bitcoin FOSS dev deplatformed by github
Bitcoin related projects handle backups of discussions like this:
"Currently, the backup is created by asking the API about changed issues and PRs and fetching and storing the response JSON." - [source](https://github.com/0xB10C/github-metadata-backup/issues/8)
When GitHub banned the account it removed important comments from the whole system (and from the backup too, it was badly designed but this is not the point).
A reaction to this from a reputable bitcoin contributor @ryanofsky:
"I kind of **hope this could be fixed on github's** end. I understand if a user was flooding github with spam it could make sense to delete all their comments and issues and prs. I also understand if a user requested all of those things to be taken down it would make sense to remove them. In both of those cases the archive should probably display the same thing as github by default, even if more data is available in the history.
But it doesn't seem reasonable for github to have nuked all of plebhash's comments and issues and I **hope they could just fix that.**" - [source](https://github.com/0xB10C/github-metadata-backup/issues/8#issuecomment-3474365848)
I think we can do better than hoping in GitHub, and storing unverifiable non-standard api responses.
I think we can move our valuable conversations around freedom tech to a better place - Nostr.
Can a Nostr relay censor? Sure. But your backup is verifiable data, compatible with the nostr app universe, deployable easily on a gamut of relay implementations in minutes.
This is one goal of #BudaBit .
The other is to make the FOSS process a supercharged community effort:
quoting
naddr1qq…6e3kOpen-source software is becoming increasingly critical to our civilization: projects like GNU, Linux, Bitcoin, and many others are becoming absolutely essential to our flourishing and freedom in the digital age. Yet, the tools for open-source collaboration as a community effort fall short in so many ways: code collaboration and social interactions are fragmented across isolated platforms waiting to be rugpulled in one way or another.
Discovery, coordination, and discussion mostly happen on GitHub, Discord and a handful of other corporate solutions. They own our accounts and discourse: we have no real way to protect our projects from them. They created a false sense of safety, and we traded most of our freedom for convenience.
Current more freedom-oriented solutions do not solve the problem of capture either: Mastodon has shown us that server operators with absolute power are not the answer. Even if the dictator of the self-hosted server is benevolent, conflicts are inevitable. Others like Matrix and Bluesky are too complex to operate, so they do not provide a practical means of exit either.
We need to lay new foundations for communities around open-source software. Self-owned, easy to operate, and leader-accountability baked-in from the start. This is BudaBit in a nutshell.
Open-source development: not just code but a community effort
Outsiders might think of open-source software development as just nerds hacking on code. In reality, this is about 10% of the whole picture: like any software project, open-source needs all sorts of support: funding, testing/feedback, coordination around events, marketing and spreading the word... the list goes on.
Serious developers realize the need for social coordination but in practice the different aspects of open-source software development are heavily fragmented. It exists on a myriad of platforms and apps, using incompatible and unverifiable data. The rise of sovereign digital identity protocols gives communities the opportunity to jump sinking ships and build lasting relationships.
Nostr is the protocol that can make this shift happen. It provides sovereign cryptographic identities, is agnostic about data storage (a Nostr event is meaningful and verifiable on its own without any servers), and has open standards for any content type imaginable. This makes Nostr the firm foundation open-source needs.
Pragmatic decentralization: How BudaBit works
Leadership with accountability
Some community solutions disregard freedom entirely: they’re designed to lock people in and inevitably become enshittified. Others try to decentralize without a practical approach to user experience. If the average user cannot easily fork the community, it is bound to repeat the mistakes of the Fediverse, Matrix, Secure Scuttlebutt or Bluesky.
Therefore, BudaBit uses a moderated Nostr relay as the basis of a community: One central relay that anyone can back up means: - Consistency of community data - A way for contributors to step up as community leaders - An easy way to migrate or fork the community by any member
This creates a usable group with high signal, and keeps its leaders accountable. They have less incentive to kick people out and more incentive to solve conflicts. Nevertheless, if some people want to go the other way, they can trivially do so by downloading the Nostr events and uploading them on another relay. Relays do not have critical functionality tied to them but are mere repositories of events. They matter for good UX, but cannot lock users in. This is secession made simple.
