gabek

gabek, 1 month ago to random

My heart goes out to xz. A single maintainer, who was clearly in a rough place with mental health, screaming out to the world for some help and additional contributions, and somebody shows up wanting to help. Could you imagine how happy that maintainer was? They were no longer alone.

And it turns out the only reason somebody wanted to help them was nefarious. I can’t imagine how they feel right now as everyone is blaming them. I hope they’re ok.

gabek, 5 months ago to random

I respond to VCs about Owncast pretty often, and I’ve never been super transparent about it. So here’s a response I just sent.

gabek, 10 months ago to random

Your reminder that this isn't Mastodon, this is the Fediverse. And you can optionally use Mastodon, or many other pieces of fantastic software, to access the Fediverse.

Tell your friends.

gabek, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to random

Nothing is wrong, and it's no emergency, but I'm curious if anybody in my Fediverse circle is in a place to offer Owncast some legal advice.

Alternatively, can anybody recommend any online options that work on an open source budget that would be able to answer specific questions on an as-needed basis?

I'm in the US (California) and Owncast is... on the internet? Nowhere? Everywhere? I don't know.

gabek, 7 months ago to iOS

I was going to wait to talk about this until I could actually release it, but it’s becoming unlikely that will happen.

A few months ago I built an #iOS and #tvOS app for watching #Owncast streams natively on your phone and tv. You could browse the directory, or add your own private servers that aren’t listed publicly. It would send you push notifications when your favorite streams went live and it all worked pretty well.

Apple has been unable to understand how the “rights” work in this case. I can’t get them to understand that people opt into the directory, and the Owncast project owns and runs the directory. Instead they see it as me “using content without rights” and “accessing a catalog without proper rights”. They asked me to provide the paperwork detailing the agreement I have with every Owncast server. Clearly that’s impossible. The number of servers that want to be public on the directory change every day, I couldn’t send them new documentation every day. I tried to explain that the directory is kind of like a search engine and the application is like a browser. A browser doesn’t have explicit rights to every webpage ever made, as that would be ridiculous. I also tried to compare it to a podcast client. A podcast client can play back any podcast without asking for permission, and there are tons of podcast directories.

They’ll approve the application if I don’t use the directory and don’t have any Owncast servers directly available from the application, however. But I’m not willing to do that as that kind of defeats the point of the convenience.

I contacted a handful of attorneys, and I was willing to fight this. I hoped if I could get an attorney to draft a document that explains, in legal terms, something that Apple’s legal team would understand it could be cleared up. But I haven’t been able to have a meaningful conversation with any of them, as none of them understand what I’m doing or aren’t interested in working with a non-corporate entity.

So I think this is dead, killed by Apple. I tried to build something cool for you all, as a side project, to make viewing Owncast streams more convenient. It’s just not going to happen and I feel bad about it.

Screenshot from the Owncasts iOS application showing the stream detail.
Screenshot from the Owncasts iOS application showing the stream detail menu.
Screenshot from the Owncasts iOS application showing an offline stream.
Screenshot from the Owncasts iOS application showing an in-app action.
Screenshot from the Owncasts iOS application showing the landscape full screen player.

gabek, 5 months ago to random

I just read a blog post where “ActivityPub” and “Mastodon” were used interchangeably.

I know this is not the hill I should die on. But it is a real problem that the Fediverse is being handed over to a single individual, and nobody seems to care.

It’s kind of like when your Grandma calls the web “The Facebook” or your Aunt says “I was on The Google checking the scores on ESPN”.

But this time it’s supposed to be open. It’s supposed to be decentralized. It’s not supposed to be one company owned by one person. It’s not supposed to be one implementation in one piece of software.

Just like you didn’t want everyone to call the web “Facebook” you shouldn’t want to call the Fediverse “Mastodon”.

gabek, 11 months ago to random

Reminder that there's only two days left in #fedivision voting! Go listen and vote for your favorite! I submitted a song this year, so if you're at all curious it's up there. https://fedivision.party/

gabek, 1 year ago to random

The other night somebody asked me to take a photo of their group. I asked them "Do you want me to take it normal style or Millennial style?" and they said "Normal, please". I was happy to hear that and turned the phone landscape to take the photo. They interrupted me and said "Oh no, we mean normal, like up and down".

