Bonjour, c/[email protected]!

Framasoft (that’s us!) is a small French non-profit (10 employees + 25 volunteers), that has been promoting Free-Libre software and its culture to a French-speaking audience for 20+ years.

What does Framasoft do?

We strongly believe that Free-Libre software is one of the essential tools for achieving a Free-Libre society. That is why we maintain and contribute to lots of projects that aim to empower people to get more freedom in their digital lives.

Among those tools are:

  • 20 FOSS based web-services that we host (mainly for our French-speaking audience) on our Degooglify Internet website, including Framadate and Framaforms… ;
  • many talks, workshops, and participations to conventions ;
  • A blog, where we share our views and where a group of volunteers translate into French news from the English-speaking FLOSS world ;
  • Many, many ressources to help people and organizations in their transition to ethical digital tools (guides, documentation, even card games!) ;

Framasoft is funded by donations (94% of our 2024 budget), mainly grassroots donations (75% of the 2024 budget). As we mainly communicate in French, the overwhelming majority of our donations comes from the French-speaking audience. You can help us through joinpeertube.org/contribute.

We develop PeerTube

In the English-speaking community, we are mostly known for developing PeerTube, a self-hosted video and live-streaming free/libre platform, which has become the main alternative to Big Tech’s video platforms.

From a student project to a software with international reach, our video platform solution is now, seven years later, used and acknowledged by many institutions!

The last major version of PeerTube, v7, has been released at the end of 2024, along with the first version of the official mobile app, available on both Android (Play Store, F-Droid) and iOS.

Now that the PeerTube platform has matured significantly over successive versions, we believe that the way to enable even more people to use PeerTube is to improve the mobile app so that it can be carried around in people’s pockets.

Ask Us Anything!

Last month, we have published the roadmap for the project. This week, we also launched our new crowdfunding campaign which focuses on our mobile app. We want to give you the opportunity through this AMA to give us feedback on the product and the project and discuss the crowdfunding campaign and our next steps!

If you have any questions, please ask them below (and upvote those you want us to answer first).

We will answer them to the best of our abilities with the /u/Framasoft account, from May. 28th 2025 5pm CET (11 am EST) until we are too tired ;).

EDIT (8:16 pm CET): This wraps it for the day, thanks for all of your questions and feedback!

  • Penny7@lemm.ee
    0·
    2 months ago

    Hi! One day I want to move from YouTube to PeerTube (in the process of getting some things done before I do) and when I was trying to explore it, one thing that frustrated me was trying to search for anything on the platform.

    I tried to do a searches for random topics and the top search results instances/servers that had nothing to do with what I was looking for.

    This frustration was also echoed by somebody with experience on the platform that I ended up talking with. They were able to direct me to the specific instances I’d want because they’re a part of them too, but it shouldn’t be so difficult to find what you want, so my question is are you trying to fix the search engine on your platform to make it more user friendly so that most of your platform isn’t seemingly word of mouth (so to speak)?

    • AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.space
      0·
      2 months ago

      Not Framasoft or affiliated with them. Depending on how long ago your attempt was, their Sepia Search tool may be what you are looking for. That search index has also become the main search option for many instances and it’s definitely a lot better than the options a few years ago.

      That being said, discoverability is still a problem. Search algorithms are actually deceptively hard to create and optimise - and with no personalised algorithm, creating a good experience needs more invested time and work at the moment (finding and adding subscriptions).

      Speaking of algorithms, there’s a promising project with a lot of potential: PeerTube Picks, which currently is in the form of a Firefox add-on that implements a very basic personalised algorithm, which, anecdotally, has helped me discover a few channels/videos I would have otherwise missed. There’s also [email protected] and [email protected] to find and share videos, channels and playlists, although that is of course kind of word of mouth, still.

      • Penny7@lemm.ee
        0·
        2 months ago

        I was looking at it around the beginning of this year, so it would have been with Sepia. And if you search something simple like ‘sewing’ or ‘movies’ you shouldn’t get topics such as modern politics as your top results. That’s not just out of left field, that is a whole different ballpark. If I did a search for ‘sewing’ and got embroidery results…ok. Same game, just different position. Makes a bit more sense. You’re still stitchin’.

        Also, using something like ‘literature’ shouldn’t get you the same top results as ‘sewing’ does.

        SUPER FRUSTRATING!!!

  • Mazesecle@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    We strongly believe that Free-Libre software is one of the essential tools for achieving a Free-Libre society.

