The lads behind Diaspora, the open source decentralized alternative to Facebook, have announced the public release of its source code to developers.
The group of four students from NYU’s Courant Institute wanted to give users complete control of their details and content in response to privacy concerns regarding Facebook. Upon releasing the source code the developers say, “this is now a community project and development is open to anyone with the technical expertise who shares the vision of a social network that puts users in control.”
In contrast to having a centralized server store all your information and communications as is the case with Facebook, Diaspora is a decentralized network where all a user’s information is stored on a personal web server called a “seed” running on their own PC – the developers also plan to provide a hosted service for those that don’t want deal with setting up their own seed.
In its current form Diaspora:
- allows the sharing of status messages and photos privately and in near real time with friends through “aspects”
- lets users friend people across the Internet no matter where the Diaspora seed is located
- manages friends using “aspects”
- supports the uploading of photos and albums
- signs and encrypts all traffic except photos.
