Remember when we told you about MediaGoblin, the open source media publishing system? Now they're building higher and higher, and they're looking for help.
As they write on the campaign page:
The internet used to be a more resilient and decentralized place. But recently the internet and the web have been moving in scarier directions. With larger and fewer media hosting institutions, we're seeing more and more problems of automated censorship (for example, NASA getting takedowns for its own content or even remixes of totally freely licensed stuff). The more that media publishing moves toward a few large providers, the harder these things are to prevent. And with more and more content on large services, what happens to all that media if that service goes away, the way GeoCities disappeared (or how Google Video nearly did)?
A few new things have come along since we first talked about MediaGoblin on opensource.com, including:
- Added support for 3D modeling
- New work on decentralization
The project is now trying to reach a goal of $60,000 to pay its lead developer for a year and potentially to pay other contributors on a contract basis. They're working through the Free Software Foundation, which makes US donations tax-deductible.
Supporters all get stickers, and like a Kickstarter or IndieGogo project, increasing levels of support get increasing levels of reward, up to a personally cooked meal by founder/lead developer Chris Weber. On top of that, The Python Software Foundation is sponsoring the project by offering free tickets to PyCon for the next 25 people (as of this writing) who donate $200.
Speaking of which, why not simply use Kickstarter rather than take donations through the FSF? Webber explains in detail in a blog post, but in short, the FSF supports them and has similar values—and they offered to do it. It also adds a layer of accountability, since the non-profit FSF will want to see results from the money they've raised for MediaGoblin.
There are four days left to support MediaGoblin, so have a look—and maybe get PyCon passes out of it!
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