MediaGoblin 0.7.0 "Time Traveler's Delight" Released

paroneayea (642895) writes "The GNU MediaGoblin folks have put out another release of their free software media hosting platform, dubbed 0.7.0: Time Traveler's Delight. The new release moves closer to federation by including a new upload API based on the Pump API, a new theme labeled "Sandy 70s Speedboat", metadata features, bulk upload, a more responsive design, and many other fixes and improvements. This is the first release since the recent crowdfunding campaign run with the FSF which was used to bring on a full time developer to focus on federation, among other things."

Comments

Eh, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you add more buzzwords in the summary please? It's too easy to read.

/. Effect

[Prien715]

I can't play the video so I'm not quite sure what kind of media platform it is...other than it can't handle the /. effect.

Because the summary won't tell you

[guruevi]

MediaGoblin is a free software media publishing platform that anyone can run. You can think of it as a decentralized alternative to Flickr, YouTube, SoundCloud, etc.

Re:Because the summary won't tell you

[Anonymous Coward]

There needs to be an "open source project bullshit bingo".

Re:Because the summary won't tell you

[ArcadeMan]

Your post is more informative than the whole summary.

Re:Because the summary won't tell you

[i kan reed]

The difference between what you wrote and what the summary said: "their free software media hosting platform" is that you give some examples. I don't think that justifies a title of "because the summary won't tell you".

Re:Because the summary won't tell you

[Gaygirlie]

decentralized

What makes it decentralized? Do the MediaGoblin-servers communicate with one another? Do they allow browsing of all the servers' contents? I mean, if they're just servers running on machines and not actually communicating with one another then they aren't "decentralized" platform at all. I took a look on their website and at least at a glance I couldn't find anything actually explaining what makes it a decentralized platform.

Re:Because the summary won't tell you

[spire3661]

They are using the term 'federated' to describe the relationships.

Re:Because the summary won't tell you

[i kan reed]

But what's better than describing the project's purpose as "free software media hosting platform". That makes sense to me, and it's the first I've heard of it.

Re:Because the summary won't tell you

[ArcadeMan]

Hosting doesn't have to be on the Internet. With all the projects out there and after reading the summary, I was wondering why anyone would need a media hosting platform in their house (think local iTunes server for your own files). Turns out it's a Web-based hosting platform like YouTube, etc.

Re:Because the summary won't tell you

[ArcadeMan]

I guess I won't wait for the "Klingonized" version, then.

Re:Because the summary won't tell you

[theshowmecanuck]

If you would have clicked the link to the product page you would see that the op copied it from there. The very first line of the content.

Re:Because the summary won't tell you

[mythosaz]

Concur. I ran through all sorts of possibilities in my head. Is this a DNLA server? Does it record TV? ...oh, it's a personal YouTube server.

Is this spam?

[NoImNotNineVolt]

The last time this paroneayea fellow posted a comment on slashdot was Sunday February 10, 2013.

Since then, it's been nothing but a bunch of story submissions, mostly about MediaGoblin. I wouldn't consider paroneayea to be a member of the slashdot community, and the singleminded focus on MediaGoblin suggests some undisclosed relationship with MediaGoblin.

Re:Is this spam?

[NoImNotNineVolt]

I didn't know that only for-profit commercial enterprises were capable of having undisclosed relationships. My apologies.

Re:Is this spam?

[Zero__Kelvin]

Mediagoblin put out a release. It doesn't really matter who brought it to the attention of Slashdot. This is news that the members of the tech community may want to know. In fact, I hadn't even heard of Mediagoblin until today. Perhaps there is some relationship between the poster and the project. So what? Were you under the impression that people involved in a project cannot post submissions? Would you be complaining if Ingo Molnar, Linus Torvalds, or Greg Kroah-Hartman submitted a link to a story about the Linux kernel?

Re:Is this spam?

[NoImNotNineVolt]

Would you be complaining if Ingo Molnar, Linus Torvalds, or Greg Kroah-Hartman submitted a link to a story about the Linux kernel?

Yes, I would be, if they're not members of the slashdot community. Last I checked, this was supposed to be a community site, where the content is submitted by the community.

If you have no issue with this being an advertising platform where arbitrary people from across the world can drop in to advertise their products (free or otherwise) in the name of community interest, then so be it. Personally, that's not what I thought slashdot was. Maybe I was wrong.

Re:Is this spam?

[swv3752]

Are you new here? Your ID would indicate otherwise, but your attitude seems incongruous.

