Mobilizon :

[Open Source Publishers] Mobilizon: sharing the events of its communities in the Fediverse

Projets Libres

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Mobilizon share groups and events without GAFAM

Walid: welcome to all of you for this new episode of Projets Libres. I’m very happy because we’re going to resume the series on the Fediverse that we stopped a few months ago. Of that. And we’re going to talk about a tool called Mobilizon. For those who regularly listen to Projets Libres, you have certainly heard of this tool when we have exchanged several times with the Framasoft team, since it is a tool that was originally developed by Framasoft, but which was then taken over. And so, I’m delighted to have with me Alexandra, who is one of the people working on the Mobilizon project at the moment, who will introduce herself right after and who will therefore be able to explain to us: what is Mobilizon? Where is it at? Why was the project taken over?

That’s it, it’s going to be very interesting. I had the chance to meet Alexandra and Stéphane with whom she made the presentation, who was supposed to be there today, but unfortunately, due to a technical issue, could not come to us. I had the chance to meet and listen to them at FOSDEM this year. I’ll put a link in the transcript to the video. And so there you have it. I’m with Alexandra today, I’m very happy. Alexandra, welcome to the Projets Libres podcast, I hope you’re doing well.

Alexandra: hello, yes, very good, I’m also happy to have the opportunity to talk about Mobilizon.

Presentation of Alexandra

Walid: Well, that’s good, I certainly have questions because I installed myself not too long ago, a Mobilizon instance that I federated to do tests and before recording the episode, so I would certainly have some questions. In any case, it’s a subject that speaks to me a lot. Alexandra, the… First of all, I’m going to ask you please introduce yourself first. Tell us a little about your background, how you came to discover free software.

Alexandra: I work in IT, not particularly in free software. I’ve always been intrigued by open source. Basically, I’m an economic engineer and the fact that open source exists alongside everything else fascinates me. On the other hand, I discovered free software via Framasoft and via Mobilizon. I wasn’t interested in it any more before that. My angle of attack, let’s say, is that we traveled a lot with my partner and we liked everything that was collaborative web.

So, now, it’s become very commercial. But for example, the concept behind Blablacar or Airbnb or Leboncoin, there today, we still use a lot of Warm Showers for those who do cycle touring. And I really find that it improves the real world. We found that what was missing was to be able to know what was going on around us, what was happening. Today, it still doesn’t exist. In a fairly simple way to find out what’s going on, you have to unravel newsletters, sometimes, it’s a poster, you really have to have paper, go to Facebook groups, go to institutional sites.

Alexandra

Just to know what’s going on in your neighborhood with this desire to do something about it. We came across Mobilizon, which has a bit of a goal for that, and which already had the merit of being a large-scale project, that’s quickly said, but we now know even more that to carry out a project like this, you need a network effect, and you can’t do that alone. So, Mobilizon and the Fediverse, it was really timely. The notion of an independent but federated platform is right, perfect. So, with my partner, when we discovered Mobilizon, we really wanted to get involved in it and we created an association really around it. Officially, its purpose is convivialism, so it’s quite broad. The association is called Kaihuri and the main goal today is to develop Mobilizon.

Walid: What does that mean, Kayahuri?

Alexandra: It’s a Maori word, because we have a little crush on New Zealand. Which means “kai: food, huri: change”, and it means “converter” in Maori.

Walid: ok, so through Mobilizon, you discovered free software and finally the digital commons, what?

Alexandra: That’s it. I used Wikipedia before.

Walid: Yes, but you weren’t necessarily, how can I put it, sensitized?

Alexandra: No. But it’s true that by unrolling the ball, we realize that if we want something a little universal, and really know what there is around us, it can only be done towards something that is… So, free software, you put what you want in it, but at least interoperable, communicative. And we also understand a little better now the economic models and that most of the players: it’s against their interests. So, it’s true that the result we would like to achieve, which is: “I look at what’s around me”, it’s not the GAFAM that will… Or else, it will cost you a lot of money.

