Almost five years ago, thanks to the Garum Fundatio, we began the development of our first program based on a distributed server architecture: Bazar.

There were two objectives: on the one hand, to give a tool with free code and a distributed architecture to all those SMEs, cooperatives and communities that decide to take the leap into the market. On the other hand, to start on the path towards a global alternative to the centralized and misnamed “social networks” and their culture of adherence.

Learning from doing

But with Bazar, we made a mistake: developing it in Ruby assumed that groups that were interested in installing it in Spain, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile and Brazil demanded an installation, administration and maintenance service that the Foundation couldn’t offer and that we should have avoided developing in PHP.

The next distributed development, Letxuga, was built on Python. The idea was to create a standard free program to manage networks of consumers of ecological products. Having been developed for the very concrete needs of a very concrete client, it was developed rapidly for functionality, specific needs, and detail, leaving aside things like the graphical interface, which were unnecessary for daily use, but very important for expanding its use.

As we were starting discussions with our friends from Enspiralabout how to integrate Loomio into WordPress, we became aware that while all this was happening, “Status” had successfully been migrated to PHP and had become GNU-Social.

Why not turn Bazar and Letxuga into plugins for GNU-Social?

We’re on it. GNU-Social can become the basis of a whole new free software on distributed architectures. We’ve decided to make our contribution with new plug-ins that allow the new distributed architectures to find the direct economy.

Full speed ahead with GNU-Social

But to become familiar, we’ll begin with the most simple, most basic functionality: microblogging in 1000 characters, reviving an old Indiano site originally opened in 2007 as a first distributed response to Twitter: lamatriz.org.

On La Matriz [which translates into English as “head office,” “matrix,” or “womb”], because the GNU-Social server architecture is distributed, you’ll be able to connect with users and other GNU-Social servers, like quitter.is,BlogSoviet, quitter.se, quitter.no, quitter.is, Vinilox, gnusocial.of or gnusocial.no. So, we’re waiting for you to share in the daily conversation and organize your own networks!

Translated by Steve Herrick from the original (in Spanish)