Ugh, I really tried to stay out of #fediverse drama but I guess I have to say a few things. Most of you know me as a #firefish core team member, so I think I owe it to the admins of almost 500 firefish servers out there and to the almost 5000 members of firefish.social.
So, yeah, if you haven't noticed, things aren't looking good for firefish. Its owner, Kainoa, has practically abandoned the project, which had its last stable release out on July. My last message to them was a week ago, and I haven't heard back since. Firefish.social, besides the other severe technical problems it's had due to mismanagement in the last few months, now also has serious federation issues. I hope Kainoa is well irl, but this is irresponsible and unacceptable.
I hear some of you saying "but you're in the core team too, don't try to put the blame elsewhere!". So I have to explain what being a core team member in firefish meant. Kainoa invited me, Namekuji and a few others to be part of the "core team", but kept all decisions and responsibilities. We didn't co-own this. We never shared donations. We were just volunteers, who were honestly trying to make it a great project. This didn't work well due to concentration of power to one person, who didn't keep their promises. I don't mean to be harsh to Kainoa, I mean we knew they were only 19 when they started the project. Still, it's a bummer to anyone who chose to trust and support Firefish. This includes myself.
I don't know if it's early to consider firefish a dead project, but it sure seems like that for a few months now. Maybe it can be resurrected, idk. It's all up to Kainoa.
In the meantime, Namekuji and I are starting #Catodon, which will have some differences with Firefish, and will include many changes I had discussed with Kainoa but were never implemented. If you decide to stick with us, we promise to be serious about this. I strongly believe in the fediverse and its potential, and I want to build a great platform for it. This was my goal when I chose to be involved in Calckey/Firefish. It's still my goal with Catodon, only this time I can stand behind it 100%, as the project will be co-managed by Namekuji and me. If Firefish left you with a bitter aftertaste, we hope we can build a better relationship and prove ourselves worthy of your trust. Catodon will go public in a matter of days, possibly even hours. We'll have more to say about its direction then.
In the meantime, I just wanted to share my apologies for any inconvenience regarding Firefish, as I'm still technically a core team member, whatever that means. But frankly, I tried so hard to make things go differently - but there's only so much you can do when it's someone else's project. I'm really sorry for how things went.
But this is not the end of the fedi journey for me. I'm super excited about the chance to do some things right this time with Catodon. Life goes on, I guess! Hope to see you soon on our #codeberg repo, so we can start a new creative adventure together =)
OK, since this post exploded (which means there is a lot of interest in #Firefish!), and since some people might have misinterpreted some of the things I said, let me point out a few things:
I am NOT saying that Firefish is necessarily dead. I hope that this post works as a wake up call for Kainoa - whenever he sees it. If nothing changes (either Kainoa getting more involved again or sharing responsibilities or whatever), yes, it will be dead. Really hope something changes drastically, a lot of people love this project.
I am also NOT saying that #catodon is a continuation of firefish, but a different project. Honestly, if that's all you're looking for, there are other project which might be more suitable - we don't want to mislead anyone. We will gradually change quite a few things, the goal is to make it a great and easier to understand all-around software for fedi communities, so for example some of the misskey-specific features will go. In a way, it will sit somewhere between Mastodon and Misskey. So our goal is NOT to replace/continue firefish but to find our people, who will be interested in what we -and not firefish- are trying to do with the platform, and maybe do it together.
Soooo... I've always been transparent about the project, so I have to give you all an update, as we're in a somewhat tough spot. A few weeks ago we made this public call for a co-lead dev, but we didn't get much interest. In the meantime, our lead dev got tangled up more and more in other obligations irl and now has close to zero time, which means development on #Catodon has practically halted at this point. We had made and announced a lot of plans, but at the moment things have been put on ice until we figure out what to do next. We will make an official announcement, I just wanted to give this another shot - we are looking for someone to work together as equals on this. If interested in leading an ambitious fedi project as a developer, just drop me a line, let's chat to see if this could work.
I really want to apologize to anyone who might be affected by this. In the meantime, Catodon code will be kept up-to-date with upstream Iceshrimp, and catodon.social will be taken care of and will keep running, so even if you're running a pre-release Catodon installation you're safe - it's basically Iceshrimp with a few changes at this point. I'm trying to make the best out of this situation, I'm trying to consider our options, and hopefully we'll have some (better) news soon.