The Kaihuri Association

Walid: Yes, that’s right. We’ll talk about that later. So, in the cooperative, currently, you are… So, it’s an association, isn’t it?

Alexandra: It’s an association. We put in the statutes that its objective was to be transformed one day into a Scop. And we are two statutory managers. At first, we thought we would have members, but in the end, we just want it to allow us to carry out the project. But we don’t have a management of members as such.

Presentation of Mobilizon

Walid: If we go back to the basics, for the people, the listeners who don’t know Mobilizon, you started to touch on two words about it. Can you explain in broad terms, before going into the history of Mobilizon, what is Mobilizon, what can we do with it?

Alexandra: Mobilizon is a software that allows you to create collaborative platforms that are independent and connected to each other. So, someone who has the technical skills can copy a codebase and install it to create a collaborative platform.

So, what are we going to do on this collaborative platform? Can we customize it? A little bit. So, we’re going to give it whatever name we want. You can put a description, you can put a logo and you can bring your community together to create accounts on it. For example, by giving it a theme. So it can be, for a city, for example, it can be the village of associations. There may be a local authority that creates its Mobilizon platform, which can integrate it more or less into the municipality’s website, and which gives access to all the members of the associations, to all the local associations, so that they can come and create their pages, create their events and their activities. It allows you to create thematic platforms, there can be something for everything. For all types of actors. The idea is to have a community or a theme behind it and interconnect with each other. The idea is really that it is interoperable, that there are bridges between other websites and Mobilizon. There are plenty of ways to do it. For example, events from different sources can be automatically integrated. You can also export, in the form of feeds, RSS or ICS, the events of the platform. The platforms are natively interoperable with each other, so we can share events from one Mobilizon platform to another. It’s called the federation. And it’s part of the Fediverse, so there’s a protocol called ActivityPub, which allows these Mobilizon platforms to exchange data, for example events. There are also accounts with other software, which are part of the Fediverse, for example Mastodon.

Walid: Absolutely. In my case, for example, I set up a Mastodon instance to share podcast events, and other free software events that wouldn’t necessarily be available on the Fediverse. So when I add, like what I did yesterday, an event, then in my Mastodon feed we see the event appear and we can interact with it.

Ok, so Mobilizon, we share events, basically rather locally. The idea was rather to do something locally. Anyone can share the events and make them available to other people and people can register for those events.

Alexandra: One of the main features is that you can choose a place and a department. For example, we have a site called Keskonfai. There are a lot of tourist events throughout France. It’s public access: anyone can create an account and publish their events. A bit like they would on Facebook. The geographical area is France. The people who are going to connect to Keskonfai, they’re just going to put where they are and the radius. It can be at home, 5, 10, 25, 100 kilometers, depending on whether it’s more or less urban or rural, or it can be when they’re at their vacation spot, for example. It depends a little on the theme of the Mobilizon site. These are events of all kinds in France. For example, there is a Mobilizon website, it’s called a Mobilizon instance, which is called Lekalepin. This is the cultural agenda of the Monts du Lyonnais. It depends on the administrator of the instance who defines its theme and who the instance is for. In any case, geographically, we can locate ourselves to see what interests us.

The history of Mobilizon

Walid: Can we take up the story of Mobilizon? Can you explain to people what we mentioned just before, that it was Framasoft that developed it? I’ll put links in the transcript to the episodes with the Framasoft team (see here and here) where we talk about this in detail. For people who haven’t listened to these episodes, can you also explain, by the way, how you said earlier that you had stumbled upon it, a little bit at the beginning of Mobilizon? Can you tell the story?