I'm still not over this. The world is crumbling.

gabek, 4 months ago to random

Does anybody have any suggestions for managing their Vulnerability Disclosure Platform? I’ve probably mentioned it before, but Owncast used to rely on Huntr.dev, but they kicked everyone off to focus on AI, because of course they did. The GitHub version of this kind of thing sucks. I just got off a call with HackerOne and they quoted me $15,000. So right now people just email me directly and threaten me, and I don’t like this workflow.

gabek, 3 months ago to fediverse

Sad to hear about #Firefish, but it's something to keep in mind.

If one person is keeping a project alive and is unable to build a long term, sustainable team around the project, relying only on that individual, that project is fragile.

Apropos of nothing, I'd love if I could build a long term, sustainable team around #owncast, if this sparks your interest at all! If I get hit by a bus tonight, Owncast is dead tomorrow.

gabek, 4 months ago to random

Thank you for making @owncast have a fantastic 2023. I wanted to share some of my thoughts and appreciation before the spirit of the new year ran away from me. https://gabekangas.com/blog/2024/01/thank-you-for-making-owncast-a-success-in-2023/

gabek, 4 months ago to random

I have so many Owncast things in the roadmap to build that I know people are waiting for. But in the six months or so, I've had just enough of a solid stream of bug fixes, small tweaks, and smaller quality of life improvements coming in that I never get a chance to sit down and work on the big features like I used to.

I know nobody is pushing me, but I'm pushing me. I want to build cool shit to solve the challenges streamers have. Every day I'm like "ugh, if I could just give you X! Some day you'll see!".

I'm trying hard to get from under this, and pushing myself harder to get through the smaller updates. I'm also realistic that those things don't stop coming in, but things happen in waves, and I'm sure I'll be able to focus on the big things soon.

gabek, 9 months ago to random

Idea: A "Switch from Gmail day". An annual day that is dedicated to moving your email from being Google-owned to another, better, email provider.

It could have branding, and documentation on how to switch, and during that day people would go out of their way to really be helpful in guiding people to switch.

Switching away from Gmail seems like a tough thing for people, so I'd really love to normalize it. This is an important part of taking the internet back from big tech. Since moving email providers falls under "someday/maybe" list for many people, I think seeing other people might make the plunge would encourage others to do so, too.

What do you think?

gabek, 6 months ago to random

Owncast release days are good days.

Unless they're bad. Then they're not good. Hopefully this is a good one.

https://owncast.online/releases/owncast-0.1.2/

gabek, 28 days ago to fediverse

Super excited that with a handful of minor maintenance releases behind us, #owncast can start looking towards big features again. Lots of preparation work is going on now for all of that. Check out the roadmap, and say hi if you'd like to be involved! https://owncast.online/roadmap/

gabek, 5 months ago to random

I just heard somebody say "I'm sure nobody has forgotten the Cambridge Analytica scandal". And the sad thing is I'm pretty sure most people have completely forgotten about it.

gabek, 1 year ago to random

People who say "My Twitch stream" give themselves too much credit, It's not yours, Amazon owns it. People who say "My Owncast stream" don't give themselves enough credit. It's all yours, Owncast just helps.

gabek, 11 months ago to random

I wish I had somebody else seriously involved with Owncast. It would be amazing to have somebody to share things with, positive or negative. But there's nobody else in the world who cares, or even understands the nitty gritty day to day that I can talk to. I'm sure there's people who would listen, but nobody would care.

gabek, 5 months ago to fediverse

One of the most amazing things about the Fediverse is that you can run your own services and set your own rules, building something that represents what is important to you.

If you chose not to run your own software and services, and instead utilize services somebody else runs, it's unlikely you'll be 100% aligned with those who you rely on to run them for you. People are unique, and companies are... companies. It's impossible to be completely on the same page for everything. Therefore, you shouldn't be surprised when they decide not to offer you those services any longer for any reason they choose. Their house, their rules. They owe you nothing.

I've relied on botsin.space to host the @owncast account for a while, but I only recently noticed it's been reduced to a restricted account. Their house, their rules.