I've noticed some people refer to me as a dev, although I never claimed to be one. One person even accused me of not having recent commits in Firefish. So... I have to confess I am not a dev.
My role in Firefish was community manager/project coordinator. But isn't it interesting that people assume I'm a dev because I was in the core team? It's so often that community-driven open source projects are run only by devs, that people just assumed I am a dev too. And, with all the respect to the wonderful dev community, I think that's kind of a problem.
You see, an open-source project needs much more than coding. My role in #Catodon will include coordinating development, designing features, testing, communication and feedback from the community, managing issues on the repo, decision making, moderating catodon.social, participating and moderating the matrix channels and I'm sure more will be added to that list. Devs may or may not be good at these things - and this clearly affect some projects. Being a good dev doesn't necessarily mean being good at everything around running an open source project, and that's ok. There's a reason companies hire project managers when developing software. You can add every community request out there - if you don't keep UX on your mind and don't have a consistent vision for your software, it will end up poorly designed and bloated.
So, I have to warn you - I may not be suitable to answer your more technical questions! We have a support channel for that, and our lead dev Namekuji is more knowledgeable about the coding aspect - while other devs, who are interested in our direction, have already reached out and are starting to work with us. So hopefully we will soon have a lively dev and admin community where we can support each other.
I'd say that one of my main goals in Catodon is to offer a safe, inclusive and laid back environment where open source devs will be able to cooperate and contribute in a productive way. Making open source code is a wonderful gesture, you are sharing your work for everyone to freely use. And it deserves to be done in a well organized and self-fulfilling way! Good communication is not always easy, but it's definitely worth trying. We have incredibly talented coders here that can do wonders when working smoothly together. That's the mindset with which we'll be trying to make Catodon a community-driven project.
The Firefish project has been on a decline for a while now, with the flagship server firefish.social experiencing severe technical problems over the last months. Another Firefish server, firefish.tech is now also shutting down, partially due to the problems with Firefish. Panos Damelos, who was the community manager for the Firefish project, explains his perspective on how the project declined here, attributing it to severe technical problems, combined with a lack of attention and communication of the lead developer Kainoa.
Together with Firefish developer Namekuji, Panos Damelos have started the Catodon project, a fork of Firefish. In the announcement blog post Catodon dives deeper into what makes the project stand out, noting the community driven aspect of the project. Catodon joins IceShrimp and Sharkey as recent Misskey fork projects that are all gaining popularity as small-scale fediverse servers.
Alright, I think we now have a better idea of what's happening with #Firefish, so I might as well give a small update. Kainoa quit, and left the project to naskya, who is a person I appreciate very much, as they've always been kind and polite and willing to help. I also think they're very devoted to Firefish, and basically were the last person actively caring about the project. As far as I know, they intend to keep maintaining and developing Firefish, and a new stable version will finally soon be released. This is great news, as you don't need to worry that your server is running unmaintained and vulnerable software. So, alarm off everybody, no need to abandon ship.
As for us, we're standing by our decision to rebase #Catodon to #Iceshrimp. The changes we want to do are long term plans, but we've started redesigning some things and, whenever we are ready, I hope we'll show you something worth your attention. So yeah, firefish, iceshrimp and catodon are all alive and valid options (the first two to be precise, for the time being). All projects share code fixes and I think we're on very good terms, here in our corner of the fediverse. Enjoy the ride.
After giving this a lot of thought and discussing with the wonderful people that build Iceshrimp, #Catodon will rebase to #Iceshrimp. We feel that it's the right decision for the road ahead, as Iceshrimp is another #firefish fork that focuses in improving performance and they have already done some amazing improvements, like full Mastodon API support. With Firefish's future uncertain, we think it's better to stay closer to an actively maintained project. The two projects will stay distinct, as we have different design goals, but we have a common codebase so we feel this makes sense.
Just to be clear on all fronts and to answer the obvious question in advance, yes, Iceshrimp is also currently doing a full rewrite in C#, which is a few months away, and we haven't decided if we'll adopt this yet - it's a strong possibility, but we're keeping our options open. We're confident they're doing a great job, still, we'll weigh what the best decision for Catodon is on this when it's ready and the time comes.
Just wanted to let you know that this might push Catodon's development back a little, as it's sort of a structural change, but we feel that it's worth it, and that it might be better for the broader community. Catodon development will resume once rebasing to Iceshrimp is finished, and then we'll have better foundations to build this on.
