[liberationtech] Diaspora's pre-alpha is live...

[Yosem Companys]

 Today, we are releasing the source code for Diaspora. This is now a
community project and development is open to anyone with the technical
expertise who shares the vision of a social network that puts users in
control. From now on, we will be working closely with the community on
improving and solidifying Diaspora.

We began the summer with a list of technologies, a few bold claims, and the
goal of making an intrinsically more private social network. The
overwhelming response that we elicited made us realize that technology
woudn’t be enough. Even the most powerful, granular set of dropdowns and
checkboxes will never give people control over where their content is going,
let alone give them ownership of their digital self.

We live our real lives in context, speaking from whatever aspect of
ourselves that those around us know. Social tools should work the same way.
Getting the source into the hands of developers is our first experiment in
making a simple and functional tool for contextual sharing. Diaspora is in
its infancy, but our initial ideas are there.

Diaspora now:

   - *Share status messages and photos privately and in near real time with
   your friends through “aspects”.*
   - *Friend people across the Internet no matter where Diaspora seed is
   located.*


    - *Manage friends using “aspects”*



    - *Upload of photos and albums*
   - *All traffic is signed and encrypted (except photos, for now).*

Things we are working on next for our Alpha in October:

   - *Facebook Integration*
   - *Internationalization*
   - *Data Portability*

These are our current priorities, for more detail check out our roadmap.

Much of our focus this summer was centered around publishing content to
groups of your friends, wherever their seed may live. It is by no means bug
free or feature complete, but it is an important step for putting us, the
users, in control. Developers, our code is on github, our tracker is public,
we have a developer mailing list, and we are happily accepting patches:

   - *Github <http://github.com/diaspora/diaspora>*
   - *Tracker <http://www.pivotaltracker.com/projects/61641>*
   - *Test Status <http://ci.joindiaspora.com/>*
   - *Roadmap & Wishlist <https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/wiki/Roadmap>
   *
   - *Development Mailing List <http://groups.google.com/group/diaspora-dev>
   *
   - *Discuss Mailing List <http://groups.google.com/group/diaspora-discuss>
   *

To stay up to date with the progress of Diaspora:

   - *twitter <http://twitter.com/joindiaspora>*
   - *identi.ca <http://identi.ca/joindiaspora>*
   - *homepage <http://joindiaspora.com/>*
   - *mailing list <http://bit.ly/c94G4h>*

PS:
Feel free to try to get it running on your machines and use it, but we give
no guarantees. We know there are security holes and bugs, and your data is
not yet fully exportable. If you do find something, be sure to log it in our
bugtracker, and we would love screenshots and browser info.
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