GitHub - cloudflare/wildebeest: Wildebeest is an ActivityPub and Mastodon-compatible server
github.com
Wildebeest is an ActivityPub and Mastodon-compatible server - GitHub - cloudflare/wildebeest: Wildebeest is an ActivityPub and Mastodon-compatible server

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/3045

Now this is interesting. A Fediverse platform developed by Cloudflare that inherently runs on Cloudflare without needing dedicated infrastructure.

The code is open source yet the platform itself is inherently proprietary. It’s going to be very interesting how this unfolds given how unpopular Cloudflare is with many Fediverse admins

  • anova (she/they/it)@beehaw.org
    91·
    2 years ago

    I’m not a fediverse admin, but I like to think that if I was I would find a way to automatically defederate with these cloudflare instances. Open source code doesn’t mean anything if it can only run on proprietary infrastructure.

    More abstractly, I don’t feel like there’s inherently anything wrong with the sort of thing, but the fact that Cloudflare Corporation in particular is doing this rubs me the wrong way

    • bunkrra@lemmy.ml
      8·
      2 years ago

      fediverse as movement and ideology <> cloudflare is not going together, u right.

    • Râu Cao ⚡@kosmos.social
      12·
      2 years ago

      @anova Why would you ban yourself from interacting with someone who voluntarily chooses provider X or Y or Z for anything? That’s their choice, not yours.

      Half the fediverse already runs on servers provided by only 3 companies. If anything, adding more to the mix, both implementations and hosting providers, is healthy for a decentralized ecosystem.

      • anova (she/they/it)@beehaw.org
        3·
        2 years ago

        Why would you ban yourself from interacting with someone who voluntarily chooses provider X or Y or Z for anything?

        Because I’m petty

        Half the fediverse already runs on servers provided by only 3 companies

        I also don’t know those three companies off the top of my head, and while I definitely believe you, I can’t imagine they are anywhere near as big as Cloudflare. If you’re talking about cloud service providers, I’d also consider running an instance that ignores say, AWS instances, but I think that’s a bit different since they don’t specifically provide “activitypub” services afaik. With Cloudflare, it’s much more explicit

  • poVoq@slrpnk.net
    7·
    2 years ago

    Hmm, obviously meant for single user instances and since you bring your own domain it is not total vendor lock-in.

    As a normal Fediverse user you will not even interact with cloudflare servers directly, but only your hopefully non-cloudflare hosted fediverse instance does.

    Personally I would not use it, but I can see its appeal. And its not like other VPS hosts are completely free of proprietary software.

    • Arthur Besse@lemmy.ml
      3·
      2 years ago

      since you bring your own domain it is not total vendor lock-in

      sure you can point your domain elsewhere, but i don’t see anything about the ability to export your data in a way that lets you actually migrate to something else (though i think that is arguably required by GDPR…)

    • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
      3·
      2 years ago

      Yeah, that’s the bit that I’m expecting to make a difference. The ease of deployment and lack of infrastructure required will make it appealing to many people that might otherwise hesitate due to Cloudflare

    • anova (she/they/it)@beehaw.org
      2·
      2 years ago

      There’s at least one not cloudflare company doing this, though I think I forget their name. It might be yunohost.org, they definitely do provide mastodon hosting, but there might have been one that focused more specifically on hosting fediverse instances. I’ve heard testimonials for them saying they take the sysadmin work out of running instances, but I suspect most of these people already have some technical background so it’s hard to say how helpful it really is.

      I don’t think it’s really that important to have a highly streamlined deployment process, mostly because I don’t really see the value in single-user or micro instances, but that’s a matter of preference