Alexandra: Maybe around 2018, Framasoft raised funds from people who were interested in it to finance, basically, an alternative to Facebook for groups and events. The observation was that there were really conflicts of values between what was organized on Facebook and what was defended. For example, the climate marches that are published on Facebook, when potentially advertising, which is just below or just above, encourages consumption. Especially for activist circles, doing their communication on Facebook is a bit of an aberration, but a bit of a necessary evil too. Now, maybe it’s not so much Facebook. To overcome this, Framasoft has launched this Mobilizon project, which is integrated with the Fediverse. It was developed, I would say, from about 2019 to 2023 by Framasoft, with a roadmap that was not particularly participatory. Obviously, they wanted it to meet the needs, but it was the main developer, Tcit (Thomas Citarel), who decided what was going to be done, who communicated a little in advance about it. And we were followers, so we discovered the new features as we went along. And it was more or less aligned with what we wanted. We really wanted to put in what interested us. And so, in 2023, Framasoft has decided globally to stop contributing. They are still making contributions and they are still doing very significantly. They are part of the community because they have a big instance, which is Mobilizon.fr, but to stop financing development, concretely. So, we offered ourselves, as buyers, thank you, with the desire to set up a lot of things that we wanted to do from the beginning, but we couldn’t work in parallel with them.

Transmission of the project

Walid: What Thomas explained in a previous episode was that in the end, they had arrived at what they estimated to be the maturity of the product. They didn’t necessarily want and needed to add extra things, but they saw that there were other people who wanted to do more things. But for them, it met the needs they had, and so in the end, it also freed up the strength of development to do other things, to stop working on the development of Mobilizon. Were you the one who went to see the Framasoft team to tell them that we would like to continue? How did it go?

Alexandra: I don’t remember exactly. In any case, when we offered ourselves, they said ok. We still had face-to-face exchanges, which was not necessarily the case before. They said, basically: “we leave the field open to you, provided that you write a small profession of faith on the forum, that you have rather positive feedback: no one who says no, it’s scandalous, it’s Framasoft’s project, we don’t want to give it to someone else”. And then, in their newsletter closing the project, they referred to it.

That’s how the transition happened. And then, technically, they gave the rights to merge. We haven’t yet completely transmitted everything at the technical level, recovered everything, but they said, “we’re giving you the field free, it’s up to you what you do with it too”. They didn’t give us any constraints, rules. They told us, ‘we are withdrawing completely’ except that they keep their instance. “Do a little bit of maintenance apart from that, but since we don’t really invest in it anymore, you have the right to do what you want.” Even if we weren’t in frequent, direct contact, I think they also saw that we were still compatible in terms of values. Of course, there are things that we want to do a little differently, but there is no real conflict with what they had done before. So, I think they still trust us, even if it’s up to them to say so.

Walid: So, in the end, you didn’t have any contact with them? You don’t have direct contact? Have you never met them before? Don’t you know them more than that? You were just in the community

Alexandra: I lived in the Paris region and I had still gone to Lyon. I had met N:jin. We also went to Nantes to… For fun, we asked if we could talk, because we were already working a lot on the project. And it’s true that we would have really liked to collaborate. We didn’t necessarily understand at that time. Now, we’re going to say that we’re walking a bit in Framasoft’s shoes, since now we’re the maintainers, and we have a community that’s with us. And it’s true that it’s complicated to free up time to have exchanges. Everything takes time, therefore: I understand that they did not necessarily allow direct exchanges. Our request was to really work with them, knowing that we still have computer skills. We would have liked to find a way to work with them, but it was not possible in the context. We had met them on the occasion of… we are part of the KITTENS, in particular, so we had met them a little at the KITTENS camp, on a few occasions at the show.

The reflections that led to the creation of the association

Walid: The fact that you had to take over Mobilizon, at the beginning, was not necessarily the idea you had, but when the idea comes up to take over Mobilizon, what are the discussions around it? Which finally, if I understand correctly, leads to the creation of the association after the fact.

