the software we use to run awful.systems, which @dgerard@awful.systems suggested I call Philthy (and I agreed!), is seeking contributors.
like upstream Lemmy, this consists of a Rust backend and a Typescript+React frontend. contributions to both are welcome; use this thread to discuss ideas and collaborate.
here’s some contribution ideas off the top of my head (but all reasonable contributions are welcome):
- (frontend & backend) actually rebrand to Philthy, to prevent confusion between us and upstream Lemmy
- (frontend & backend) rewrite
README.mdto emphasize that this is a fork - (frontend) make the page header and footer more configurable; remove various links that aren’t relevant to awful.systems
- (backend) delete posts from Mastodon when they’re deleted on our end
- (frontend & backend) implement The Firehose, a big admin-only list of the posts and content leaving our instance
- (frontend & backend, ongoing) merge in changes from upstream Lemmy if there are features you wish our instance had
or make suggestions in this thread!
one major blocker preventing folks from contributing to Lemmy-related development I’ve seen is that a lot of people don’t know Rust. if that’s the case, I can offer the following:
- the Lemmy codebase is the worst possible place to learn Rust, but I’d love to start a thread for Rust tutorials and shared learning. it’s honestly an excellent language in its own right, so I’d love to teach folks about it even if they don’t end up contributing to Philthy.
- if you’re good with React and/or Typescript and the feature you want to implement has a backend component, I don’t mind handling the backend portion if I’m able.
one for the FAQs:
Q. Why a fork? Why not just contribute to Lemmy upstream?
A. The Lemmy devs aggressively don’t want to hear from Lemmy site admins about problems, and frequently don’t seem to understand the problems. Many site admins have tried to work with the project and given up in frustration.
e.g.
https://wedistribute.org/2024/03/lemmy-image-problem/
https://lemmy.ml/post/12829700
https://my.jewy.blog/my-love-hate-relationship-with-lemmy
https://lemmy.ml/comment/8968867
https://literature.cafe/post/7623718
We appreciate and are grateful for the Lemmy developers’ considerable efforts to build discussion forum software that works well enough to sustain a social network. However, the practical issues with direct contribution remain.
As Lemmy developer nutomic said (archive):
if you leave Lemmy it means less work and less complaints for us.
We are taking him up on this offer.
Our code remains under the same license (AGPL 3) and is fully available for reuse by the upstream project, or anyone else.
