this post was submitted on 28 May 2025

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[AMA] We're Framasoft, we develop PeerTube, ask us anything! (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

209 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Bonjour, c/[email protected]!

Framasoft (that's us!) is a small French non-profit (10 employees + 25 volunteers), that has been promoting Free-Libre software and its culture to a French-speaking audience for 20+ years.

What does Framasoft do?

We strongly believe that Free-Libre software is one of the essential tools for achieving a Free-Libre society. That is why we maintain and contribute to lots of projects that aim to empower people to get more freedom in their digital lives.

Among those tools are:

20 FOSS based web-services that we host (mainly for our French-speaking audience) on our Degooglify Internet website, including Framadate and Framaforms… ;
many talks, workshops, and participations to conventions ;
A blog, where we share our views and where a group of volunteers translate into French news from the English-speaking FLOSS world ;
Many, many ressources to help people and organizations in their transition to ethical digital tools (guides, documentation, even card games!) ;

Framasoft is funded by donations (94% of our 2024 budget), mainly grassroots donations (75% of the 2024 budget). As we mainly communicate in French, the overwhelming majority of our donations comes from the French-speaking audience. You can help us through joinpeertube.org/contribute.

We develop PeerTube

In the English-speaking community, we are mostly known for developing PeerTube, a self-hosted video and live-streaming free/libre platform, which has become the main alternative to Big Tech's video platforms.

From a student project to a software with international reach, our video platform solution is now, seven years later, used and acknowledged by many institutions!

The last major version of PeerTube, v7, has been released at the end of 2024, along with the first version of the official mobile app, available on both Android (Play Store, F-Droid) and iOS.

Now that the PeerTube platform has matured significantly over successive versions, we believe that the way to enable even more people to use PeerTube is to improve the mobile app so that it can be carried around in people's pockets.

Ask Us Anything!

Last month, we have published the roadmap for the project. This week, we also launched our new crowdfunding campaign which focuses on our mobile app. We want to give you the opportunity through this AMA to give us feedback on the product and the project and discuss the crowdfunding campaign and our next steps!

If you have any questions, please ask them below (and upvote those you want us to answer first).

We will answer them to the best of our abilities with the /u/Framasoft account, from May. 28th 2025 5pm CET (11 am EST) until we are too tired ;).

EDIT (8:16 pm CET): This wraps it for the day, thanks for all of your questions and feedback!

(page 2) 50 comments

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Hello guys! Congratulations for your work on so many services! I have a question about Mobilizon: if I want to see events from Bucharest, is there a way to see events from all the instances, or do I have to search on each instance? Thank you!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Not sure if it's a question. I was looking into PT, but there aren't hardly any instances that are 1. open and 2. have much activity. Also, it seemed like you only got the content on the instance, it wasn't easy at all to find non-local content.

(Also, most of it was playthroughs)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

What the fuck was the point of your comment?

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Why doesn't framasoft monetize by providing hosted instances of PT?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I want to run a PT instance that just mirrors 100% of the CC-licensed videos on YouTube, so folks using Tor and VPNs can access it.

I'm not looking to make money, but I do need to cover the monthly costs of the server. What methods are available to monetize the site? Is there some plugin that can simply inject (privacy friendly) pre-watch ads?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago

For now, it's mostly only the possibility writing in the "About" page of the server ways to support it, possibly with a banner above videos to encourage people to give money. Creators can also add a "Support" button below videos to tell viewers how to support them.

But I think some people are working on requiring people to login and have a subscription to view videos.

I don't know of an existing plugin that injects pre-roll ads, but it could probably already be developed with the current available APIs.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago (2 children)

What is the authoritative source of information for learning how to run an instance of peertube and how difficult is it for a moderately skilled sysadmin to do so?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

The main thing is our documentation https://docs.joinpeertube.org/. Basic install should be really fine.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Not Framasoft, or affiliated with them - but I managed to set it up from basically having 0 practical experience and only very basic, non-professional knowledge. I'd say it's not especially hard, and compared with setting up Lemmy and Mastodon, I'd even call it easy, personally.

I'd say the definitive source is the online docs, with a good installation guide included:

https://docs.joinpeertube.org/

https://docs.joinpeertube.org/install/any-os

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I write closed source, proprietary code for a living.

That makes me sad.

Have your developers any advice on how to get paid to write Free Software?

[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Our developers were writing Free Software on their free time before they got hired, because Framasoft knew them through their free-time productions, but obviously not everybody can do that, and we've very lucky to have an economic model which allows us to pay developers properly.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

I have a friend that does this.

They're right. First build an amazing profile contributing to Foss. Then apply for grants. If you don't like writing grants, get a part time job doing evil closed code and another part time doing Foss.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Just came to say Thank You!

I've been using FramaGit ever since Github went Microsoft.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Hope it helps!

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I may still have a pdf listing free software (or just games?) somewhere that you were writing from nearly two decades ago, and still today you provide so many great resources. Thank you!!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

Yup, we're been there a while! <3

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago (6 children)

We strongly believe that Free-Libre software is one of the essential tools for achieving a Free-Libre society.

French-speaking audience

Why is your user target group mainly a French-speaking audience? It seems like hosting services in English would be more in-line with having a "Free-Libre society"; instead it is "Free-Libre society but only in French-speaking regions"

(I'm not from USA), but online I still prefer to use a language that almost everyone speaks, instead of creating content only few peopke can enjoy

(Μπορώ να γράψω την ερώτηση και στα ελληνικά άμα θέλετε να την καταλάβετε καλύτερα)

Nevertheless, I really am grateful for your work in Peertube and your other projects!

[–] [email protected] 43 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Because we're a very small team, and we're okay with it staying this way. Not all of us are speaking English correctly. Having a worldwide audience would mean communicating in English all the time, providing assistance in English.

Also, we want to grow at a pace that suits us. We would much prefer if there were other organizations doing exactly the same thing as us in other countries that we could refer people to.