    French-speaking audience

    Why is your user target group mainly a French-speaking audience? It seems like hosting services in English would be more in-line with having a “Free-Libre society”; instead it is “Free-Libre society but only in French-speaking regions”

    (I’m not from USA), but online I still prefer to use a language that almost everyone speaks, instead of creating content only few peopke can enjoy

    (Μπορώ να γράψω την ερώτηση και στα ελληνικά άμα θέλετε να την καταλάβετε καλύτερα)

    Nevertheless, I really am grateful for your work in Peertube and your other projects!

    • a Kendrick fan@lemmy.ml
      0·
      2 months ago

      online I still prefer to use a language that almost everyone speaks

      i wonder how many languages this mindset would kill off

      ehm no, fuck english

      • AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.space
        0·
        2 months ago

        I get it, and I have been ambivalent throughout my life about it - but I think every time I sit down and think about it, I am still more appreciative of the benefits of a global “Lingua Franca”, compared to the problems. I do appreciate that I can enter the majority of communities online, and immediately, there’s one language everyone can participate in the discussions with, without the need of machine translations and other hoops.

        But I do agree that it would be wrong to extrapolate from English being such a language that everyone speaks “well enough” (often with local quirks, like my German bleeding through when I provide run on sentences en masse), to saying content should be made exclusively/primarily in English only.

        I think Framasoft are good enough at providing their technology offerings with English documentation, which is I think the important part. They also accept English feedback, and can communicate with people in English like here. And their more local, French focus has, I think, helped them with a stable foundation at home and a supportive community.

        • Mazesecle@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          I don’t always like it much either, but we do need a common language for exchanging information etc; there is already too much fake news, misinformation, and echo chambers without having a language barrier.

    • Framasoft@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      2 months ago

      Because we’re a very small team, and we’re okay with it staying this way. Not all of us are speaking English correctly. Having a worldwide audience would mean communicating in English all the time, providing assistance in English.

      Also, we want to grow at a pace that suits us. We would much prefer if there were other organizations doing exactly the same thing as us in other countries that we could refer people to.

      • Mazesecle@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Ευχαριστώ για την απάντηση! Ναι φυσικά, δεν αναφέρθηκα στον ρυθμό ανάπτυξής σας, απλώς αν ο στόχος είναι η διάδοση του ελεύθερου λογισμικού, θα έχει μεγαλύτερη επιτυχία η παραγωγή περιεχομένου σε μια γλώσσα που μιλάνε περισσότεροι άνθρωποι.

        Αλλιώς καταλήγουμε με περιεχόμενο που ήδη από τη στιγμή της συγγραφής του, έχει εξ’ ορισμού ένα παραπάνω εμπόδιο στο να έχουν πρόσβαση άνθρωποι, και μάλιστα εσκεμμένα από τον συγγραφέα. Συνήθως το ελεύθερο λογισμικό προσπαθεί να έχει και διάφορα πλεονεκτήματα, όπως η εκπαίδευση του κόσμου, η βελτίωση της ιδιωτικότητας του ατόμου, κλπ κλπ.

        Γράφοντας ο καθένας στη γλώσσα του, είναι σαν να λέμε ότι μόνο οι λίγοι που μιλάνε την γλώσσα αξίζει να χρησιμοποιήσουν πχ ένα λογισμικό που έχει μεγαλύτερη ιδιωτικότητα. Αυτό προφανώς δεν συμβαίνει άμα κάνουμε τις ίδιες ενέργειες αλλά χρησιμοποιώντας μια γλώσσα που μιλάει ο μισός πλανήτης

        Οι άνθρωποι που μιλάνε αγγλικά, είναι πάρα πολύ περισσότεροι από εκείνους που μιλάνε γαλλικά, κι αν πρέπει κάθε κείμενο να το ξαναγράφουμε 200 φορές σε 200 γλώσσες, αφιερώνουμε ενέργεια που θα μπορούσε να βοηθήσει και με άλλους τρόπους το έργο

  • Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee
    0·
    2 months ago

    What is the buffer (in months) that framasoft has when it comes to donations? (Aka, how long can you operate if all sources of funding suddenly dry up)

    • Framasoft@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      2 months ago

      As the major part of our income comes from our fundraising campaign at the end of every year, it depends on when you ask this question. So, along the year, we’re operating with something between 3 and 9 months buffer. Of course, we’re lucky to also have monthly donators who help ensure that cash flow does not decline too much.

  • sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al
    0·
    2 months ago

    First of all, thanks for doing this.