It's almost time. We're super-excited. #FediGroups is entering public testing now, before a full live launch.
Many of us have used other Boosting Groups, but they only work well if you follow from Mastodon accounts. We know there is a wider fediverse. FediGroups works with all the favourites, including #Mastodon, #Firefish, #Iceshrimp, #Catodon, #Sharkey, and more. One big happy family 👪
The number of Misskey forks continues to expand. How do we mention them collectively? I'm veering toward Forkeys, as in "Catodon is the latest Forkey to enter the stage." or "The Forkeys have one thing in common - emoji reactions."
I suggest checking them all out - each has their own strengths. :blobcatstrong:
#Catodon is looking for a co-lead dev! They need to be comfortable with git, and able to manually install a Catodon server without scripts. All races, genders, sexual orientations welcome. No fascists or sexists. If you think you're up to the task, have some time and would like to be part of a team effort, let's talk! Find us on matrix, at #catodon:matrix.org .
From a #sharkey Dev to People On Fedi (pls boost):
While i understand that there's lots of drama around firefish, please do actual research. Sharkey is not and has NEVER been a firefish/#calckey fork, it didn't spring of from firefish. it started off as just an indipendent Misskey soft-fork(updates with misskey), there is no relation at all to firefish, it is incredibly damaging to call it a firefish fork, as the sharkey team actually spends lots of time just implementing features that people wish for (this include some features firefish has), while also spending time on making sure they work decently unlike (firefish some times)
also it's just as damaging to call Iceshrimp an offspring of the whole firefish drama now, Iceshrimp while an actual fork of firefish existed way before the entire recent firefish drama the only recent ofspring of firefish is #catodon and then again catodon is not trying to be firefish, catodon is its own thing it wants to sit inbetween mastodon and *key as a more userfriendly thing with alot of the "fun" misskey stuff removed, and #iceshrimp is doing a full rewrite of firefish in c#, none of these projects are even remotly similar to the firefish way of doing things, some of them aren't even in any relation to #firefish
tldr: stop calling things firefish sucessor, esspecialy don't call sharkey a firefish ofspring it was never in any way related to firefish
We have now opened registrations at https://catodon.social - you can now have your own catodon.social account and use a fully functional pre-release version of Catodon!
Please keep in mind that this is still beta, you will notice some changes compared to #Firefish but more things will change! This isn't even our final form 😼
Also please be patient if there are delays due to increased traffic. There shouldn't be, but if there are, we'll sort them out.
This means that our repo on #codeberg is also now public!
Learn all about #Catodon, the ideas behind this new #fediverse project, our mewssion, and the first changes we're doing in our first blog post:
After #Catodon (and the situation with #Firefish) went public, we've certainly had a lot of support and positive feedback. However, there were also people who shared irony and negativity. There were people who seemed happy to see Firefish's state, and who would be happy if Catodon failed. Some didn't like our name. Some found it unacceptable that the name resembles Mastodon, whereas we start as a Misskey fork. It's sort of a tribute, people. We're in a way a Mastodon alternative where you can be a cat. And we'll improve our Mastodon API support so you can use Catodon with Mastodon apps. No need to take things so seriously and with a hostile stance, if what we're doing doesn't click with you that's fine, we never asked you to like us. There are certainly better things to define and present youself than by your dislike towards an open source project. We're not hurting anyone, we're trying to build a free tool that people may find useful. Lose the hate, it's only a burden.
I'm giving Catodon.social a go.
Unfortunately Firefish.social has become so broken it doesn't even respect migration requests (let alone post downloads). So a lot of people will miss seeing my move 🫣. I suppose people will find me again over time, but that's a real shame for a server to get that neglected.
I do also have my @ArtBear account which I won't be migrating (it's just offline for DB maintenance for a few hours, don't freak out anyone).
Why Catodon?
I'm sure other projects are interesting too.
I liked how @panos interacted & was committed to community building on #firefish.social. I feel like it's important for any dev team to have in mind Community, not just features, nor just admin, nor just moderation it's all really important but community is the base. I liked how he posted his frustrations with the very large parts of the firefish project that were not a team endeavour that could be picked up & redistributed, but solely resting on only 1 individual. I like the Catodon mission statement about being a team wanting to dev for a lot of servers, and not dev for some mega flagship server (which is a vulnerability of fedi. decentralised & well distributed is good). Also the 1st set of improvement notes were really good at logical cleanup, changes & taking the good parts of stalled firefish forward again, but in a more streamlined direction.
