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

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 platform (server software) for hosting and sharing many forms of digital media. It strives to provide an extensible, federated, and freedom-respectful

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

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 profession ...

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 sharing and 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 Google, and is the second mo ...

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)(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 under copyleft (" ...

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 o ...

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 ...

, Diaspora, 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. 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 to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...

. 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 imag ...

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, theming, Creative Commons licensing and

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

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), images ( PNG and JPEG). *

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, 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-accelera ...

and

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

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 i ...

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