Sublinks
github.com
Link Aggregation Social Network in the Fediverse. Sublinks has 10 repositories available. Follow their code on GitHub.

Today I learned about Sublinks (here), an open-source project that aims to be a drop-in replacement for the backend of Lemmy, a federated link aggregator and microblogging platform. Sublinks is designed to be initially API-compatible with Lemmy, allowing existing Lemmy clients, such as Lemmy-UI, to integrate seamlessly.

The project is written in Java, which may introduce some overhead but is chosen for its maintainability and familiarity among a wider pool of developers. The Sublinks team prioritizes a more inclusive and less toxic development environment, and the project has already attracted more developers than Lemmy.

While Sublinks is starting with 1:1 compatibility, future plans include implementing additional features that the Lemmy developers have not pursued. This could lead to a divergence in functionality between the two platforms as Sublinks evolves beyond its initial compatibility phase.

README

GitHub stars GitHub tag (latest SemVer) gradle workflow GitHub issues License

Sublinks

A decentralized, censorship-resistant, and privacy-preserving social network.

About

Sublinks, crafted using Java Spring Boot, stands as a state-of-the-art link aggregation and microblogging platform, reminiscent yet advanced compared to Lemmy & Kbin. It features a Lemmy compatible API, allowing for seamless integration and migration for existing Lemmy users. Unique to Sublinks are its enhanced moderation tools, tailored to provide a safe and manageable online community space. Embracing the fediverse, it supports the ActivityPub protocol, enabling interoperability with a wide range of social platforms. Sublinks is not just a platform; it’s a community-centric ecosystem, prioritizing user experience, content authenticity, and networked social interaction.

Features

  • Open source, MIT License.
  • Self hostable, easy to deploy.
  • Clean, mobile-friendly interface.
    • Only a minimum of a username and password is required to sign up!
    • User avatar support.
    • Live-updating Comment threads.
    • Full vote scores (+/-) like old Reddit.
    • Themes, including light, dark, and solarized.
    • Emojis with autocomplete support. Start typing :
    • User tagging using @, Community tagging using !.
    • Integrated image uploading in both posts and comments.
    • A post can consist of a title and any combination of self text, a URL, or nothing else.
    • Notifications, on comment replies and when you’re tagged.
      • Notifications can be sent via email.
      • Private messaging support.
    • i18n / internationalization support.
    • RSS / Atom feeds for All, Subscribed, Inbox, User, and Community.
  • Cross-posting support.
    • A similar post search when creating new posts. Great for question / answer communities.
  • Moderation abilities.
    • Public Moderation Logs.
    • Can sticky posts to the top of communities.
    • Both site admins, and community moderators, who can appoint other moderators.
    • Can lock, remove, and restore posts and comments.
    • Can ban and unban users from communities and the site.
    • Can transfer site and communities to others.
  • Can fully erase your data, replacing all posts and comments.
  • NSFW post / community support.
  • High performance.

Contact

Contributing

Support / Donate

Sublinks is free, open-source software, meaning no advertising, monetizing, or venture capital, ever. Your donations directly support full-time development of the project.

  • @SorteKaninAEnglish
    13•3 months ago

    Once the new round of NLnet funding is finalized we will publish those milestones.

    That sounds great :)

    Im not sure if a backlog like the one you linked is really helpful

    I think the GitHub issue tracker that you’re already using is plenty as a backlog. The more important part was the road map.

    Do you have any concrete suggestions how to recruit and train them?

    It’s a good question. I would recommend taking a look at the Bevy game engine project. They’ve had a success story with lots of contributors and they also use Rust. Obviously they have it easy because game development is something a lot of people are passionate about while online forums aren’t as hot… But still, I think they’ve done some really good stuff and it seems like a really well-managed open source project.

    One of the bevy project managers did a talk at RustConf 2022 that I’d recommend watching: https://youtu.be/u3PJaiSpbmc?si=AtdmdalfFidWOJYq

    • @nutomic@lemmy.mlEnglish
      7•3 months ago

      Yes Bevy has a big advantage because its a library, so everyone who uses it is a developer and is able to fix minor issues. In case of Lemmy only a small fraction of users are developers, and even less know Rust. I watched the video, but its not easy to take concrete suggestions and apply them to Lemmy. Maybe the community reviews for PRs would be a good idea to get people familiar with the codebase. It also mentions using a project board so we should consider that. Though Im not sure how to select issues for each milestone because again, everything is up for grabs.

      • @AtmaJnana@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1•3 months ago

        even less know Rust.

        Hmm. If only there were a way the developers who already know another popular language could contribute to help the community. I suppose someone could make a Lemmy -compatible server in another, more popular language. Nah, that’s crazy talk.

        • @nutomic@lemmy.mlEnglish
          6•3 months ago

          Or these people could learn Rust and contribute to the existing project. That would save years of duplicated effort. I personally knew zero Rust before starting to contribute to Lemmy, its really not that hard to learn.