I fully expect there to be postings about interesting Free Software products. (And something from the GNU project is definitely Free Software).

Re:Is this spam?

[NoImNotNineVolt]

WTF does it mean to "advertise" a free product?

Advertise, v., to describe or draw attention to (a product, service, or event) in a public medium in order to promote sales or attendance.

We like free software around here. It costs us nothing to try it out, and it profits the submitter nothing to "advertise" it.

Sure. If you don't value your time. And if the submitter doesn't benefit from increased adoption of their project.

You're acting like something corrupt is going on. Save it for the actual slashvertisements!

I'm acting as though someone who is not a member of the slashdot community is submitting content under the guise of 'from the community, for the community'. I readily admit that I assumed that slashdot content was community-sourced. Apparently I was wrong in my assumption, as so many of you ACs have eagerly pointed out. I welcome our new content-providing overlords.

Re:Is this spam?

[Anonymous Coward]

News for nerds. Stuff that matters. Nothing in there that says, only posted by people with greater than x number of comments, or, only posted by members whose user ID is less than y. If it is cool, post it. If it makes it through the fire hose, it's worthy. So shut the fuck up.

Re:Is this spam?

[Zero__Kelvin]

You are quite wrong on a number of levels, and seem to think that one has to have an account to submit a story. This is a community of sorts, but there are also plent of lurkers and people who come and go. None of that matters, because the other mistake you are making is believing that people "post" stories (i.e. "drop in to advertise their products".) News and links to news / project announcements get submitted. They get reviewed. I don't always agree with what gets posted, and I wouldn't expect you to, but I would expect you to know that judging a message by the nature of the messenger is just flat stupid. In this particular case it is absurd to complain. It's not even a frigging product. It's Open Source software.

Re:Is this spam?

[NoImNotNineVolt]

None of that matters, because the other mistake you are making is believing that people "post" stories (i.e. "drop in to advertise their products".) News and links to news / project announcements get submitted.

I refer you to the post you replied to, where I said: "Last I checked, this was supposed to be a community site, where the content is submitted by the community."
My original post on the subject also clearly talks about "a bunch of story submissions, mostly about MediaGoblin", so I'm not sure what you're talking about. Perhaps you're replying to the wrong post?

judging a message by the nature of the messenger is just flat stupid

Sure, and the fable of the boy who cried wolf seeks to teach young children not that people judge a message by the nature of the messenger, but that wolves eat sheep.

It's not even a frigging product. It's Open Source software.

Oh, of course. It's not like it's possible for someone to personally benefit from their Open Source project gaining increased adoption. I'm sure Linus Torvalds would be just as much of a highly sought celebrity if nobody had heard of his Open Source software.

Re:Is this spam?

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Perhaps you're replying to the wrong post?"

No. I'm defininately replying to the guy who spewed a bunch of ridiculous drivel, compaining that some people should be able to suggest stories and other news items to slashdot and others should not. The same post that now has numerous people trying to explain to yo why your post was idiotic.

"Sure, and the fable of the boy who cried wolf seeks to teach young children not that people judge a message by the nature of the messenger, but that wolves eat sheep."

Take the boy who cried wolf, change it so there really is a wolf every time, and let me know what that story teaches. I mean unless of course you are saying there is no mediagoblin.com, or what the submitter submitted was untrue.

Just accept that you have an absurd complaint that is much ado about nothing, and everyone knows it.

Re:Is this spam?

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

I'm not sure being an active participant on an open-source project like this counts as "undisclosed relationship".

Re:Is this spam?

[Inconexo]

Undisclosed?

Re:Is this spam?

[NoImNotNineVolt]

I'm not sure being an active participant on an open-source project like this counts as "undisclosed relationship".

In a literal sense, it most definitely does. Being a participant on an open-source project is inarguably a relationship of some sort. If this relationship isn't disclosed, it's an undisclosed relationship.

Whether or not such an undisclosed relationship matters in any meaningful sense, well, that's a subjective matter. I'd guess that it probably doesn't matter to most people. The responses I've gotten so far would corroborate that. Most people seem to think it matters so little that they're upset with me for even bringing it up. I'm confused as to why people find their ignorance of the submitter's relation to the submission so valuable.

Re:Is this spam?

[NoImNotNineVolt]

undisclosed, adj., not revealed or made known publicly.

Re:Is this spam?

[NoImNotNineVolt]

No. I'm defininately replying to the guy who spewed a bunch of ridiculous drivel, compaining that some people should be able to suggest stories and other news items to slashdot and others should not. The same post that now has numerous people trying to explain to yo why your post was idiotic.

