Diaspora (Software)

Diaspora ( also Diaspora *, where the asterisk is meant to symbolize a dandelion ) is a free software to form the same social network, currently estimated which has over 380,000 users. Unlike centralized social networks, like Facebook or Google , Diaspora is designed as a distributed system.

Scope

Diaspora is written in the Ruby programming language. The project aims at the same scope of services to offer such as Facebook: bulletin boards for time-shifted and a chat window for real- time communication and interfaces for third-party applications programmed ( plug-ins). Unlike Facebook, however, the decentralized structure ensures that the user stores its data on personal servers ( pods ) and thus retains control over them. If you want to operate your own pod on your own server, you can open an account at one of the public Pods, which are operated by other users for this purpose.

Since it is a decentralized network, there is no single URL at which the user can be reached. Other users can be found via the search function, which provides pod -wide results. There are in diaspora no global user name as for the central web offerings, but (as with e- mail addresses or Jabber IDs ) each have a user name, which is composed of an @ sign and the pod address, so for example: example @ pod - name.tld.

History

The project is based on four mathematics students at the University of New York: Dan Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer and Ilya Zhitomirskiy ( 1989-2011 ).

It was announced on 24 April 2010 on the platform Kickstarter and scored his first fundraising goal of $ 10,000 within 12 days. In the following weeks, a total of $ 200,642 were occupied by 6479 donors. This diaspora was the hitherto most successful Kickstarter project. A donor was called a " cool idea " claims to be the founder and CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, the diaspora.

The impetus for the creation of the Diaspora project had given a speech that Eben Moglen of Columbia Law School was held on 5 February 2010 in front of the Internet Society. Moglen described therein under the title Freedom in the cloud, such as centralized social networks spy on their users.

With an initial investment of 200,000 U.S. dollars, the students developed a prototype and released him on 23 November 2010 as an alpha version.

The source code of the software should be released on September 15, 2010 originally. The first release was delayed initially on October 2010. An alpha version of the social network was finally released on November 24, 2010. Invitations will be sent via the mailing list of the project since 23 November 2010. The approval of new invitations on the joindiaspora.com pod was initially set again on 27 November 2010. A note to be found in an updated blog entry. Since early January 2011, a series of pods to test Diaspora is publicly available. Since September 2011, it is again possible to receive new invitations. In mid-November 2011, a new version with extended range of functions that include " Hashtag follow function, direct messages, Like buttons for status updates and a notification system " published.

Since September 2011, the project is supported by the Diaspora Foundation, which launched a major fundraising campaign in the following month. Shortly thereafter, it was announced that the company PayPal, via the transfer of donations could be made, the account of the project froze after were received within days U.S. $ 45,000 in donations. A detailed explanation was not given, but were asking for more documents on the part of the U.S. group. After massive protests by the Diaspora supporters of the account was released shortly afterwards.

On 12 November 2011, died Ilya Zhitomirskiy, a co-founder of the project, at the age of 22 years immediately before the date on which the launch of the public beta phase of the social network was provided.

Most of the users of the network are from the USA, followed by Germany. There are mainly " technical-minded " members, along with creative and supporters of the Occupy movement and the Pirate Party. Currently the largest pod in Germany is Geraspora.

In May 2012, it was announced that Diaspora was developed from now on as part of the startup program Y Combinator. The result was a concern, the project could be commercialized, so that it loses its current free character and thereby forfeit if appropriate for its current users of its appeal.

End of August 2012 gave the developers announced that diaspora is a community project. Discussions and decisions on the development of Diaspora will take place on the platform Loomio. There are also mailing lists for developers and users who have been set up in Google Groups.

Security

Diaspora is based on the idea of ​​a decentralized distributed system for safe, controlled and easy exchange of data on the Internet to provide. Each user can even run a server and completely control the software. As a result, neither the users who access the server, or other server that is communicating with whom can be considered as trustworthy, with secure identification, since attackers ( crackers) could not be prevented, to integrate its own compromised server to the network. Therefore, data are only intended for a limited circle of users, not unlimited passed to other servers, but only in the form in which it determines the user.

Further development

Diaspora is to be modular by using add -ons to allow every conceivable type of communication between users. In addition, it should be possible to extend the functionality of the plug-ins. The developers also plan to offer a paid web hosting service for Diaspora pod.

Is an app for Android smartphones in an alpha version and another app is in development.

Criticism

In February 2012, criticized the computer magazine c't, the original promise, a peer-to -peer network to offer, has not been redeemed from Diaspora, because the installation on your own PC or for your own web host for most users to extensive and complicated to be. On a Linux or Mac OS X Server Ruby, SQLite3, OpenSSL, CURL, ImageMagick, Git and Redis would have to be set up before you can even install Diaspora. Therefore, most users of diaspora are still reliant on the pod, which leads to their account with their data confidently deal. The alternative Friendica was in relation to easy installation even further than Diaspora.