Announcementshttps://fediverse.blog/~/Announcements@blog.funkwhale.audio/atom.xml2021-08-03T13:12:07.202596+00:00<![CDATA[Funkwhale_1.1.4]]>https://blog.funkwhale.audio/~/Announcements/Funkwhale_1.1.4/2021-08-03T13:12:07.202596+00:00funkwhale / bloghttps://blog.funkwhale.audio/@/funkwhale/2021-08-03T13:12:07.202596+00:00<![CDATA[<p dir="auto">Yesterday, the Funkwhale project made history. We released not one, but two versions!</p>
<p dir="auto">Okay, to be fair, we messed up a little and shipped a broken release. But we fixed it immediately with another release! 1.1.3 is broken, so go straight to 1.1.4 when you upgrade.</p>
<p dir="auto">As the version number implies, this is a patch release. It includes some important security and quality of life fixes:</p>
<ul dir="auto">
<li dir="auto">Fix the scrobbler plugin submitting “None” as MusicBrainz ID.</li>
<li dir="auto">Add <code>worker-src</code> to nginx header to prevent issues.</li>
<li dir="auto">Only suggest typed tag once if it already exists.</li>
<li dir="auto">Add access control to the moderation views.</li>
<li dir="auto">Prevent open redirect on login.</li>
</ul>
<p dir="auto">Some of these issues are findings of a “Security Quickscan” provided as part of our NLNet funding. We’ll publish the full report soon.</p>
<p dir="auto">If you’re using our Docker images we have another interesting update. All issues are now tagged with their major and minor versions. This means that <code>1</code>, <code>1.1.1</code>, and <code>1.1.4</code> refer to the same image, so you can use <code>1.1</code> in your compose file to receive all patches automatically.</p>
]]><![CDATA[New Funkwhale forums]]>https://blog.funkwhale.audio/~/Announcements/New Funkwhale forums/2021-07-13T18:21:28.022483+00:00funkwhale / bloghttps://blog.funkwhale.audio/@/funkwhale/2021-07-13T18:21:28.022483+00:00<![CDATA[<p dir="auto">We’re excited to announce that we have launched a new forum! 🎉 </p>
<p dir="auto">You can check it out and sign up over at <a href="https://forum.funkwhale.audio" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://forum.funkwhale.audio</a>. This will be replacing our existing forums over at <a href="https://governance.funkwhale.audio" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://governance.funkwhale.audio</a> for future community discussions.</p>
<p dir="auto">Forums are an important part of a lot of software projects and communities. They offer a place for communities to gather and talk about a project asynchronously. For some, they are more accessible and understandable than fast-moving chats and email threads. Because of this, we’ve kept our forums at the heart of Funkwhale-related discussions and communications.</p>
<p dir="auto">Back when the project was starting to pick up, we decided upon Loomio as our forum software. This was due to Loomio’s polling tools, which helped us conduct community decision-making. But over the last few years the forums have grown more complex. People have sometimes found it a bit difficult to navigate and understand. The layout of topics and discoverability of threads is a bit lacking in Loomio compared to other forum software. Since we want the forums to be the center of community engagement, this is not ideal!</p>
<p dir="auto">A few weeks ago, a user enquired about whether we’d considered alternatives to Loomio. They pointed out some areas where Loomio was lacking, such as a lack of social log in and poor post editing tools. Off the back of this discussion, we decided to take a look at what was out there.</p>
<h2 dir="auto">The alternatives</h2>
<p dir="auto">When looking at alternative software, we had a few requirements:</p>
<ol dir="auto">
<li dir="auto">The software needed to be free and open source to keep in line with the project’s goals.</li>
<li dir="auto">It needed to be user-friendly and offer better navigation options than Loomio.</li>
<li dir="auto">It had to support a range of login methods to enable users to sign in how they want.</li>
<li dir="auto">It had to integrate well with our existing tools to make sure we weren’t duplicating efforts.</li>
</ol>
<p dir="auto">The two main alternatives we considered were <a href="https://www.discourse.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Discourse</a> and <a href="https://flarum.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Flarum</a>. </p>
<p dir="auto">Discourse is a very well-known piece of software that many projects use day-to-day. It has a user-friendly interface, good layout options, and offers many prebuilt plugins. But when we looked at it we found a couple of issues with it. Discourse is quite a resource-intensive application, and can get quite slow. It is also written in Ruby, which nobody in the project is very familiar with. While neither of these issues would block a deployment, they could lead to issues later on.</p>
<p dir="auto">Flarum, by comparison, is pretty lightweight. It also offers a pleasant user interface and simple tools, and has many prebuilt plugins. The biggest advantage of Flarum is that it is written in PHP.</p>
<blockquote dir="auto">
<p dir="auto">A million developers cry out in pain.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="auto">All jokes aside, PHP is a very capable language and one that many people on the project have some experience with. Sticking to software written in familiar languages enables us to maintain and build upon our forums much more easily.</p>
<h2 dir="auto">Forum setup</h2>
<p dir="auto">Once we’d picked our software, we decided to create a test instance for the community to check out. We set up some spaces to separate out content and test how the forum would look, then started posting content like normal.</p>
<p dir="auto">The new forums contain more clearly separated topics. We now have dedicated topics for:</p>