Alexandra: First of all, it was: was Framasoft going to allow us to do it? Because it’s still their baby, it wasn’t a foregone conclusion. Of course, it’s a responsibility, so it puts a responsibility, a kind of weight. And on the other hand, it’s quite exciting because we’ve been involved in it for a long time. And so, yes, to be able to take care of it ourselves, we had the opportunity to do it, we didn’t hesitate a lot. On the other hand, we both have almost full-time jobs. There is Stéphane who doesn’t work on Fridays, I don’t work on Friday afternoons. And for the project to be viable, it must be able to develop. There were really things to be settled, we have to be able to make developments. In concrete terms, we can’t do them ourselves, so we needed funding. And what Framasoft encouraged us to do, go knock on the door of NLnet, they really supported us on that. And really, what made it possible was that NLnet agreed to fund us.

The European NGI0 programme and the NLNet Foundation

Walid: I’m going to make a very small aside. If you don’t know NLnet and the European funds of the NGI Zero project, Next Generation Internet Zero, I invite you to go and listen to the episode with Lwenn Bussière, where we talk about this whole subject in detail. What NLnet is, which is a foundation in the Netherlands that is the recipient of these European funds and that makes calls for projects and distributes them. I won’t say much more, but I invite you to go and listen to this episode, which is very interesting, which allows you to understand how a good part of the free software in Europe is financed. That’s it, that was my little aside.

Alexandra: So, when Framasoft said yes, and NLnet said yes, we were still super happy.

Walid: How much funding did you get at NLnet?

Alexandra: We got 30,000 euros. We started spending, I think, February-March 2024. And that we are finishing now.

Walid: And so, what did they finance you? Because NLnet, what they fund is features.

Alexandra: I’m going back to the project plan.

Walid: Did they finance your technique?

Alexandra: really technique.

We agree on a project plan that we sign, with amounts assigned to each task. They don’t pay anything upfront. It’s as and when we make deliveries. Where they go to look at the commits and they say “ok, it’s good or not”. There were lots of various features, a lot of bugs too. So, we fixed bugs that were quite glaring. Maybe we didn’t really know where to start, and NLnet was quite flexible on that. Between the moment we said “ok, we’re committed”, so at the end of 2023, and six months later. We started to put our fingers in it and started to exchange with the community. We had also, let’s say, sourced our developers, because we found developers to deliver the NLnet project.

Alexandra

So, there were three of them originally. It was maybe six months after we started that it became a little clear, that we had a real plan. It was first of all upstream. We ourselves had stayed with version 2, while Framasoft had delivered up to version 4. There were other instances that had also remained in version 2. On the one hand, there were prerequisites for us to be able to migrate to the latest version. There were things to do so that we could migrate. There were things that had been developed on the right, on the left, that we were able to recover. And so, we set ourselves that goal. That’s it, upstreaming everything that exists, that has already been developed, so that people can get on a version, really share a little bit of what had been done, and remove the most critical bugs.

There had still been regressions between version 2 and version 4. And by doing that, we didn’t have much choice. We were really pressed for time. We didn’t have any margin to do anything else. On the contrary, it was quite tense. We rolled out the ball a bit. There’s this to upstream. So, we have to adjust that.

Silly stuff. For example, on the home page, as soon as an event was started, it disappeared. The criterion for seeing an event was that it had not yet begun. So, it’s a bit weird because when you arrive on a site, you want to see what’s in progress, what’s ready, and you didn’t see it. We said to ourselves that we had to take as a criterion rather than that it’s not over. But from the moment we set this criterion, there were people who had created events over 10 years, for example, because they wanted us to see them, and who arrived on the home page. So, we had content that was old and not up to date on the home page. We said to ourselves: “well, now, we have to put start dates, end dates on the stickers too, because it didn’t exist”. And since there were still a lot of people who had created very long events, because they said, for example, “we have yoga classes, it’s all year round”, we implemented a feature called activities to be able to describe activities that are not events. So, just starting from “we want the home page so that we can see the events of the moment”, we had to make a lot of adjustments.

Alexandra

The Mobilizon community

Walid: You talked about the community, which makes it up. What do you know about it?