You're displaying an unwillingness to admit that your accusation was mistaken. I suppose the name-calling is intended to distract me from that? In any case, I don't remember ever making any claims about who "should be able to suggest stories" and who should not. I was merely informing readers about the submitter of this story. I did explicitly state my assumptions about the nature of this site, although I don't see how you could mistake that for a value judgement regarding certain submitters.

Take the boy who cried wolf, change it so there really is a wolf every time, and let me know what that story teaches.

I suppose such a variation would teach that a messenger that is deemed to be reliable should continue to be deemed reliable until proven otherwise? I'm not sure how that's relevant to the issue at hand, since I never questioned the reliability of paroneayea (nor even the veracity of his claims). Regardless, I only mentioned this fable as a counterexample to your claim that "judging a message by the nature of the messenger is just flat stupid", since as a society we choose to teach our children (through this fable) that judging a message by the nature of the messenger is precisely what one ought to do. Since you don't contest this, I'll take this as tacit agreement that this claim of yours was indeed false. In any case, this doesn't really have much to do with the importance (or lack thereof) of the undisclosed relationship between the submitter and MediaGoblin, as we've digressed quite a bit from the original topic.

Just accept that you have an absurd complaint that is much ado about nothing, and everyone knows it.

That's a strong argument. Actually, I'm kidding; you've left the realm of reason and turned instead to rhetoric. The idea of rational debate seems new to you, and your inability to make a coherent logical argument has exhausted my patience.

Re:Is this spam?

[Zero__Kelvin]

"That's a strong argument. Actually, I'm kidding; you've left the realm of reason and turned instead to rhetoric."

You never entered the realm of reason, so it didn't make much sense to stay there to try and communicate with you now did it. I think by now you realize what an idiot you actually are for posting what you did, and are now trying to save fae, but even if you haven't figured it out yet I don't really care since it is pretty clear you relish idiocy above reason. Cue the "OMG ad hominem Blah Blah Blah strawman." bullshit.

Re:Is this spam?

[NoImNotNineVolt]

OMG ad hominem Blah Blah Blah strawman.

Re:Is this spam?

[Inconexo]

The definition I found was:

Not disclosed; kept secret.

I didn't know it was kept secret.

Re:Is this spam?

[NoImNotNineVolt]

Did you also not know that it was not disclosed? Or are you always this dense?

Re:Is this spam?

[Inconexo]

I have seen it on different places, so I tend to think it was disclosed. Maybe I'm always this dense. Also, I'm not a native speaker, and I may be losing some connotations and meanings, but I did not thing something to be disclosed has to be explained every time in the same page.

I don't know if it's my denseness, or my poor English skills, but I interpreted that when you used the word "undisclosed" you wanted to imply he was purposely keeping secret his affiliations.

Re:Is this spam?

[NoImNotNineVolt]

I interpreted that when you used the word "undisclosed" you wanted to imply he was purposely keeping secret his affiliations.

I don't know if he was keeping secret his affiliations purposely or incidentally. I only know that none of paroneayea's submitted stories about MediaGoblin (of which this is the fifth consecutive one since 2013) have mentioned any affiliation whatsoever. Therefore, as far as slashdot story submissions go, there has been no disclosed relationship between paroneayea and MediaGoblin, despite his posting history suggesting otherwise. All I'm saying is that paroneayea seems to be affiliated with MediaGoblin, yet has not disclosed such a relationship.

Perhaps there is no relationship, and paroneayea is merely a big fan of MediaGoblin (and totally uninterested in any other subject). Or conversely, perhaps there is one, and it's not being disclosed alongside these story submissions. I'm not implying anything beyond the fact that the latter seems likely to me.

Re:Is this spam?

[Inconexo]

paroneayea is Christopher Allan Webber, the core developer.

Re:Is this spam?

[NoImNotNineVolt]

As I suspected. See, I didn't mean to suggest that there's some ulterior motives or malicious intent in not explicitly disclosing his relationship to the project. I merely wanted to convey that there is often an expectation of full disclosure of relationships, and that (especially in industry) even potential (although clearly nonexistant) conflicts of interest are disclosed simply in the name of transparency and good faith. For example, let's look at this arbitrary post, where a researcher feels compelled to disclose his affiliation with the team that wrote an academic paper. Why? Is he concerned that if he was "found out", people might think he's trying to make a quick buck by astroturfing for some team of researchers and advertising their paper? No, that wouldn't even make sense. Much like in the case of this MediaGoblin project, there isn't any way a reasonable person could suspect some sort of malice in withholding disclosure of such a relationship. However, disclosure is still expected, if for no other reason than transparency and a show of good faith. I suspect paroneayea has nothing to lose by disclosing his relationship with MediaGoblin, but something as trivial as this lapse in transparency can cause some to question the motivation behind it. Plus, there's nothing wrong with bragging about being the core developer!

