmyBB on your own server. This setup also installs lemmy-ui, in order to access functionality which is not yet available in lemmyBB (particularly moderation).

You can also try out lemmyBB on a test server with this setup, namely lemmybb.lemmy.ml. It runs lemmy-ui at lemmyui.lemmy.ml, which shows the same data in another format, and the same account login works on both domains. Registrations are currently open, but keep in mind that this instance is only meant for testing, until other instances are created.

If you notice any bugs or want to request new features, please open an issue or comment here.

Lemmy is structured in a way that backend (database, api, federation etc) and frontend (html, css, javascript) are completely separate. This makes it possible to create other frontends which can take the place of lemmy-ui. I have long been playing with the thought of having a Lemmy frontend that looks more like a traditional forum. Now I finally found some time to work on this, and get an initial proof of concept working.

To reduce the amount of work, the project uses HTML templates and CSS themes from phpBB, which are open source under GPLv2. This also has the advantage that many preexisting phpBB themes can be used for lemmyBB. It is written in Rust, because it allows for tight integration with the Lemmy API, and is generally a great language for webservers.

For now the funcionality is very basic, but nonetheless its already usable. You can:

• browse the local post listing
• browse comments
• login and logout
• create new posts and comments

To give it a try, run the following commands on your local computer, replacing lemmy.ml with your own instance:

git clone https://github.com/Nutomic/lemmyBB.git
LEMMY_INTERNAL_HOST=https://lemmy.ml cargo run

If there is any specific feature that you would like to see added, please open an issue. For now there arent any instructions for deploying lemmyBB to a server. If you would like to do that, please open an issue as well.

This post was made from lemmyBB.

Lemmy.ml has long had some political conflict among the userbase, especially in communities like worldnews. This is because the instance is composed of both leftists (anarchist/communist) and liberals (those who agree with the mainstream political views in western countries). Additionally, the instance admins all belong to the former group.

Recently we made an announcement offering free Lemmy instance hosting for one year, for non-politics instances. We are hereby making a similar offer to host a liberal or mainstream political instance, which can accomodate those who are unhappy with lemmy.ml moderation.

This has many advantages. Instance admins have full power to set the rules, block federated instances (like lemmygrad.ml), or remove unwanted content. An administration team that is closer aligned politically would certainly be an improvement for some of the users here.

So if you are interested to host such an instance, send an email to contact@join-lemmy.org some relevant details about yourself. You will also have to buy a domain. We will only host one such instance, so if multiple people are interested, you should coordinate among yourselves. As in the original offer, the hosting will be limited to one year.

On a side note, we would also like to help with the creation of a general-purpose instance that is less focused on politics than most of the existing instances. This is fully within the terms of the initial "free instance hosting" announcement, so if you are interested, send us an email!