    Secondly, the friction of using PeerTube is more than any other application within the Fediverse. Even subscribing doesn’t follow a sane UX with the button randomly appearing at the bottom of the screen. Do you not think that mirroring something closer to the YouTube UX would minimise friction?

    Thirdly, can you please create a tool that will scrape my YouTube subscriptions and look for their PeerTube channels, so I actually have a reason to open the app. Finding content is still really really really hard.

  • wakest ⁂@social.wake.st
    0·
    2 months ago

    @Framasoft would be really nice to work more on compatibility with other fediverse software. There have been a lot of quirks with how comments on peertube render across fediverse platforms, like the way your @mentions don’t render as links when the posts feterate out to many other places etc. What can we do to iron out these type of issues other then just filing bug reports?

    • wakest ⁂@social.wake.st
      0·
      2 months ago

      @Framasoft hey @db0 I just commented in this post from my mastodon and see its not federating to the OP post. Any idea why? I know I was recently able to comment on .ml posts but maybe I am blocked from .world? How does one even go about figuring that out

        • wakest ⁂@social.wake.st
          0·
          2 months ago

          @db0 oh weird it’s now showing up. I guess federation was just really slow. It wasn’t showing on either .ml or .world for like 20 minutes

          • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            0·
            2 months ago

            Note that comment federation can get a bit weird between lemmy and mastodon. Replies from mastodon might only be visible from the instance of the user’s you’re replying to directly, if that instance is not the one owning the community, because of the way that mastodon tends to send replies to the user’s instance, instead of sendind them to the community’s instance (which would then forward them to everyone)

  • OctaviaMeowzly@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    0·
    2 months ago

    Will you guys add þe ability to login to an instance þat isn’t provided in þe app already into þe ios app?

    Est-ce que vous allez ajouter la possibilité de se connecter à une instance qui n’est pas fournie dans l’application déjà dans l’application ios?

    • Framasoft@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      2 months ago

      Yes, we are looking into allowing users to add their platforms manually (as you can already do on Android). We just don’t have an ETA yet!

  • AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.space
    0·
    2 months ago

    As I’m German (from near the French border, even, but unfortunately, not speaking even just basic French), and Germany is also relatively big on the Fediverse and the open source/hacker communities, I’ve often wondered, if there are (official) cooperations between German and French activists. Does Framasoft (or individual members of it) participate in anything like that?

    • Framasoft@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      2 months ago

      I don’t think we have been. Thing is, we do not know of many organizations that are identical to us in other countries: we’re not really a Linux or FLOSS group, and we don’t lobby governments or other institutions. In some ways, we’re similar to Disroot which also offers services as we do, but since we do quite a lot of other stuff (developing PeerTube, producing commons, sharing knowledge, and we even have a publishing house!)

      Even if we have been working with a lot of partners, most of them are French and on very specific topics.

      If people want to join forces on the FLOSS-software-hosting services topic, maybe look into something similar to the (very french) CHATONS (and possibly https://libreho.st/, but it’s no longer active to our knowledge).

      On the topic of contributing to develop things together, we’re not doing much apart from PeerTube (we only have two developers, and both are working nearly fully on PeerTube).

      • andypiper@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 months ago

        hi from the Mastodon team, we’d love to work more closely with you in the future on Fediverse and freedom related topics 🙂 also, I am personally a big fan of PeerTube, and think the work you do is fantastic! 🐙

        • Framasoft@lemmy.worldOP
          0·
          2 months ago

          Hi!

          Thank you so much for your kind words!

          Feel free to send us a message through our contact form whenever you want to talk about a specific topic! We’re always interested to talk with other Fediverse project so we can try to provide softwares!

          https://contact.framasoft.org/en/

          We hope to hear from you soon!

      • AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.space
        0·
        2 months ago

        Thank you for the answer, that makes a lot of sense. I think the very unique structure and goals you have developed have served you well, since PeerTube might be one of the best fleshed-out projects in the Fediverse space, at least in my opinion.

      • Framasoft@lemmy.worldOP
        0·
        2 months ago

        I believe they have their own player already, so unsure what would be their direct interest, but the PeerTube ecosystem could be useful to them anyway. For instance there’s a big French institution that uses PeerTube runner for their video transcription tasks (and paid for specific features), but doesn’t use the PeerTube server or player at all.

      • sapetoku@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        2 months ago

        Copyright law would be in the way, Arte content is only available in France, Germany and parts of Switzerland. I have to use a VPN to even get their youtube videos, which are otherwise geofenced.

  • obsidianfoxxy7870@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    I love your guys work and fully support it. I think libre software is the only way foward if we don’t want worse and worse platforms.