So my options are to run my own microblogging service for this single account, or take that functionality offline. If I run it, my service, my rules. But like anybody else, I have to weigh the pros and cons of running yet another service I need to maintain, and this time it's not personally worth it.

Hopefully, this bot has been helpful in sharing live streams to those who wouldn't have normally seen them.

While every #owncast server doesn't choose to be on the Fediverse, hopefully those who want to be shared with others decide to be. And if so, this bot isn't needed anymore, anyway.

gabek, 28 days ago to random

On the topic of Owncast, and some discussion about donations and open source budgets:

Owncast has always been lucky to have fantastic donors to help us pay our monthly overhead. It took me a long while to feel comfortable using that money to reimburse myself for things I was used to paying for the project, but it's worked out for a couple of years now, and I've been so appreciative.

However, the project is in the midsts of this year's second unexpected legal cost (you probably saw me asking questions a couple of weeks ago, I'll explain more later), and it's clear that we're not in the place to be able to handle more of these bigger-ticket items going forward. So as of now, I'm going to stop reimbursing myself the reoccurring project costs from the Owncast budget, and instead start putting money into the budget to make sure the project can handle unexpected things that come up in the future. Any bigger items that come up can then be paid for, and reimbursed, and tracked through OpenCollective. It might sound dumb to put money in just to take it out at some point down the road again, but it allows for transparency.

gabek, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to random

In the early days of podcasting, most podcasts were about podcasting. People just interested in trying it out for curiosity sake, discussing the tools and the opportunities. I think this is pretty common. Years ago it wasn’t uncommon to see web pages just about enjoying building web pages. But eventually this kind of thing falls aside and the tech and tools are no longer the most important thing.

I’ve noticed this with Owncast. A lot of people who tried Owncast early on used it out of curiosity, and the primary topic discussed on these streams was Owncast, streaming, and how much fun they were having running it. But it seems to be growing past that now, and I think that’s cool.

gabek, 3 months ago to random

I was never going to share this, because I feared for aggressively being fought with and being labeled as problematic or anti-moderation. But I think it’s worthwhile to offer different viewpoints, and datapoints.

I hear a lot of discussions about shared blocklists on the Fediverse. And I know some of them are about instances blocklists, but I’ll tell you about my experience with shared account blocklists.

One day I made an, admittedly stupid, comment on Twitter, about Wil Wheaton. It was just an opinion, but I should have said nothing at all. But it was no big deal.

He saw what I said and he blocked me, as he 100% has the right to do. That’s what it’s there for. What I didn’t know was he was a part of some kind of shared Twitter blocklist that would completely change my experience on Twitter after that day.

It started slow, I’d click on somebody’s profile and see that they had blocked me, even though we didn’t know each other. As time went on an increasingly growing number of people I had never met were blocking me, until it was materially impacting my usage of the platform. I’d click on people’s profiles multiple times a day and see they were already blocking me and they wouldn’t even know why. Over time I felt like Twitter was borderline unusable for me because I simply couldn’t talk to some percentage of the users.

The system worked as it was designed. The design was faulty. I’d hate to see that replicated here.

gabek, 9 months ago to random

Call me crazy, but it'd be cool if all the effort that people put into running Windows software on Linux was put into Linux software, instead.

gabek, 10 months ago to random

"I think deciding what restaurant to eat at causes undue friction and confusion when all I want to do is eat. Why can't there just be one restaurant for all of us and we just deal with eating the same thing every day?"

Said no-one ever.

gabek, 1 month ago to random

I noticed the company who wanted to add their service directly into Owncast, and I said no, started releasing their own version of Owncast with their own changes in it to support this use case.

I'm not sure how to feel about this. It's kind of a fork, but it's really just another release of Owncast by somebody else. They're releasing something called Owncast with functionality and decisions that have nothing to do with the real Owncast. It specifically says stuff like "Owncast does X", and Owncast does not do X, and will never do X. Only their changes do X.

I fear this may confuse people. If something goes wrong with their version of the software, people are going to ask me for support, and might make the real Owncast look bad. But I don't know if this is wrong, or if this is completely acceptable. It's open source, and the name "Owncast" isn't owned by anybody, as Owncast is an open source project, not a company. So I guess they have the right to do whatever they want and call it Owncast.

But it feels wrong, and it seems like really bad things could come of this.