There's a lot of new stuff here and I don't go into great detail. There is a link to a place to comment or ask questions at the end. #
FeedLand is a feed management system for individuals and groups. So far it's only been offered as a free service on the web. This roadmap explains how that will change.#
The next version will by default not use Twitter for identity. When you sign up you'll specify both a name and an email address. Both must be unique. An email confirms. Click the link and you're sent back with the credentials your browser needs to access your account. The usual dance. #
I do not plan to transition feedland.org to work this way. Recall that we haven't been accepting new members since December 12. Everyone who uses it has a Twitter identity and it's working, and I don't want to screw with that. As long as Twitter is willing to let us use their identity service, we'll keep using it on this server. #
Here's the big news: The new FeedLand server software will be available as open source, so anyone will be able to run a FeedLand instance. It's a Node.js application. Uses MySQL. You may want to hook up an S3 bucket for special features like RSS feeds for Likes. At first email sending will be via Amazon SES, the method I currently use. It will be possible to plug in new drivers to use other email services. #
The open source model is WordPress which uses GPLv2. I want to make it as easy to set up a FeedLand instance as it is to start a new WordPress server. #
People can set up commercial services to host FeedLand for individuals and groups. Every instance is set up to do that. #
It's efficient software. I'm spending about $25 a month to host feedland.org for almost 1000 users. #
The client, which runs in the browser, will not be open source. I don't want to spawn a bunch of incompatible forks. I want FeedLand and its API to be solid. By maintaining control of the client, which btw need not be the only client, I can help be sure that we're starting a developer community with some basic rules about interop. If you want to run FeedLand it has to behave like FeedLand. I've been down this road and watched others go down this road. I think this is the right way to start. #
Typical use-cases: A university department maintaining a FeedLand server to gather new writing from other departments at other universities on topics of interest. Workgroups at companies. It would make a lot of sense for a news org to offer a FeedLand service to readers and their internal news writing staff. #
I don't have dates for any of this. But at this point the path is pretty certain, so I felt it was time to say where FeedLand is going. #
On Friday I posted an earlier version of this roadmap on the FeedLand support repo. I'm sure there will be other changes to this document as we go forward. #
Last update: Monday January 16, 2023; 9:50 AM EST.
You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)