GNU MediaGoblin (also shortened to MediaGoblin or GMG) is a

free Free may refer to: Concept * Freedom, having the ability to do something, without having to obey anyone/anything * Freethought, a position that beliefs should be formed only on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism * Emancipate, to procur ...

decentralized Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group. Conce ...

Web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...

platform (server software) for hosting and sharing many forms of

digital media Digital media is any communication media that operate in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital media can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, and preserved on a digital electronics device. ' ...

. It strives to provide an extensible, federated, and freedom-respectful

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

replacement to major media publishing services such as

Flickr Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and professional ...

DeviantArt DeviantArt (historically stylized as deviantART) is an American online art community that features artwork, videography and photography, launched on August 7, 2000 by Angelo Sotira, Scott Jarkoff, and Matthew Stephens among others. DeviantArt, ...

, and

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

History

The origins of GNU MediaGoblin date back to 2008, when a gathering was held at the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)#501(c)(3), 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...

in order to discuss the path that Internet communities should take. The answer was that restrictive and centralized structures were both technically and ethically doubtful, and may harm the typical fairness and availability of the Internet. Several projects have since appeared to prevent this, including

Identi.ca identi.ca was a free and open-source social networking and blogging service based on the pump.io software, using the Activity Streams protocol. Identi.ca stopped accepting new registrations in 2013, but continues to operate alongside several ...

Libre.fm Libre.fm is a music community website that aims to provide a Free Software replacement for last.fm. The website was founded in 2009 by Matt Lee. Libre.fm can optionally store a user's listening habits using information sent to the website's ser ...

Diaspora A diaspora ( ) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of origin. Historically, the word was used first in reference to the dispersion of Greeks in the Hellenic world, and later Jews after ...

, among others. The MediaGoblin project remains in active development.

Design and features

MediaGoblin is part of

GNU GNU () is an extensive collection of free software (383 packages as of January 2022), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operat ...

, and its code is released under the terms of the

GNU Affero General Public License The GNU Affero General Public License (GNU AGPL) is a free, copyleft license published by the Free Software Foundation in November 2007, and based on the GNU General Public License, version 3 and the Affero General Public License. The Free So ...

; meaning that it adheres to the principles of

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

. The copyright on everything else (e.g. design, logo) is given to the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...

. Christine Lemmer Webber, the core developer, came up with the name "MediaGoblin" which also makes a pun with the pronunciation of "gobbling". The main page displays an upper banner with MediaGoblin's typeface and an authentication section for users. The remaining space is left to show

thumbnail Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures or videos, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words. In the age of digital images, visual search engines and image ...

s of the latest posted works. Each user owns a personal profile comprised by two vertical sections – one for uploads arranged as a gallery and another with a customizable text box. For displaying media, the platform focuses on the work itself rather than overstocking with options and buttons; nonetheless, comments can be added under the artwork description. Some other features like tags,

metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...

, theming,

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

licensing and

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a Radionavigation-satellite service, satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of t ...

support can be enabled as separate plug-ins to enrich the usage of GNU MediaGoblin. MediaGoblin 0

The platform successfully hosts and displays many sorts of media: * As of version 0.3.1 it includes support for plain text (

ASCII art ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable (from a total of 128) characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant chara ...

), images ( PNG and

JPEG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and imag ...

). *

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...

capabilities are widely used to play video and/or audio contained in

WebM WebM is an audiovisual media file format. It is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML5 video and the HTML5 audio elements. It has a sister project, WebP, for images. The development of the format is sponsored ...

format; while

FLAC FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software p ...

, WAV and MP3 uploads are automatically transcoded to Vorbis audio and then encapsulated into WebM. * 3D models support (preview and renderization) was added on 22 October 2012 and is achieved by means of HTML5 Canvas, Thingiview,

WebGL WebGL (Short for Web Graphics Library) is a JavaScript API for rendering interactive 2D and 3D graphics within any compatible web browser without the use of plug-ins. WebGL is fully integrated with other web standards, allowing GPU-accelerated ...

and

Blender A blender (sometimes called a mixer or liquidiser in British English) is a kitchen appliance, kitchen and laboratory appliance used to mix, crush, purée or emulsion, emulsify food and other substances. A stationary blender consists of a blender ...

Mascot

The project mascot is a purple goblin called

Gavroche Gavroche () is a fictional character in the 1862 novel ''Les Misérables'' by Victor Hugo. He is a boy who lives on the streets of Paris. His name has become a synonym for an urchin or street child. Gavroche plays a short yet significant role in ...

wearing clothing that resembles a stereotypical artist costume.

References

External links

{{Commons category, GNU MediaGoblin
GNU MediaGoblin website
Free content management systems Free image galleries Free server software GNU Project software Internet services supporting OpenID Software using the GNU AGPL license Video hosting software Web hosting

History

Design and features

Mascot

See also

References

External links