Alexandra: That’s a good question. We are French, Framasoft, they are French. On the forum, there are still a lot of exchanges in French, so we still have a lot of French speakers. But we are always surprised to see that there are also Europeans, other countries, and even beyond Europe. We have a large instance that has been set up, for example, in the United States and we have even been approached by two other American groups. So, it’s true that with what’s happening right now, it’s creating reactions. People need a little care to emancipate themselves from the traditional networks. So, it’s a community that is still very international. There are many in Germany, there are still in all countries, perhaps not all the countries of Europe, but there are bodies throughout Europe in any case, also in Brazil.

So, it’s a community that is still very varied and very international. After all, most people, we don’t know them. We know that there are about 40,000 users who are registered. Not all instances combined, but there is a collaborative index of instances. So, those who create an instance and think about it can declare it on the site that lists all the instances. So, that’s where we get statistics from. After that, I’m not sure that all the existing instances are listed there.

So, it’s at least 40,000 users and the geographical origins are quite varied. On the other hand, the driving force is still the militant world. We’d like to address everyone, but there are free software activists who are the ones who take ownership first, and then after, related struggles, let’s say, the environment, the social.

Alexandra

Walid: It can be addressed, I don’t know, to sports federations. I see in the sport I practice, I look at the agenda thing. It’s an old thing and I told myself that with a Mobilizon, we could do so much better, so easily. It can really be aimed at any type of audience.

Alexandra: Absolutely. I am not aware of any sports federations or federations that use Mobilizon, but it is clearly a use case that we would like to see born. If you have federations that want to use Mobilizon, don’t hesitate to send them to Mobilizon. It’s really adapted.

The Mobilizon federation of bodies

Walid: Since earlier, we’ve been talking about bodies, we’ve started to talk a little bit about the Fediverse. That’s a big part of the subject. And now, for once, I have a few questions to ask you. So, I’d like us to talk about the Fediverse too, because on Projets Libres, it’s a recurring topic. We’ve already talked about Castopod (here), we’ve talked about Inventaire (here), we’ve talked about PeerTube (here), we’ve talked about a lot of different projects. So I would like you, first, to explain, for those who don’t know, in your own words, what the Fediverse is? It’s not that simple a question.

Alexandra: So, Fediverse is software that exchanges information using a common protocol. So, concretely, these softwares, they have a kind of inbox and a kind of outbox, and they can pick from each other. As long as software has been designed to communicate with each other, the potential is enormous.

Alexandra

Concrete achievement, so I admit, I’m not necessarily on many platforms, software, so I haven’t experimented by myself. It’s thanks to user feedback that I know what works, what doesn’t. So I’ve mostly heard about Mastodon and Pixelfed, which are connected with Mobilizon. So we can follow, we can have flows of information easily.

Walid: Mastodon, which is a tool for micro-blogging and Pixelfed, which is a tool for sharing photos. We can say an alternative to Instagram, free and decentralized.

Alexandra: On the other hand, it’s an area that we’d like to explore more this year. For the moment, our actions were really almost constrained. We didn’t necessarily choose what we were going to work on, but now, we’d like to develop that a little bit. So, experiment, develop.

Walid: We talked about the federation.

Alexandra: Well, that, on the other hand, is my hobby.

Walid: That’s good. So, we have to explain to listeners what the federation is and what it means in the case of Mobilizon. I experienced it myself by mounting my own Mobilizon instance on my small YunoHost server at home. And then, by asking other bodies for federation. Can you explain to us, in this context, what the federation is and how it works within Mobilizon?

Alexandra: So at Mobilizon,

Federation is that an instance administrator can request to follow another instance. So we, for example, have a site called Kesfonfait which presents events throughout France, tourist or other. We also have a site called Keskonfait Kids and it’s dedicated to families and children. The Kesfonfait instance follows the Kesfonfait Kids instance. So, this means that if we put an event on Kesfonfait, it will only be on Kesfonfait. But if you put an event on Kesfonfait Kids, it will of course be on Kesfonfait Kids, but it will also go back to the Kesfonfait site automatically.