Reputation of members in BudaBit accumulates and cannot be easily erased, but the real people behind them can freely create any number of Nostr identities. An identity reboot can happen with the trade-off that it starts with a clean slate of reputation and might be less trusted initially. However, communities can quickly recover from a leaked or stolen identity in practice if some members vouch for each other or by using off-protocol methods. The absence of protocol-level key rotation is another design aspect Nostr got right: resist complexity, and let people figure out the rest.
Use platforms where it makes sense, avoid where it doesn't
BudaBit is not a drop-in replacement for GitHub, GitLab or such. However, it deeply integrates code collaboration from any of these, while making them redundant utilities for open-source projects.
Code can still be hosted on popular platforms so projects make use of the convenience they provide, while drawing a clear boundary around social features they want to keep separate. Issues, discussions and the PR workflow must be protected by Nostr events. Code, CI/CD (like GitHub actions), and file hosting (such as releases) can either remain on platforms or be gradually migrated to an even more sovereign setup, like Grasp servers with Nostr-native Git server authentication.
Freedom tech tools are getting better for heavier tasks by the day but first movers have to endure an unpolished experience while the tech is maturing. BudaBit wants to provide a straightforward complementary experience requiring minimal changes to the usual workflows but delivering maximum impact on control and peace of mind. This is laying the groundwork for further steps toward freedom later on.
Ecosystem over platform bloat
BudaBit wants to offer a good community experience with git-centric workflows but not more. We strive to build software that is extensible via the Nostr protocol, similar to how WordPress has done it with blogs in the past. With Nostr, however, we have stronger cryptographic guarantees instead of loose conventions, and a vast number of use-cases instead of an inherently limited reach (e.g. only blogs and very basic websites for WordPress).
Nostr apps find niches and interoperate while platforms bloat. GitHub users understand what I am talking about: a mishmash of features that try to do everything at once. Users cannot draw clear boundaries and extend or modify features because GitHub is not open-source software and it is not trying to adhere to open-source values. It merely wants to leech off of open-source. In contrast, BudaBit is fully open-source and embraces cypherpunk values while meeting projects where they currently are.
BudaBit uses standard Nostr events for content types and NIP34 for git-related operations. In fact, https://budabit.club is just a static website easily deployable on a cheap web server. Moreover, running or renting a Nostr relay is considered quite simple already. This means that you can launch your own BudaBit community today, and we will make that even simpler in the future. Existing communities are compatible with each other, and thanks to Nostr the data speaks for itself, so the only thing required is to keep a copy of it somewhere.
Current status and future plans
BudaBit is focusing on delivering a stable experience for basic social interactions and code collaboration: - Chat rooms - Forum-like threads - Event calendar - Direct messages - Create and fork repos using GitHub, GitLab or Gitea - Track and browse repos announced on Nostr - Issues and Comments on Nostr - A basic PR flow that handles patches posted with ngit - Share git-related data anywhere
Expect some rough edges, with quick stability improvements on the basics. The future of BudaBit communities holds even simpler hosting, easy migration, and exciting innovations only possible on Nostr: - One-click migration from popular platforms for repo metadata, issues, and discussions - One-click deployment of all important components of the community - Full Grasp compatibility - Seamless PR workflow across all hosting providers, thus making ngit optional - CI/CD as a marketplace on Nostr for sats: generate income or help your cause by running CI jobs on your machine or phone - A Nostr-wide marketplace of extensions (NIP89) for extra features in BudaBit such as community calls, streams and job listings
BudaBit is here for the adventurers to start their own colonies on the new continent of digital freedom, unlocked by Nostr and Bitcoin. Try it today in beta, or take a glance at how the magic is made! We need feedback from open-source contributors, community leaders around OSS, and everyone trying to help open-source projects succeed.