Re:Great! !

[i kan reed]

For once, the summary actually includes a clear description of the open source product that was updated, it's a "free software media hosting platform".

And if you can't guess at the primary functions from that description, they also helpfully link the product's home page for more information.

I bitch about these sorts of summaries all the time, but this one is practically the gold standard for doing it right.

What's MediaGoblin? Do we care?

[Animats]

The Slashdot article doesn't tell me what MediaGoblin does, or what it's for. Nether does the MediaGoblin site. The documentation, in typical Gnu syle, starts out with "how to participate" and continues with installation instructions.

It's sort of like Wordpress, but with different features and support for streaming media. There's a list of sites that use it. Of the public sites listed, all but one are demos of MediaGoblin. The first site on the list that isn't a a demo and works is this set of baby pictures. There's one site that lets you upload stuff. It's a collection of uploaded pictures with no organization.

This seems to be a publishing system for people with nothing to say.

Re:What's MediaGoblin? Do we care?

[marcello_dl]

> This seems to be a publishing system for people with nothing to say.

Facebook and Twitter are now officially concerned about this newfangled competition.

Re:What's MediaGoblin? Do we care?

[ArcadeMan]

This is one thing that annoys me with a lot of projects. You may have been working on it for weeks, months or even years, but always assume it's completely unknown to new visitors. The very first thing you need to do is describe on the front page of your Website what your project is.

Re:What's MediaGoblin? Do we care?

[theshowmecanuck]

The very first thing you need to do is describe on the front page of your Website what your project is

In non-technical terms. Everyday language an average computer user can understand, free of jargon. More than one or two sentences, with pictures. Think extra long user story written by an end user who is going to use the output, not the one installing it. You can have as many other web pages you wish to get esoteric with.

Re:What's MediaGoblin? Do we care?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Slashdot article doesn't tell me what MediaGoblin does, or what it's for. Nether does the MediaGoblin site.

The VERY FIRST SENTENCE IN THE SUMMARY includes:

free software media hosting platform

The VERY FIRST LINE OF TEXT on the MediaGoblin site explains:

MediaGoblin is a free software media publishing platform that anyone can run. You can think of it as a decentralized alternative to Flickr, YouTube, SoundCloud, etc.

What websites were you reading?

OK, it's a content publishing system

[slaker]

I have a number of Plex servers. Plex also allows me to publish images, music and video online, albeit to a select group of people. Were I seeking a wider audience, I'd have the options of Vimeo or Xtube or Soundcloud or Bandcamp or Flickr to put my content online.

I also have a bunch of web servers. What's stopping me from using the dozens of web content galleries, if I'm going to be using my own disk space and bandwidth instead of Google's or Yahoo's?

Seriously, what is this doing that those things aren't?

Re:OK, it's a content publishing system

[Anonymous Coward]

It's free, under your own control, you can make it private (try THAT on facebook) and doesn't require shitty licenses like Plex does. Some people value free & freedom more than you apparently.

Re:OK, it's a content publishing system

[Raumkraut]

From a brief glance, Plex appears to be for streaming existing content. MediaGoblin is for hosting content you create.

Were I seeking a wider audience, I'd have the options of Vimeo or Xtube or Soundcloud or Bandcamp or Flickr to put my content online.

And if you don't want to turn your own content over to third parties, and thereby be subject to their licenses, and often arbitrary censorship/takedown decisions, you could use an instance of MediaGoblin to replace any or all of those services.

What's stopping me from using the dozens of web content galleries

Nothing, but if you're going to do that, you might choose to use MediaGoblin.

Decentralization is the Key

[newsnews]

The thrust of MediaGoblin is its decentralization. The video posted here does a good job explaining what they are trying to achieve and why: MediaGoblin campaign video.

Since this is a 0.7 release, I don't expect they have accomplished all the states goals yet, but the progress is promising.

Re:Great! !