<ul dir="auto">
<li dir="auto"><strong>Development</strong>: Conversations relating to bugs, new features, and other development topics.</li>
<li dir="auto"><strong>Support</strong>: A space for community members to ask each other for help and support.</li>
<li dir="auto"><strong>Music</strong>: A space to share music you’ve discovered or created on Funkwhale!</li>
<li dir="auto"><strong>Podcasts</strong>: A space to share cool podcast content with each other.</li>
<li dir="auto"><strong>Community</strong>: A place to hang out, introduce yourselves, and get to know one another.</li>
</ul>
<p dir="auto">Each of these topics has subtopics to help keep discussions navigable. We’re open to feedback about more topics/subtopics going forward, so please feel free to open up a discussion!</p>
<h2 dir="auto">Join us!</h2>
<p dir="auto">If you’re an existing user or just someone who wants to get involved, please come and join us. If you want to get more involved with the community, make a post in the <a href="https://forum.funkwhale.audio/t/introduction" rel="noopener noreferrer">introduction topic</a> telling us a bit about yourself! </p>
<p dir="auto">We are looking to add more language-specific topics for people who don’t speak English. Currently, we have German and French spaces set up. However, we need help maintaining and moderating these spaces as we don’t speak other languages fluently. If you’d like to volunteer to moderate a new language, open up a thread about it in the <a href="https://forum.funkwhale.audio/t/community" rel="noopener noreferrer">community topic</a>!</p>
<p dir="auto">We’re looking forward to seeing everyone there 👋</p>
]]><![CDATA[Diversity]]>https://blog.funkwhale.audio/~/Announcements/Diversity/2021-06-14T18:07:56.360806+00:00funkwhale / bloghttps://blog.funkwhale.audio/@/funkwhale/2021-06-14T18:07:56.360806+00:00<![CDATA[<p dir="auto">It’s Pride month. People around the world are fighting for equality and celebrate diversity. The Funkwhale community is fully in support of diversity. We believe it is the greatest strength any community can have. Because of this, we have always tried to make our spaces welcoming to everyone and have strived to be inclusive to people from all backgrounds. However, we have not always been as successful as we would have liked to have been.</p>
<p dir="auto">It is easy to pay lip service to the subject of diversity. Words and platitudes are cheap, and many in the technology world like to wax philosophical about how much they are in support of under-represented communities. Putting these sentiments into practice, however, is much more challenging. For all of our best efforts, we need to acknowledge we are far from perfect. Most of the people who hold positions in the Funkwhale community are male, based in Europe, and white. That’s not an equal representation of the people around the world or the users of Funkwhale, and is something we are keen to address.</p>
<p dir="auto">Lets elaborate why this is so important to us. Humans are quite different, they have different use cases for and different access to our software. There are different devices, different languages, different abilities and many more differences than we can even think about. On the one hand its simply discriminatory to exclude some people from using or developing our software or take part in shaping the community. On the other hand this exclusion is a huge loss for the community, since we loose perspectives, opinions and contributors. And this is exclusion is not only happening explicitly. We also exclude people by not making our places welcoming or making it not easy enough for people to join us.</p>
<p dir="auto">We have had some discussions about this topic. We know we cannot remedy every factor that has led us to where we are currently. But we typify these issues at Funkwhale, too, and this is something we think we can change. We want to be more inclusive and welcoming, and we want to make sure that people can not only enjoy our software, but feel positive about contributing to the project and community as well.</p>
<p dir="auto">This is where you come in. Besides having our own thoughts about the topic and doing some research, we want to open the discussion and get your feedback, so that we are not just acting on our own myopic points of view. So, if you want to give us some input, have some ideas, or want to point out places where we have messed up, let us know! Tell us everything you think about this topic, especially if you don’t feel represented in the community already.</p>
<p dir="auto">You can write us an <a href="mailto:maintainers@funkwhale.audio" rel="noopener noreferrer">E-Mail</a> (private), contact us on <a href="https://mastodon.eliotberriot.com/web/accounts/20496" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mastodon</a> or <a href="https://twitter.com/funkwhaleaudio" rel="noopener noreferrer">Twitter</a> (private or publicly), you can post to our <a href="https://governance.funkwhale.audio" rel="noopener noreferrer">Forums</a> (public) or provide your feedback <a href="https://nextcloud.funkwhale.audio/apps/forms/iHSAHryTbbx2gEWb" rel="noopener noreferrer">here</a> (private & anonymous). </p>
]]><![CDATA[Funkwhale 1.1.2 released]]>https://blog.funkwhale.audio/~/Announcements/Funkwhale 1.1.2 released/2021-05-19T17:33:26.782542+00:00funkwhale / bloghttps://blog.funkwhale.audio/@/funkwhale/2021-05-19T17:33:26.782542+00:00<![CDATA[<p dir="auto">We’re pleased to announce the release of Funkwhale 1.1.2. This is a minor release containing a few quality of life improvements and bugfixes. As always, upgrade instructions can be found in <a href="https://docs.funkwhale.audio/admin/upgrading.html" rel="noopener noreferrer">our documentation</a> and the changelog can be found <a href="https://docs.funkwhale.audio/changelog.html" rel="noopener noreferrer">here</a>.</p>
<h2 dir="auto">What’s new?</h2>
<p dir="auto">Since this is a bugfix release, we’ve focused mostly on fixing smaller issues which have been impacting both app behavior and appearance:</p>
<ul dir="auto">
<li dir="auto">Dark theme users will be pleased to see we’ve shipped a fix for a CSS regression which caused loading spinners to render with a white background. These loaders will now match the background colour of the theme as intended.</li>
<li dir="auto">A missing serializer has been added to the <code>tracks</code> endpoint which allows us to filter results by whether or not they are playable by the current user. This means we can hide unplayable content and prevent some of the confusion people have experienced when browsing content.</li>
<li dir="auto">An issue which caused systemd to read environment variables incorrectly has been patched.</li>
<li dir="auto">Various smaller frontend bugs have been squashed, mostly relating to improper HTML.</li>
</ul>
<p dir="auto">We’ve also added a new behavior for unauthenticated users who try to subscribe to channels. Previously, the subscribe button would treat the user as though they were logged in and register the subscription even though the request had failed. Now unauthenticated users will be met with a popup prompting them to log in or sign up (if registrations are open) to subscribe to channels.</p>
<p dir="auto">Happy upgrade!</p>
]]><![CDATA[Roadmap]]>https://blog.funkwhale.audio/~/Announcements/Roadmap/2021-05-12T13:27:39.467931+00:00funkwhale / bloghttps://blog.funkwhale.audio/@/funkwhale/2021-05-12T13:27:39.467931+00:00<![CDATA[<h2 dir="auto">Project maintainence</h2>
<p dir="auto">We have some good news: the Funkwhale community is slowly becoming more organized again and we are getting stuff done. We are quite close to publishing another bugfix release and the development for the next minor version has already started. </p>
<p dir="auto">In the background there is a lot of stuff going on, too. Our infrastructure is being revisited, all tools are getting updates, deprecated tools are being replaced and new tools are already planned. Additionally we have been talking about the state of the Funding with NLNet and have got a few extra offers, namely a security audit, packaging for NixOS and an accessibility audit. </p>
<h2 dir="auto">Upcoming version 1.2</h2>
<p dir="auto">Enough of the boring stuff, you are here to hear about the new features we plan to ship in the following releases. As I said, development for 1.2 has already started. There are already some minor improvements merged: If you click on a track in a playlist, e.g. an album, the whole context gets added to the queue instead of the single song and track pages now show a cover image. There is also some refactoring of the lists in the UI in progress, which is especially useful on mobile devices. Check this video to see what we are working on:</p>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://videos.funkwhale.audio/videos/embed/f6bb4202-09eb-43df-a27a-3a4b6496182d" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<p dir="auto">Some more UI improvements will be included in 1.2. Most of the work will be done under the hood, though. We need to update a lot of dependencies, prepare ourselves for a new major version of our UI toolkit and build a solid base for future versions. We have a lot of great feature requests, but before we start to work on them we need to built a solid base and iron out technical debts.</p>
<h2 dir="auto">Plans for 1.3</h2>
<p dir="auto">None of this is set in stone yet, but we have some plans for 1.3: we want to refactor the UI to provide a better experience.</p>
<p dir="auto"><img src="https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale/funkwhale-design/-/raw/master/browser/home-1.3.png" alt=""></p>
<p dir="auto">On this side, our goal is to provide people with a more welcoming landing page, and offer an easier navigation throughout content.</p>
<p dir="auto">Additionally we want to implement some tools to have a wider view at the network. Due to the distributed nature of Funkwhale, there is no single database containing all the music. We want to built some mechanics to increase the amount of content which is visible for the user, no matter which instance they are using!</p>
<h2 dir="auto">Support us</h2>
<p dir="auto">This is a community project. If you want to support us, check out <a href="https://funkwhale.audio/en_US/support-us" rel="noopener noreferrer">our support page</a> or join our <a href="https://funkwhale.audio/en_US/community" rel="noopener noreferrer">Community spaces</a> if you want to contribute to Funkwhale!</p>
]]><![CDATA[Current state of finding new maintainers]]>https://blog.funkwhale.audio/~/Announcements/Current state of finding new maintainers/2021-04-25T12:37:38.756549+00:00funkwhale / bloghttps://blog.funkwhale.audio/@/funkwhale/2021-04-25T12:37:38.756549+00:00<![CDATA[<p dir="auto">Hello everyone. About five months ago Agate wrote a blog post explaining that Funkwhale searches for new maintainers as she steps down for personal reasons. </p>
<p dir="auto">Since then, some things happened. Lately we realized there was not enough transparency about the process and a update is needed. Thats the motivation for this post.</p>
<p dir="auto">I used the term “we” in the previous paragraph and this is probably the point, where this update should start. Who are we? My name is Georg, I am actually quite new to this great community. My instance was started in May 2020. Since I was using mopidy before my first contributions were made for the mopidy plugin. When I saw the mentioned blog post, I stepped up for maintaining this plugin. Some people gathered together in a maintainers chat room to coordinate the work on the whole project.
When I entered this room in February, it was quite silent. There already were some contributions from several people merged into the develop branch and a release was needed to ship them. So we worked towards a 1.1 release, published an release candidate, fixed some bugs and the first release made by the community was there \o/ </p>
<p dir="auto">While I did some coordination, a lot of work was done by others: We had a bunch of contributors (See the <a href="https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale/funkwhale/-/releases/1.1" rel="noopener noreferrer">Changelog</a>), petitminion helps with managing the issues, mjourdan works on concepts to improve the design of the Funkwhale interface and reviews changes if they are a step in the right direction. Agate is still there for answering questions while Ginny moderated open.audio and was available to handle any case of abuse. Additionally we had a lot of users reporting issues and help to debug them.</p>
<p dir="auto">By getting deeper into the project I noticed there are still a lot of responsibilities for Agate. The project was raised by her and thats a natural thing, but still a burden for her and sometimes a brake when she is not available. A huge task was the maintaince of our self hosted systems: Our project management, our forum and a lot of other services. Luckyly <a href="//blog.funkwhale.audio/@/egon0/" title="egon0" rel="noopener noreferrer">@egon0</a> stepped up to care for our infrastructure in the future. This takes another load from Agate.</p>
<p dir="auto">So lets sum this up. As a reminder, here is the list of tasks collected by Agate in November 2020.</p>
<ol dir="auto">
<li dir="auto">Building a roadmap</li>
<li dir="auto">Implementing roadmap items (new features)</li>
<li dir="auto">Implementing day-to-day bugfixes and enhancements</li>
<li dir="auto">Publishing new releases</li>
<li dir="auto">Providing support to pod admins and users</li>
<li dir="auto">Maintaining the Funkwhale infrastructure and services (servers, GitLab, Blog, Forums, etc.)</li>
<li dir="auto">Maintaining and moderating open.audio</li>
<li dir="auto">Communicating around the project and our blog and social media</li>
<li dir="auto">Triage, answer and prioritize issues on the issue tracker</li>
</ol>
<p dir="auto">As mentioned above, petitminion covers point 9., egon0 handles 6., while I take care of publishing releases, supporting users and admins and hunting bugs. Some points are still not covered. I wish I could spend more time to work on Funkwhale and implement new features, but this is not going to work for me this year. Additionally there are points 7 and 8. Especially moderation and handling of abuses are important tasks.</p>
<p dir="auto">Agate will continue to be around to answer questions about the existing processes, organization, infrastructure and codebase, but plans to slowly move to other horizons.</p>
<p dir="auto">If you are interested in helping out there, please <a href="https://funkwhale.audio/en_US/community" rel="noopener noreferrer">get in touch</a>! :)</p>
<p dir="auto">~Georg</p>
]]><![CDATA[Funkwhale 1.1.1 is released]]>https://blog.funkwhale.audio/~/Announcements/funkwhale-1.1.1-is-released/2021-04-13T18:04:27.805858+00:00funkwhale / bloghttps://blog.funkwhale.audio/@/funkwhale/2021-04-13T18:04:27.805858+00:00<![CDATA[<p>Hello everyone.</p>
<p>Today we tagged version 1.1.1 of Funkwhale.</p>
<p>The update instructions are available <a href="https://docs.funkwhale.audio/admin/upgrading.html" rel="noopener noreferrer">in our docs</a>. The changelog can be read <a href="https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale/funkwhale/-/releases/1.1.1" rel="noopener noreferrer">on the Gitlab release page</a>.</p>
<p>Please note we increased the default number of <code>FUNKWHALE_WEB_WORKERS</code> and recommend to check your configuration and apply this change. In some cases having only one web worker available seems to break the federation. We are still working on improving the situation, until than please evaluate if more web workers work for you.</p>
<p>If there are any problems or difficulties, feel free to reach out to us :) Take care!</p>
]]><![CDATA[Funkwhale 1.1 has been released]]>https://blog.funkwhale.audio/~/Announcements/funkwhale-1.1-has-been-released/2021-03-10T16:52:05.521974+00:00funkwhale / bloghttps://blog.funkwhale.audio/@/funkwhale/2021-03-10T16:52:05.521974+00:00<![CDATA[<p>Hello there!</p>
<p>Funkwhale 1.1 has been released this afternoon, and we encourage all pod admins to upgrade, as this version contains no breaking changes, and many improvements and bugfixes.</p>
<p>Many thanks to Georg for managing and publishing this release and to our amazing community of testers, contributors, developpers, users, admins, designers and translators!</p>
<h2>What's new?</h2>
<p>You can read the <a href="https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale/funkwhale/-/tags/1.1-rc1" rel="noopener noreferrer">full changelog</a>, but here is an excerpt of the main changes and enhancements included in this release:</p>
<ul>
<li>Support for AIFF file format</li>
<li>More user-friendly subsonic tokens</li>
<li>New search functions to allow users to more easily search for podcasts in the UI</li>
<li>Brand new ListenBrainz plugin to submit listenings</li>
</ul>
<p>This release also fix a lot issues on both the UI and the backend.</p>
<p>Happy upgrade <3</p>
]]><![CDATA[First release candidate for Funkwhale 1.1]]>https://blog.funkwhale.audio/~/Announcements/first-release-candidate-for-funkwhale-1.1/2021-02-24T17:56:42.860591+00:00funkwhale / bloghttps://blog.funkwhale.audio/@/funkwhale/2021-02-24T17:56:42.860591+00:00<![CDATA[<p>Hello there!</p>
<p>While developpment and activity slowed down for a while since our <a href="https://blog.funkwhale.audio/%7E/Announcements/funkwhale-is-looking-for-new-maintainers" rel="noopener noreferrer">call for maintainers</a>, a few months ago, we're really excited to announce the upcoming release of Funkwhale 1.1!</p>
<h2>A release candidate for Funkwhale 1.1</h2>
<p><a href="https://governance.funkwhale.audio/d/amoT1YnA/incoming-funkwhale-release-1-1-call-for-tests-and-translations" rel="noopener noreferrer">Our first release candidate (RC) is out</a> and ready for wider testing by the community!</p>
<p>It should be stable enough for further testing, although some bugs may occur. If you feel like it, have a look at the forum post linked above to get instructions on how to upgrade and what to test.</p>
<p>We want to get as much feedback as possible regarding bugs and regressions before the final release, scheduled around March 15, so don't wait too much ;)</p>
<p>You can share your feedback on the forum link above, or by opening new issues on our <a href="https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale/funkwhale/-/issues" rel="noopener noreferrer">issue tracker</a>.</p>
<h2>What's new?</h2>
<p>You can read the <a href="https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale/funkwhale/-/tags/1.1-rc1" rel="noopener noreferrer">full changelog</a>, but here is an excerpt of the main changes and enhancements included in this release:</p>
<ul>
<li>Support for AIFF file format</li>
<li>More user-friendly subsonic tokens</li>
<li>New search functions to allow users to more easily search for podcasts in the UI</li>
<li>Brand new ListenBrainz plugin to submit listenings</li>
</ul>
<p>This release also fix a lot issues on both the UI and the backend.</p>
<h2>An important note about this release</h2>
<p>For the first time in more than 5 years, this release wasn't supervised and published by Agate, but by Georg, a new maintainer.</p>
<p>We're really grateful to him for stepping up, and also to all the people who joined the <a href="https://app.element.io/#/room/#funkwhale-maintainers:matrix.org" rel="noopener noreferrer">#funkwhale-maintainers:matrix.org</a> Matrix room to help us with the transition.</p>
<p>To the amazing community who continued to translate, test, design, debug, document, enhance and fix Funkwhale during this difficult and uncertain period, we also say a big thank you!</p>
<p>We're still looking for additional maintainers who could take ownership on certain portions of the codebase and project management tasks. If you're interested, you can get in touch via Matrix (using the channel linked above), or by email at <a href="mailto:maintainers@funkwhale.audio" rel="noopener noreferrer">maintainers@funkwhale.audio</a>.</p>
<p>Take care <3</p>
]]><![CDATA[Funkwhale is looking for new maintainers]]>https://blog.funkwhale.audio/~/Announcements/funkwhale-is-looking-for-new-maintainers/2020-11-18T19:27:45.310419+00:00funkwhale / bloghttps://blog.funkwhale.audio/@/funkwhale/2020-11-18T19:27:45.310419+00:00<![CDATA[<p>Hi there!</p>
<p>It's been a while since our last blog post. Lots of things happened, in particular Funkwhale 1.0 and 1.0.1 were released, eventhough we didn't publish proper announcements on the blog, so congratulation to the community for this big milestone.</p>
<p>I come today with some important news that are going to impact the future of the project.</p>
<h2>On Funkwhale development and project management</h2>
<p>When I (Agate) started Funkwhale, five years ago, it was a personal hobby. Over the years, it has grown to become much, much more. New people joined the effort, we built a collective to support the project and work together, Funkwhale itself grew and many, many new features were implemented.</p>
<p>While the collective effort of our community made a lot of things possible, like keeping the documentation accurate and up-to-date, translating Funkwhale to new languages, packaging it to several platforms, integrating it with third-party projects, giving feedback on new features or developing a dedicated Android application, some tasks kept being handled almost exclusively by me.</p>
<p>In particular, I'm thinking about project management, development and maintenance tasks, such as:</p>
<ol>
<li>Building a roadmap</li>
<li>Implementing roadmap items (new features)</li>
<li>Implementing day-to-day bugfixes and enhancements</li>
<li>Publishing new releases</li>
<li>Providing support to pod admins and users</li>
<li>Maintaining the Funkwhale infrastructure and services (servers, GitLab, Blog, Forums, etc.)</li>
<li>Maintaining and moderating open.audio</li>
<li>Communicating around the project and our blog and social media</li>
<li>Triage, answer and prioritize issues on the issue tracker</li>
</ol>
<p>Some people helped or are still helping with those tasks but overall, it has been my responsibility to handle all of this (and possibly more).</p>
<h2>I cannot do this anymore</h2>
<p>As you're probably already guessing from our silence and the post title, I am not able to do this work anymore.</p>
<p>I won't dive too much in the details, but I had serious health issues this summer, and the dust is only starting to settle. This affected my ability to work on the project on more important scale than expected, and I haven't been able to achieve anything lately but the most basic tasks.</p>
<p>Initially, I thought my energy and motivation would eventually come back as they were before. They didn't, however, and I think it's time I communicate clearly about this and take a step back from my current role as a project maintainer.</p>
<h2>We're looking for help</h2>
<p>For the time being, I am still willing to perform some of the tasks listed above, mainly maintenance tasks like basic support, infrastructure and open.audio maintenance or critical bugfixing and releases. Everything else, I won't do anymore (I haven't in a while, anyway).</p>
<p>I don't want to put what we have built in danger, and I want to leave some time for new people to take over.</p>
<p>Me reducing my involvement in the project doesn't necessarily mean Funkwhale will die, though this implies members of the community take ownership on the unfullfilled tasks and responsibilities. I've been amazed by our collective strength in the past, and I'm quite eager to see what will happen next.</p>
<p>As much as possible, I'll try to help with the transition, if people have questions or need pointers. I'm not leaving the community after all ;)</p>
<p>Some of the development tasks can be paid, as we still have some of the <a href="https://governance.funkwhale.audio/d/QyEBOaV6/status-of-our-nlnet-funding" rel="noopener noreferrer">NLNet funding</a>. This could be an opportunity for you to get paid working on open-source software!</p>
<p>If you are willing to help with one or many of the tasks listed above, please get in touch with us on <a href="https://governance.funkwhale.audio/d/mBfhxe6N/funkwhale-is-looking-for-new-maintainers" rel="noopener noreferrer">our forum</a>, or on <a href="https://app.element.io/#/room/#funkwhale:matrix.org" rel="noopener noreferrer">Matrix</a>.</p>
<p>Thank you so much for reading and helping with Funkwhale <3</p>
]]><![CDATA[Blog post week 2020-19: starting the work on Funkwhale 0.21.1 and 1.0]]>https://blog.funkwhale.audio/~/Announcements/blog-post-week-2020-19-starting-the-work-on-funkwhale-0.21.1-and-1.0/2020-05-08T13:45:39.958462+00:00funkwhale / bloghttps://blog.funkwhale.audio/@/funkwhale/2020-05-08T13:45:39.958462+00:00<![CDATA[<p>What has happened since <a href="https://blog.funkwhale.audio/%7E/Announcements/blog-post-week-2020-17-funkwhale-0.21-is-out" rel="noopener noreferrer">last time</a>?</p>
<h2>Squashing bugs in Funkwhale 0.21</h2>
<p>With the new features and the player/queue redesign introduced in v0.21, we've introduced new bugs and issues.</p>
<p>As a result, we've started to work on fixing these, and will release a patch release, <a href="https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale/funkwhale/-/milestones/24" rel="noopener noreferrer">v0.21.1</a>, probably by the end of the month.</p>
<p>This release will only include bugfixes and fully backward compatible enhancements that can be backported from the incoming 1.0 release.</p>
<p>It will also bring <a href="https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale/funkwhale/-/issues/741" rel="noopener noreferrer">several enhancements</a> that have been requested by the community regarding the <code>import_files</code> command, and in particular:</p>
<ul>
<li>Support updating metadata on existing in-place imported files when performing a scan</li>
<li>A new <code>--watch</code> flag to react to filesystem events (file creation, update, removal, move)</li>
<li>A <code>--prune</code> flag to easily prune library from dangling metadata after a scan</li>
</ul>
<p>If you've encountered new bugs in Funkwhale 0.21 that are not yet scheduled for the <a href="https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale/funkwhale/-/milestones/24" rel="noopener noreferrer">0.21.1</a> milestone, don't hesitate to open new tickets!</p>
<h2>Planning Funkwhale 1.0</h2>
<p><a href="https://governance.funkwhale.audio/d/0RJWr5Ts/a-roadmap-for-funkwhale-0-21/10" rel="noopener noreferrer">As already announced during our last community consultation when building the roadmap for Funkwhale 0.21</a>, Funkwhale 0.22 will in fact be 1.0.</p>
<p>Let's take a moment to review the reasons and implications of that.</p>
<h3>Longstanding issues and technical debt</h3>
<p>The current Funkwhale codebase will be three-years old on June 23, 2020. Over the years, we've introduced a lot of new features, and barely removed any. This means that the amount of existing bugs has grown in the app.</p>
<p>In addition to this, working on new exciting features meant we have postponed some important enhancements that were requested by our community:</p>
<ul>
<li>Our search experience is suboptimal as we don't have a dedicated search page</li>
<li>It's not possible to change your email</li>
<li>We have several accessibility issues (we'll talk more about this in a dedicated post) that need to be fixed</li>
</ul>
<p>This list is not exhaustive.</p>
<p>Finally, we've accumulated a fair share of technical debt. For instance, we're still supporting Python 3.5, which was released in 2015, and is not supported anymore by many of our dependencies, leading to a wide range of bugs and unexpected behaviours (as well as some performance or security issues).</p>
<p>Other examples of technical debt that currently exist in the project:</p>
<ul>
<li>We have two authentication schemes in place (JWT for the Web UI and OAuth for third-party apps)</li>
<li>Our theming system needs to be reworked to be easier to deal with</li>
<li>Some components (library cards, radio cards) don't match the latest improvements in the UI</li>
</ul>
<p>Here again, the list isn't exhaustive.</p>
<h3>Our first stable release</h3>
<p><strong>Funkwhale 1.0 will allow us to address these issues and work on the overall stability of the project.</strong> By releasing our first stable version (that's what 1.0 means), we're also sending a signal to our community.</p>
<p>When Funkwhale 1.0 is released, it means we consider Funkwhale is mature enough for you to use, and we're committed to keep it that way.</p>
<p>We won't break Funkwhale REST API compatibility in future minor releases (1.1, 1.2, etc.), meaning developers can safely build new clients, apps and integrations on top of it.</p>
<p>However, to get there and ensure Funkwhale 1.0 is as stable and clean as possible, we will have to break compatibility in some places (e.g by removing JWT auth, or Python 3.5 support). As always, we'll document such breaking changes and offer guidance to upgrade.</p>
<p>Finally, the 1.0 release will be an opportunity for us to complete the API documentation, as many endpoints are not currently documented.</p>
<p>Thank you for staying with us, and let's build an awesome and stable 1.0 release!</p>
]]><![CDATA[Hosting your podcast for free on Funkwhale / open.audio]]>https://blog.funkwhale.audio/~/Announcements/hosting-your-podcast-for-free-on-funkwhale-open.audio/2020-04-24T09:25:46.012120+00:00funkwhale / bloghttps://blog.funkwhale.audio/@/funkwhale/2020-04-24T09:25:46.012120+00:00<![CDATA[<p>TL;DR: To celebrate our <a href="https://blog.funkwhale.audio/%7E/Announcements/blog-post-week-2020-17-funkwhale-0.21-is-out/" rel="noopener noreferrer">latest release</a>, for a limited time, we're offering free accounts with 3GB of storage at https://open.audio if you want to host your podcast or audio content on a decentralized, ad-free, open platform.</p>
<p>Visit <a href="https://open.audio/signup" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://open.audio/signup</a> to get started or continue reading to learn more.</p>
<hr>
<p>Hi there, fellow podcasters!</p>
<p>Over the past 6 months, <a href="https://blog.funkwhale.audio/%7E/Announcements/0.21-preview-channels-feature" rel="noopener noreferrer">we've worked really hard to make it possible to publish and host podcasts on Funkwhale</a>, and we're now confident enough to communicate more widely about it.</p>
<h3>The offer</h3>
<p>To celebrate this, we're opening subscriptions for a couple of weeks at <a href="https://open.audio" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://open.audio</a>. Any account created in this period will get 3GB of storage to publish podcast episodes!</p>
<p>To avoid abuse and ensure the best quality of service, we'll review registrations manually, typically in a few hours so don't panic if there is a small delay before you get your confirmation.</p>
<h3>The features</h3>
<p>As soon as your account is confirmed, you can <a href="https://docs.funkwhale.audio/users/channels.html" rel="noopener noreferrer">create channels and publish your podcasts</a> there. <a href="https://open.audio/channels/umlautsareoverestimated/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Here</a> is an example of a podcast page.</p>
<p>A couple features that you may like:</p>
<ul>
<li>Other users can <a href="https://docs.funkwhale.audio/users/followchannel.html#following-funkwhale-channels-on-funkwhale" rel="noopener noreferrer">subscribe to podcasts if they have an account on any Funkwhale pod</a>, and anonymously, as we produce <a href="https://docs.funkwhale.audio/users/followchannel.html#following-funkwhale-channels-through-podcast-apps" rel="noopener noreferrer">a RSS feed compatible with existing podcasting applications</a>.</li>
<li>Each podcast episode published on Funkwhale gets a dedicated page, and can have a description and cover image. People can visit this page to listen to your episode, without logging-in.</li>
<li>It's also possible to embed your channel or episodes on your own website, through an iframe-based player</li>
</ul>
<p>Because Funkwhale is free software, you can also <a href="https://docs.funkwhale.audio/installation/" rel="noopener noreferrer">host your own pod</a> or let someone else, such as <a href="https://app.spacebear.ee/funkwhale" rel="noopener noreferrer">SpaceBear</a> host it for you, under your own domain.</p>
<p>We'd love to hear what you think about it, and of course, let us know if you have any questions! You can contact us by email at contact@open.audio.</p>
]]><![CDATA[Blog post week 2020-17: Funkwhale 0.21 is out!]]>https://blog.funkwhale.audio/~/Announcements/blog-post-week-2020-17-funkwhale-0.21-is-out/2020-04-24T09:02:10.467734+00:00funkwhale / bloghttps://blog.funkwhale.audio/@/funkwhale/2020-04-24T09:02:10.467734+00:00<![CDATA[<p>What has happened since <a href="https://blog.funkwhale.audio/%7E/Announcements/blog-post-week-2020-15-first-release-candidate-for-funkwhale-0.21" rel="noopener noreferrer">last time</a>?</p>
<h2>Funkwhale 0.21 is out</h2>
<p>Funkwhale 0.21, codename "Agate", was officially published this morning! You can now upgrade your pod or install a brand new one, to benefit from the dozens of new features, enhancements and bugfixes shipped in this release, including:</p>
<ul>
<li>Support for publishing and subscribing to podcasts</li>
<li>Brand new navigation, queue and player redesign</li>
<li>Browsing a library content through the UI</li>
<li>Federated reports</li>
<li>Screening for sign-ups</li>
<li>Enforceable email verification</li>
<li>More reliable and less resource-hungry CLI importer, esp. on large libraries</li>
</ul>
<p>As usual, we recommend reading the <a href="https://docs.funkwhale.audio/changelog.html#agate-2020-04-24" rel="noopener noreferrer">full changelog</a> before upgrading.</p>
<p>This release is dedicated to Agate, to thank her, for both having created the Funkwhale project, being the current lead developer, and for her courage of coming out. Thank you Agate from all the members of the Funkwhale community <3</p>
<p>We are truly grateful as well to the dozens of people who contributed to this release with translations, development, documentation, reviews, design, testing, feedback, financial support, third-party projects and integrations... You made it possible!</p>
