In my mind, open source infrastructure is one of the most essential aspects of a successful blockchain protocol. For example, Hive was only possible because large parts of the Steem ecosystem were open source, allowing the community to fork the codebase and shatter our serfdom to Justin Sun and the STINC ninja-mined stake.
Initially however when Hive forked repositories from Steem, they were initially kept private. This possibly made sense prior to the fork when the situation was adversarial and secrecy might have helped with a successful execution of the break-away. But now that the fork is over, it's important all critical infrastructure becomes open as soon as possible.
Yesterday, the Hive condenser repository that powers https://hive.blog was made public! It's available at https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/condenser. The repository is released under the permissive MIT License. So this is an event to celebrate.
While I am not involved in this repository (I don't have any special privileges to it), as a Hive stakeholder, I've been lobbying for it to be open sourced. Check out some of my previous statements below.
Twitter conversion
#steemit extends their censorship of users who even mentioned the name of #hive to blocking on other front ends by completely censoring at the backend level.
https://github.com/steemit/hivemind/commit/0bab9fb47f7e091793c5167cb8e702fb6d7e544d
@justinsuntron aims to completely silence anyone he disagrees with.
A cautionary tale of centralized infrastructure… which is why it irks me so much that both https://hive.blog and https://peakd.com are closed source. It's like the community is blind to their mistakes that created this problem in the first place.
Response by @themarkymark:
Peakd.com is closed source but I think Hive.blog is only until it gets moved to the public repository. A lot of the tools that got ported have been moved already.
It is just on GitLab not GitHub.
Response by @dhimmel:
Yes, good to see many tools are already publicly available with an open license. But what's with the delay in making condenser open? Asking users to trust others' goodwill that critical infrastructure will be made open in the future is less than ideal.
Response by @roelandp
afaik condenser will be available asap.
Additional response by @roelandp:
update: Condenser for http://hive.blog now public via https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/condenser
Other comments I've made
From https://peakd.com/hive-167922/@khaleelkazi/idtxhsoa#@dhimmel/q7p8t0:
its quite concerning that both major frontends for Hive are closed-source: both hive.blog and peakd.com. While I think the entities that control these sites are more benevolent than Sun / STINC, it's unjust and centralized that continued access to the network relies on the goodwill of a small group of individuals. Frankly, this community has way too much tolerance for closed source code and solutions that rely on trusted centralized entities... which is what got us into this situation in the first place. So hopefully we see the critical frontend infrastructure become open source ASAP.
From https://peakd.com/hive-139531/@quochuy/my-first-hive-condenser-contributions#@quochuy/q7n1b3:
Thanks @quochuy for the explanation. Feel free to pass along my feedback on the important of it being open source ASAP, since this is for the time being one way in which Hive is less open than Steem. Currently, the two main frontends: Peakd and hive.blog are not open source, which does not fit with the decentralized ambitions of Hive.
Conclusion
Leave comments! Happy to answer any questions about open source and licensing. And why it's so important for blockchain projects.
Do you know if peakd will be open source in the future? After all, the proposal gets 395 HBD per day and 289913 HBD in total.
Good question. I asked @steempeak / @peakd about this in the past and they indicated currently they are planning on remaining closed source.
I agree it would be ideal for work supported by the SPS to be open source. It sucks that @peakd could disappear tomorrow and the SPS-funding would have gone to waste.
Perhaps there is a model where they can make many of their features open source. I would be willing to support a second @steem.dao proposal for them to become open source.
I am so glad it was possible to fork out in such a smooth and fast manner. What´s happening on Steem now is absolutely crazy. Censorship is a real thing there, I was censored too, just yesterday. My post just disappeared and no front end is showing it anymore. Crazy. I think the CPC must be really proud of Justin.
Congratulations! A great mark of honor. How did you know you were censored?
Are you still able to submit transactions like make new posts, or the Steemit API rejects those as well? I'm afraid the next step for Sun will be to try to censor transactions that dump STEEM.
Hehe, I also considered it a "milestone" :) Yes, I can still post on Steem. I don´t know why they chose this particular post to censor though, it was actually nothing "harmful" in it. Well, concerns are rising that he might eventually prevent people from accessing their Steem wallets completely... Unprecedented treachery.
revenge
this condenser, is it the one responsible for the smooth running of the hiv.blog webpage
Yes, it's the codebase that runs steemit.com and hive.blog, although the codebases like the blockchains have now diverged (i.e. forked).
okay i was unaware. i thought the hive blockchain is paying web hosters like godaddy or bluehost to host their webpage.
thank you
The host provides a server to run the software... but the question here is what software is the hive.blog team telling the server to run.
decentralize it.....go daddy block perodooferas... IPFS and good old fashion racism will fix hive/........
eat some bidbot spiders yum
this stil relevant?