Alexandra

At first glance, it is not obvious that it comes from another site. You can search for them, you can click on them, you can see more details, but the real source is another site. So we can aggregate events, groups that are on other sites. So, it’s very powerful, very nice for what’s a little bit pyramidal — I don’t know if that’s the right term. For example, Mobilizon.fr is the showcase of many small bodies. On the other hand, there is a big shortcoming. So, that’s already not bad.

At the level of local authorities, for example, we can also say that there may be, or federations, there may be local, regional, departmental authorities — which pour in, which feed into larger national platforms, for example. So, that’s already not bad. On the other hand — and this is really in our roadmap — we have new funding for NLnet for the future, which we will start attacking now. And that, we said to ourselves, we really have to spend time on it. There are, in quotation marks, only we, as maintainers, who have a supra-instance interest, let’s say, who can do it. It is to make this federation selective. So to keep this “I am another instance” feature, but also to be able to pick what interests us from the other instances. For example, we, by having two instances, we already have this case in What do we do. For example, we collect all the Open Data France events, there are plenty of them, which are great for children and families. We would like to be able to put them on Keskonfait Kids. So, from Keskonfait Kids, we would like to say this one I’m interested in, this one I’m interested in. There is also, for example, I was talking to you about the Kalepin, which is a local authority. They are also interested in these events, without necessarily redeveloping the entire integration. So, they would like to be able to repatriate events that are published on another instance, without necessarily recovering all its content. So it seems obvious, as needed. But here’s the thing, doing it is going to be another matter. So, we want to develop this selective federation.

Walid: In the case, for example, of Keskonfait and Keskonfait Kids, in order for Keskonfait Kids events to appear on Keskonfait, which of the two asks the federation of the other?

Alexandra: So, it was Keskonfait who asked to follow Keskonfait Kids, and Keskonfait Kids who said “OK, you can follow me”.

Walid: Okay. OK, that’s how it works.

Alexandra: And we can federate in both directions, but it’s not mandatory.

Walid: That brings me an additional question. What I did was I set up my own instance to share my own events around the podcast. Typically, the conferences in which Raphaël (Semeteys) or I will talk, other open source events that are not available on Mobilizon in one way or another. And then, I asked for the federation with, for example, Mobilizon.fr. It was accepted, so here I am, I see the events of Mobilizon.fr appear. And in fact, finally…

Alexandra: It’s more the other meaning that interests you.

Walid: That’s it! I didn’t quite understand, so I said to myself “ok, well, actually, it’s more the other way around that I would have been interested”. The thought I had was “ok, well, finally, maybe I’ll have 10 events a year, was it more interesting to set up my own instance, or would it have been more interesting just to create an account on a bigger instance, like Mobilizon.fr, and put my events on it”. I don’t know what you think?

When to create your instance or just an account on an existing instance?

Alexandra: So, there are two things in what you’re saying. First of all, it’s true that it’s not necessarily intuitive to say to yourself “I want the events of my instance to go back to Mobilizon.fr”. It is not made easy by the system to ask to be followed. But it still corresponds to what a lot of people want, I think. So that’s maybe something we need to develop. We just have more ideas for development than for financing today, and bandwidth. But clearly, this is what you need. Because conversely, having all the events of Mobilizon on your platform may risk drowning the fish, of not having a clear line. So, there you have it, a feature that may be missing.

Today, if you want someone to follow you, you have to go to the About of the instance, About, see what the contact email is and tell them “Can you follow my instance?” Let the administrator go to his instance, enter the URL of your instance and request a follow-up. And you will have to accept. So, there may be a flow that needs to be improved on this.

Then, creating a group or creating an instance is a good question. I hear a lot of people who want to create their instance in cases where potentially a group, it’s enough, it will provide the same service. If you have an instance with content, a group and you ask Mobilizon.fr to follow you, it can be the same service as a group on Mobilizon. It’s just more complicated to implement. So, indeed, if you can get the same result just by creating a group elsewhere, if the need is to have a source of information with events that are consistent with each other, creating a group on an existing instance, that can be very, very good too.

Alexandra

Walid: I found it not that simple, because at the beginning, it’s fun to create your own instance. But in fact, in the end, it’s interesting if you have a lot of people, well, if you have a lot of events. In my case, in the end, it’s going to be quite anecdotal. And it’s having brought out the big artillery for nothing. That was kind of the conclusion I came to.

Alexandra: I encourage those who want to publish events and still have a little visibility. You, the events you post, you may want them to be related to you, to your group, to two or three admins. Indeed, here, creating a group on an existing instance and creating events with this group as the organizer is simpler than creating an instance. You should not hesitate to do so. I think that creating an instance is good as soon as there are maybe dozens of users and at least three distinct groups, if there really is a territory, distinct local groups. Here, we can ask ourselves the question of creating a instance, but if this is not the case, it is really not mandatory.

What has been done since the resumption and what remains to be done

Walid: ok, very good. I wanted us to talk about — where are you on Mobilizon today in relation to everything you want to do? What have you done and what do you still have to do in relation to what you want to do? In a fairly global way, not necessarily feature by feature, of course.

Alexandra: That year when we resumed, it was still a transition year where we mainly upstreamed. It really wasn’t a blank page. Now, we’re still quite happy because we have two great developers, Guillaume and Laurent. So they are financed part-time by NLnet funding. At the beginning, we had a third, but now it has turned to teaching. But I take the opportunity to do a trick to Paul. And we really have a lot of things to do. I think that if we had more funding or if we have funding over the next five years, we know what to do.

I can go back to the project plan that we validated, but in our heads, we at least have the interoperability that we would like to improve, a bit like what we were talking about with the Fediverse. We also have a tool that is external to Mobilizon, but which is quite great and deserves to be really improved, which is Mobilizon Import Tool. So, we can feed it with an ICS feed and it automatically creates events on Mobilizon that come from another source. So, we would like to be able to plug (connect) other sources. There you have it, selective federation, interoperability.

There’s clearly a lot of work to be done on UX, which is a topic in itself. And then, there’s a very long list of features that we’d like to implement: one that we’ve started to touch and that we’re quite excited about is automatic newsletters. So that’s done via a third-party tool, but the idea is that it’s very easy to implement by the admin of the instance. So we, on Keskonfai, won’t do it because we’re not going to send the events of the whole of France by email to people, but for example, Le Kalepin, which has the territory of the Monts du Lyonnais. The idea is that without any effort on the part of the admin of the instance, people can subscribe to a newsletter, and that they receive, for example, every Wednesday, the upcoming events for the two weeks. It might be quite nice. And then there’s a big list. In particular, we had the fact of making applications, so Apple, Android. It’s definitely useful, but it’s not clear that we’re going to do it because it’s still a big piece. We know that we won’t be able to do everything we want this year. In fact, I’m going to find a way to share this document. There are technical parts on tests and accessibility that we have also put in the project plan.

Walid: And there, for example, you were talking about the UX interface part. Is the idea to work with a designer on it? Or for example, you’re going to take care of it? Do you have an idea already?

Alexandra: So, we benefited from expertise from NLnet. So, in addition to giving money for the project, they provide specialized resources. We had help with security and we had help with UX. So, we already have at least some recommendations. Afterwards, in terms of UX skills, it’s not easy. It’s easier to say what’s wrong than to make sure that things go well. We have someone from the community who is qualified on this and who spontaneously offered his help. We’ll see how it goes. We can go with that. Hello Theo!

I don’t know exactly how it’s going to go. But after that, we may not go back to the drawing board as we would ideally like to do, but at least make small improvements. Perhaps what is most obvious at first.