Right away #Catodon feels like an old friend, I really missed:
markdown!
awesome super customisable UI!
properly rendered links so you don't have to click away!
multi links in a single post!
proper quote posts! (really it's users, not features!)
threading display so you actually know if you're in a thread & where!
floating user info cards with actions like follow (not clicking away to a profile)!
custom emoji reactions! (like 😻 or 🥴not just ⭐!)
custom feeds & also lists, are amazingly flexible, you really need to try them!
widgets!
storage with all media for re-use (with editable #altText!!)!
search your contentsearchbox [search]post controls!
blogs (pages)!
forums (channels)!
8000 word limit (be afraid, be very afraid muhahaha!)
and so much more...
Anyway, here's to a new #Fedi adventure! :catodon:💜🐻🎉
A handy little new feature in #Catodon, implemented by @linca - thank you!
You know how Mastodon and Misskey show only the number of direct replies under each post? This doesn't provide enough information, as a post might have just one direct reply, but it might be a thread with twenty more comments nested - yet you only see "1" reply.
In Catodon, you still see the number of direct replies in your timeline, but when you click on a post and see the detailed view, next to the number of direct replies you can also see the number of sub-replies under them! So in this case we have 55 direct replies, nesting 118 sub-replies. This way you can easily see how deep the discussion under a post goes at any time, without having to go through every thread! Does this sound useful to you?
Kinda big day tomorrow as catodon.social's getting updated to our latest dev version, since our announced rebase to #Iceshrimp is finished, which means that, if everything goes well, after tomorrow catodon.social will have all of the performance improvements of Iceshrimp, including full Mastodon API support. It took us back a few weeks but we think it was worth it, and now we can resume development towards our first release. #Catodon
Just learned about the demise of #Firefish (head is M.I.A.). It's unfortunate for the thousands of instances running it, but with that comes #IceShrimp, #Sharkey, and #Catodon. All of them (I think) are being developed by former Firefish devs. Options.
Hopefully, current FF users are all, if they want to, able to move to another actively-developed community easily.
Alright, we wanna be as transparent as possible, so here's a small update on #Catodon's development: The idea so far was to have our first release more as a debloated, to some extent, version of firefish, which would be more like the foundation to build our next releases on, rather than something representative of what we want Catodon to be. But it turns out that, in order for things to be smooth in the first release, we'd have to fix some stuff that would need to be refactored anyway for the second release. So we realized it's better to just get directly to it.
So, what does this mean? We'll be sort of merging our first and second planned releases. This unfortunately means that we'll need more time to get where we want to. My advice to you, if you are running a #Firefish server and thinking of migrating, is to either stay on Firefish for the time being, or migrate to Iceshrimp - it will be easy to migrate to Catodon later if you want. The good news is that, when Catodon is finally released, I think it will be worth the wait, it won't be just a transitional version, and I'm much more excited now for the upcoming release. And yes, you can go back to Misskey and forget about firefish forks but... I wouldn't do that if I were you =)
Im honestly kinda disappointed in all the people jumping on catodon now and calling it firefish successor its kinda very bad as the devs don't intend it to be a firefish successor nor is it trying to be anything like firefish or misskey in general, talking about migrating to catodon while also calling it firefish sucessor is like punching the catodon devs in the face
as they try to create something simple for newer users, not something for existing key users that enjoy fun shit like MFM
please everyone do you research before spreading shit this is also very harmful to the project at least from my POV. if everyone starts hyping the project for something that it is not.
please just give @panos and @catodon some time, and don't put them under pressure for something its not.
If you want a Misskey fork that is unlikely to die as its a softfork (updates with misskey) anytime soon and is community focused and includes #firefish inspired changes go with #sharkey
if you really really want to stick with the firefish sort of thing of doing things try the firefish fork #iceshrimp
and if u want something new more geared towards new users / casual users try looking into #catodon
but don't just jump the gun on things u don't even know fully about
Hello there! If you are on #Iceshrimp, #Firefish or #Sharkey, there's a new security patch out so your server admin should update the software immediately. #Catodon has also merged the patch from upstream #Iceshrimp and catodon.social has been updated :catodon: