GNU MediaGoblin is a new software project that will provide users with freely licensed and distributed photo sharing. Lead developer Chris Webber says, “We believe people should be able to own their online data and that means someone has to build the tools to make it possible. We decided that someone would be us.” For the past two months, Webber’s been laying down technical foundations and assembling a team of contributors to start building GNU MediaGoblin.
GNU MediaGoblin is being built by free software activists. Chris Webber and Will Kahn-Greene, both longtime Miro contributors, are leading the Development Team. Matt Lee and Rob Myers from FooCorp, the makers of GNU FM (the software that powers Libre.fm and GNU Social, are providing infrastructure. Deb Nicholson, founder of the Women's Caucus is helping with community outreach. As of this announcement, GNU MediaGoblin is actively welcoming new contributors
"Development couldn't be launching at a better time, given the recent high-profile failures of so-called cloud services, which have reminded us of the danger in relying on faceless corporations to store our cherished possessions and mediate our personal interactions." says John Sullivan, Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation. GNU MediaGoblin has the official support of the GNU Project and will be licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License and federated using OStatus, making it compatible with other free network services such as GNU Social, StatusNet, and GNU FM.
Mike Linksvayer, Vice President of Creative Commons looks forward to the launch, "GNU MediaGoblin is free software and has federation built-in, removing the barriers of proprietary software and closed networks faced by anyone who wants to offer customers superior media hosting, to experiment with new features around sharing, curation, and creation of media, or to simply have full control over their web media portfolio."
An alpha release of the distributable photo-sharing system is planned for this fall. Later versions of GNU MediaGoblin will include support for video and other media as well as tools to encourage user collaboration on media projects.
We're looking for contributors to help build, run and promote GNU MediaGoblin. Join us! More information is here or email press@mediagoblin.org for questions. We look forward to hearing from you!