[hairyfeet]

Might be good for somebody not living in the USA, but here our ISP overlords use any excuse to add ever shittier caps so hosting your own media? Probably not a good idea,especially when there are sites like YouTube and Dropbox. Hell I wouldn't be surprised if this would be a TOS breaking deal, like running your own servers.

Re:First Day Online

[JackieBrown]

SPAM is a registered trademark of Hormel. It's a controversial food product; people tend to love it or hate it.

I don't usually eat food with that much salt, but it's pretty good fried.

As a kid, I used to love it including that jelly stuff. Now when I see the jelly stuff, I have to stop myself from gagging.

Re:Great! !

[NoImNotNineVolt]

For once, the summary actually includes a clear description of the open source product that was updated, it's a "free software media hosting platform".

So it's an FTP server?

Re:Great! !

[wertigon]

Sorry to hear that. Bitch at your overlords they're holding you back, because that's in essence what they are doing.

Maybe they'll listen once they realise they are the laughing stock of everyone else in the world... :)

An attempt at a better description (a bit long):

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

It is still kind of hard to get a sense of what this project is. To be honest, I didn't even fully get it until I'd managed to get it installed and play with it a little. This is my understanding of the project, someone who is more closely involved can probably correct any errors I might be making here.

MediaGoblin is a backend system for hosting "media". Part of the big idea is that "media" potentially includes any kind of thing you want to host. It's first incarnation was really just for photos/still images (like piwigo or gallery), but now also handles video, audio, "raw" images, PDF, .stl 3d models, Ascii Art, and apparently blog-style HTML text. I'm not sure if it's planned, but I'd expect it to also end up with support for .svg graphics, additional document formats (.odf, etc) and various others as interest develops. I, personally, would love to see .epub support.

MediaGoblin's main purpose is to take uploaded media and catalog it, tag it, generate "thumbnail"images, and perform any additional processing needed (such as producing legally-free format media for streaming and/or download - this IS a GNU-affiliated project after all.) It also handles authentication, access control, generation of the HTML for the pages that present the media, and so on. It is NOT (really) the frontend - they assume you have your own webserver. (There is a minimal python web-server script included can be used but it's not really intended for more than basic testing.

There is currently a focus on developing federation, meaning people can run their own individual hosts with their own login accounts, but be able to use and share media between different hosts without needing separate accounts on all of them. This will make it easy to spread out the hosting and mirroring of media across different servers in different places, which will be useful for load-spreading (like bittorrent) and for "censorship-resistance". (For a large organization with a worldwide spread of MediaGoblin instances, it could be like a Streisand-effect amplifier...)

The buzzword version of the description goes something like this: it's a unified (because this one system handles more or less all types of "content"), decentralized (because multiple independent servers can allow data-sharing and authentication with each other to prevent loss of one server from stopping access to media), federated (that's the buzzword for "one server can be told to trust another server's authentication" thing) system for hosting any "content" (or "media" if you prefer) that you want.

The short version is that it does the same sort of thing as flickr(/piwigo/gallery/picasa...), youtube(/vimeo, etc), soundcloud(/jamendo etc), wordpress, and various others, but it does it all in one interface in a way that the owners have control over so that (for example) some buttnugget can't shut off your video by just telling Google that the sound of birds in the background of your video is pirated music.

It'll currently mostly be of interest to people who are capable of operating their own servers rather than "end-users", though it seems obvious that the expectation is that people will end up using this system to set up hosting for said "end-users", whether for the general public or for use by members of some organization or other. I could imagine a university using it for inter-departmental or inter-campus media sharing and hosting, or an activist organization setting up federated instances in several countries for storing and sharing media, or a commercial start-up basing a multi-media Jamendo-style hosting company on the platform, for example.

My personal opinion: in its current state it's still too difficult install to be worthwhile for, say, a photo-gallery site (piwigo was a much simpler install on my existing webserver), but I don't know of anything similar for hosting video, audio,

Re:Great! !

[Drew826]

Like any other web-based service, you'd be better off running this on actual server space (your own VPS perhaps, or on Sandstorm). But you could certainly run it on your home computer and just access it from within your own network.

Re:Linux.

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

It's getting hard to tell whether posts like this are serious but just in case:
Yes. Linux is the main platform. Hypothetically, any platform with python, gstreamer, and whatever other add-ons are needed ought to be workable too, but I know it works on Linux.

Otherwise: Yes, but you need a beowulf cluster of linuxes.

Re:Great! !

[hairyfeet]

But what would be the point of that when Windows has Homegroup that will let you do the same thing on your own network without the overhead?