    Question: Do you think Peertube will likely ever have a the diversity of content that YouTube has or with different motives for making content it may never reach that scale?

    • Framasoft@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      2 months ago

      We don’t think PeerTube will directly replace YouTube at some point, but we do think that some organizations, media outlets, and content creators may not have the same level of interest in posting on YouTube as they do today. For all of them, we hope they will find PeerTube to be a good fit.

  • Ludrol@szmer.info
    0·
    2 months ago

    Thanks for your work. I have two questions:

    1. Will the set-up wizzard include federation settings? (Federate by default or defederate by default)?

    2. What are current plans for FramaDate? That was the only usable project for sheudling TTRPG sessions that I have found, but it has a bunch of issues on mobile.

    • Framasoft@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      2 months ago

      Hi!

      1. The wizard is still not designed, but yes we think it will include federation settings so it’s easier for institutions or private instances to setup a “safe” PeerTube instance.

      2. We’re actually evaluating alternative softwares for Framadate, with mobile support as a required feature. We’ll tell more about it once we’re ready!

  • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    0·
    2 months ago

    Hey thanks for doing this! Impressive that you can support 10 paid staff. As someone also doing FOSS development in Europe, it’s inspiring that you managed to achieve this so I’m hoping you could share some light. How do you have so many people donating? Do you have dedicated outreach people or just people donate on their own. My own FOSS projects typically just get enough donations to cover their hosting costs and not much else.

    Did you start as a big team, or just kinda grew from one person’s projects starting 20 years ago?

    Any tips and strategies to other FOSS devs in Europe would be greatly appreciated.

    • Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I thought government grants would make up a big portion of their income, but according to Wikipedia, 98% of the money they received in 2019 was from donations.

      So, yeah, it sounds like they really know how to get people to donate

      • Framasoft@lemmy.worldOP
        0·
        2 months ago

        You can get up-to-date and detailed statistics (2024) on the crowdfunding page in the “Who is Framasoft? How do they get funds to make PeerTube?” :

        We are funded by donations (mainly from the French-speaking community). 94 % of our 2024 funds comes from donations, with 76 % from grassroots donations, and 18 % from fondations’ grants (like NLnet).

    • Framasoft@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      2 months ago

      Hi!

      Thanks for your questions!

      We didn’t start big. Framasoft exists since 21 years with a team full of volunteers. However, there are essential steps we reached during our journey. First, we launched the de-google-ify campaign, aiming to help people to escape from Big Tech. This campaign happened only two years after Snowden’s revelations and we think it played a big role in its success in France. Quickly, we had enough money to hire new employees. So, we had the ability to hire our sysadmin at full time. That helped us a lot to maintain a good service quality so people knew they could trust us with their data and use our services. Finally, we hired someone dedicated to our communication. He did a huge work and helped us to find our identity: you know, all those cute mascots you can find on most of our communications. We wanted FLOSS softwares to be attractive for most people and this new identity helped us a lot to reach a wider audience (not only tech-savvy people!).

      Also, we work hard each year to build funding campaigns. They are helping us a lot to collect the money we need to work but require at least 1 month of work from different people of our team.

      Concerning tips and strategis to other FLOSS devs… It’s kinda hard since we think the context we had is different from now. BUT, we truly think that being respectful to people using our services and transparent about our failures helped people to understand we are just a small team of humans trying to do their best!

      I hope this answer helped you!

      • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        0·
        2 months ago

        Sure, it does look like you were at the right place at the right time indeed and then could continue from there. Having a dedicated communications person is also in my impression very important, but alas they’re not as easy to find for FOSS projects.

        Could you be able to elaborate what kind of wages you pay your staff? Are they market competitive, or below market rates for the same roles?

        • Framasoft@lemmy.worldOP
          0·
          2 months ago

          Yeah, we think we worked hard but we still had a bit of luck

          We really think communication is important too. However, to be precise, even our colleague which joined us to start working on it was not an expert of the field. He was just a volunteer interested to work on our communication and started to do so. Some years later, we’re able to hire him so he could be truly dedicated to this mission!

          We thinks it’s better to hire someone being able to work with others and passionate about digital issues than an expert in a specific field. Technical skills can be acquired but human skills are harder to get!

          Concerning how we pay our staff: we pay a lot more than most non-profit organizations in France, but it’s less than what our employees could expect regarding their skills on the competitive market. Though, we think money is not the only reason why our talents stay with us: we also provide really good work conditions (We try to respect each one rythm and needs, either it’s material or something like following a training). Finally, all of our employees find a meaning in our mission (raising awareness about digital issues, providing alternative and respectful services to organizations and people, etc).

          • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            0·
            2 months ago

            Ye I know that there’s a lot of self-fulfillment coming from FOSS work. It’s why I do it even though I’m not getting paid. However being in Luxembourg, even market competitive rates are barely affordable, and good vibes doesn’t pay my rent, so alas if our org had enough money to pay someone, I would personally still have to continue with the wage work.

            It’s unfortunate that people give so much to for-profits, but people doing things that are objectively better for the world, have to tighten their belts to get by.

            Anyway, thank you for your time. You explained pretty much what has been my observations in the FOSS space. I agree with all your takes. Perhaps in the future Framasoft and Haidra might be able to collaborate.

  • Angel Mountain@feddit.nl
    0·
    2 months ago

    I love the idea that stuff should be free, but at the moment we do live a capitalist society and hosting videos especially is a costly enterprise.

    I am wondering therefore whether there are any plans to provide options for content creators (and server hosters) to make money with videos on peertube (other than including advertisements in the videos)?

    I think Peertube can never grow when content creators do have the costs of creating, hosting and serving their videos, while at the same time not having a good way to earn money back for their work.

    • NebLem@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 months ago

      Not Framasoft, but here’s a few ideas on monetizing:

      The software allows you to post a “Support” button under the video with links for donations, etc. It also allows you to upload platform member only (internal) and password protected videos that you could charge access via another means to unlock.

      Plugins can be added by admins to add monetization more directly as well. For example https://github.com/kontrollanten/peertube-plugin-premium-users is an attempt adds the ability to have premium videos with Stripe as the payment processor/verifier.

      Admins can also soft fork and add in whatever customizations to enable monetization too as long as they adhere to the AGPL terms.

    • Framasoft@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      2 months ago

      Monetization is a complicated and potentially sensitive topic that we have not yet addressed. However, this is not the only reason why YouTube is in its dominant position; even with monetization, the network effect of this platform will always remain.

      PeerTube today meets the demand for video hosting (e.g., the market where Vimeo is positioned), but is not really a distribution channel with social features like YouTube.

      While our goal is not to provide a definitive answer to this shortcoming, we are considering possibilities for integration with third-party payment or subscription platforms (such as Patreon) to make it easy to restrict videos to subscribers, for example. That’s something we’re thinking of, but is very far from being done.

      Finally, there is already the Bunseed project (website exclusively in French, sorry) which is looking into this issue and has a prototype based on Ghost (publishing, subscription, email) + PeerTube + payment platform (such as Stripe).

      • julianwgs@discuss.tchncs.de
        0·
        2 months ago

        My opinion: Figuring monetization out while keeping most of your audience happy will be the most important step to be a viable alternative to YouTube. Big YouTubers like LinusTechTips, Corridor Digital or something like Nebula already have their own service, because it is worth it to have fewer people pay more. Sadly everyone of them develops their own solution which are not interoperable. Are you in the talks with anyone to migrate to PeerTube backend? I think this would be such a gamechanger.

      • wiki_me@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Maybe a survey can disprove my opinion. but i would argue the option of having ads plus paying for the ability to remove ads is something most users would accept (even if there is a vocal minority). especially if you explain that researching and developing some forms of content (documentaries, video courses, investigative journalism) can take dozen of hours and is not feasible to do without getting paid when aiming for the highest quality.

        That could be better then just restricting videos (mitra could also be a open source alternative to patreon).

  • bbk_9@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Hi! Thank you for all your work :)

    I’m wondering if 30 seconds is a reasonable latency for live streaming on a raspberry pi 5 instance ?

    And if I want to store the videos on another drive, is it so simple as just changing the path for “/var/www/peertube/storage” in the production.yaml file ?

    Finally, is it possible to connect to the live session chat with another fediverse instance (mastodon or lemmy) ?

    • Framasoft@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      2 months ago

      Yes it is if you don’t use muxing (disable transcoding) because we don’t think the Raspberry CPU will be able to handle it. Yes, you can use another drive with PeerTube. It just doesn’t support a remote drive (network mounted point for example). No, you can’t connect to the live chat using Masotdon or Lemmy, but you can using another PeerTube instance or using a XMPP client.

    • Framasoft@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      2 months ago

      We prefer monthly donations because they help us maintain financial stability throughout the year, whereas one-time donations tend to come in mainly when we run fundraising campaigns like this one (which means that some months our cash flow is low).

      Thank you for your support!