Earthstar July Goings-on
Published on July 28, 2021 by Sam Gwilym
Greetings all! Recently we've been hard at work building a sustainable future for Earthstar. How are we doing that?
Letterbox
We don't yet have a place where we're really dogfooding Earthstar, and I'd like that to start changing that. What better place to start than threaded long-form discussions?
So I've started work on a long-form posting client called Letterbox. In terms of functionality, it sits somewhere between Scuttlebutt's Patchwork, Slack, and email. It supports markdown, granular read/unread statuses for threads, and more to come. Undoubtedly I will be posting about it here.
Terrasol
@dtby on Scuttlebutt has been working on an implementation of Earthstar for BEAM called Terrasol. This is the first non-Javascript Earthstar code out there, so we're really excited to start syncing docs with Terrasol soon!
Funding
Needless to say, working seriously on open source in your spare time is no good.
- We now have a page up at Open Collective, where you are now! Since it opened a week ago, we've been fortunate enough to receive a very generous €2k donation from George Fan. Thank you, George!
- Earlier this month I applied Earthstar to NLNet's User-operated internet fund. We will hear back early August. Much thanks to the Grant Peach gang for all their help.
- We are following up with new grant opportunities, with some help from friends more experienced with this kind of thing.
Blogging
Earlier this month I posted 'Where data lives', featuring a few illustrated topographies of different kinds of networks... including Earthstar!
If any of this tickles your interest, we’ve also got a discord where we’re chatting, building things, and regularly hosting short, cosy calls.
Until next time!
Sam