<h2>What's next?</h2>
<p>Now that 0.21 is published, we'll probably take a break and start scheduling tickets for the stable release.</p>
<p>Funkwhale 1.0 will focuse on stability, bugfixing, and building a solid, backward-compatible foundation for the project. You can expect to hear more about this in the upcoming weeks :)</p>
]]><![CDATA[Blog post week 2020-15: first release candidate for Funkwhale 0.21]]>https://blog.funkwhale.audio/~/Announcements/blog-post-week-2020-15-first-release-candidate-for-funkwhale-0.21/2020-04-10T12:23:26.505513+00:00funkwhale / bloghttps://blog.funkwhale.audio/@/funkwhale/2020-04-10T12:23:26.505513+00:00<![CDATA[<p>What has happened since <a href="https://blog.funkwhale.audio/%7E/Announcements/blog-post-week-2020-011-new-shiny-stuff-status-update-and-our-first-nl-net-payment" rel="noopener noreferrer">last time</a>?</p>
<h2>Funkwhale 0.21-rc1 is out</h2>
<p><a href="https://governance.funkwhale.audio/d/SeUDP7vM/funkwhale-0-21-release-incoming-looking-for-testers-" rel="noopener noreferrer">Our first release candidate (RC) is out</a> and ready for wider testing by the community!</p>
<p>It should be stable enough for further testing, although some bugs may occur. If you feel like it, have a look at the forum post linked above to get instructions on how to upgrade and what to test.</p>
<p>We want to get as much feedback as possible regarding bugs and regressions before the final release, scheduled around April 21, so don't wait too much ;)</p>
<h2>What's new?</h2>
<p>You can read the <a href="https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale/funkwhale/-/tags/0.21-rc1" rel="noopener noreferrer">full changelog</a>, but here is an excerpt of the main changes and features included in this release:</p>
<ul>
<li>Support for publishing and subscribing to podcasts (Channels)</li>
<li>Brand new navigation, queue and player redesign</li>
<li>Browse a library content through the UI</li>
<li>Federated reports</li>
<li>Screening for sign-ups</li>
<li>Make it possible to enforce email verification</li>
</ul>
<p>Ginny put together a couple of blog posts to give you an in-depth preview of the new <a href="https://blog.funkwhale.audio/%7E/Announcements/0.21-preview-moderation-features" rel="noopener noreferrer">moderation features</a>, and the new <a href="https://blog.funkwhale.audio/%7E/Announcements/0.21-preview-channels-feature" rel="noopener noreferrer">channels features</a>, you should definitely have a look if you're curious!</p>
<h2>Thank you!</h2>
<p>Overall, more than 35 people contributed to this release, and counting. Be it with feedback, translations, design, development, third-party integrations, testing, their work is truly invaluable.</p>
<p>Thank you Agate, annando, Anton Strömkvist, Audrey, ButterflyOfFire, Ciarán Ainsworth, dashie, Eloisa, eorn, Francesc Galí, GinnyMcQueen, guillermau, Haelwenn, jinxx, Jonathan Aylard, Keunes, M.G, marzzzello, Mathé Grievink, Mélanie Chauvel, Mjourdan, Morgan Kesler, Noe Gaumont, Noureddine HADDAG, Ollie, Peter Wickenberg, Renon, Satsuki Yanagi, Shlee, techknowlogick, ThibG, Tony Wasserka, unklebonehead, wakest, wxcafé, Xosé M and everyone else way me have forgot in this list <3</p>
<p>We're also extremely grateful to NLNet and all our supporters and donors, for making it possible to work on Funkwhale in a sustainable way!</p>
]]><![CDATA[0.21 Preview: Channels Feature]]>https://blog.funkwhale.audio/~/Announcements/0.21-preview-channels-feature/2020-04-10T10:09:22.834189+00:00funkwhale / bloghttps://blog.funkwhale.audio/@/funkwhale/2020-04-10T10:09:22.834189+00:00<![CDATA[<p>Expanding Funkwhale to be podcast friendly has been the culmination of months of community work, and we're so excited to finally show it to you!</p>
<p>Channels are here! Users can now create channels which makes it easy for users to have their music, podcasts, and other audio manageable from one user account, with listeners able to subscribe to channels individually.</p>
<p>Here is a preview of the channel creation:</p>
<video src="https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale/funkwhale/uploads/ede819b20d530e23b290ca2a4f9ad0ca/channels-upload.mp4" controls="true"></video>
<p>And here is what the subscription feature looks like:</p>
<video src="https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale/funkwhale/uploads/91d0135daedf3fb737acc9742267b99f/Peek_2020-03-19_16-13.mp4" controls="true"></video>
<p>There's lots more to this feature, such as batch uploads and meta data editing, and a whole redesign of the single track page:</p>
<video src="https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale/funkwhale/uploads/72f4f8d1d0a51059c7008fc0012a6c73/Peek_2020-03-26_16-18.mp4" controls="true"></video>
<p>Not only does each Funkwhale channel have its own RSS feed for easy subscription by listeners outside of Funkwhale, but podcasts and other audio hosted elsewhere can be subscribed to via its RSS feed inside Funkwhale. This means you can have all your subscriptions in once place for easy listening and management right from your Funkwhale account.</p>
<video src="https://mastodon.eliotberriot.com/system/media_attachments/files/000/589/669/original/b67f7469a04b6fa5.mp4?1584102549" controls="true"></video>
<p>In addition, Funkwhale channels can be followed from other federated services: Mastodon, Pleroma, Friendica and Reel2Bits!</p>
<p>We want to again thank the community for their amazing work on these features from the idea stage, to testing, to coding. We could not have gotten to this release without you!</p>
<p><img src="https://blog.funkwhale.audio/static/media/FF6AC0A1-FBD9-A91A-8170-27327B2F26AF.png" alt="Betty"></p>
]]>