Walid: ok, it works. Do you see any other big stuff?

Alexandra: I’m going to make a small selection.

Walid: yes, the big stuff, I know you had some in the FOSDEM list, you had listed some stuff, already.

Alexandra: We would like to improve the branding of the instance, so that the people who create their instance can better show who they are, what this instance is for, on the home page. For the moment, it’s limited with small texts and a logo, but we’d like to be able to customize the home page more. And in particular also to make the aspects related to the federation more readable. So, what does this instance follow as another instance, for example? What is its own content and what comes from the federation. We would also like to allow federation between groups. Today, one instance can follow another, so it’s big in terms of federation. On the other hand, two groups cannot say “we are friendly groups”, cannot be linked to each other. And in particular, events are organized by one group, they cannot be highlighted on another group. So, we would like to build bridges between several groups. And also to ensure that events organized by one group can appear at the level of other groups. For example, co-organizations.

Walid: Oh yes, it’s really necessary.

Alexandra: When I say that we have a lot of things to do, it’s not a joke. Secondly, to allow the integration of events in a more or less automatic way from external sources. I talked a little bit about ICS. There was also a project initiated by Framasoft to have a Facebook integration that we would like to be able to push to the end.

Walid: stuff, like, Meetup, Eventbrite, stuff like that.

Alexandra: That’s right, exactly. As soon as it’s a source that is structured, theoretically, you can integrate it, but in computer science, nothing is done without anything. I think you can really achieve anything, but you have to put a lot of energy into it sometimes.

Improve moderation. So, it was still a little black spot. Today, we can’t moderate new accounts. So it seems like a pretty obvious need. Improve search criteria. We would like to be able to search by tag, for example. Also look for or highlight what is free events, free admissions. So, maybe structure the events a little better. Have a map. There had been something started by Framasoft, but it was only on PC, I think. So, we’re still mobile first. So there you have it, a map. See put videos. It didn’t necessarily seem essential to me at the beginning, video. For me, it wasn’t really a need I have. But in fact, the people who lead groups, clearly, they say it’s super important. The cat. So the same thing, it’s not something I really wanted to invest time on. But it’s still in high demand. And so does notification management.

Walid: How do people ask?

Alexandra: For the features, the forum is really good. Because it allows you to exchange. Then there’s Git, which is maybe a little more technical, but I think that to get feedback , to align yourself a little within the community, the forum, it’s not bad. Then, we meet users. We are also users ourselves, so we get ideas about certain things. And what we’re setting up is a group of community representatives. I made an appeal on the forum to people who wanted to get involved, maybe a little more, who can serve as representatives. We’ll make that happen at the start of the school year, I think. So, there will be officials who can help a little bit to show us what’s most important. It’s not necessarily easy. Sometimes we make the big difference between everything that is important.

Alternative sources of financing

Walid: I would like us to come back to the financing part, because there has been a lot of talk about NLnet. And I was asking myself the question: you have set up an association, are you going to do it in one way or another, or are you already looking for alternative sources of funding? Am I thinking of donations or something else, to finance development? Because NLnet is good, but given all the ambitions you have, you may not be able to get everything through NLnet.

Alexandra: Yes, we don’t have a donation tool today. I think that will also be part of the things we will do.

We may not necessarily be soliciting individuals, but at least people who have their own instance and potentially who have funding. It would be nice if they donated to Mobilizon. For the moment, it’s only done through us. Maybe we’ll find an organization where we can donate to Mobilizon and not to Kaihuri. But we tell ourselves that for the project to be viable in the long term, the authorities would simply have to finance the software. It seems to me that this is done in the free world. And then, where we see our economic model, is to offer accommodation to those who need it.

Alexandra

You took the example of a sports federation. If they want a Mobilizon site, probably, they will need someone to host it. And that’s not necessarily huge sums, but potentially, there are many sites that could be Mobilizon bodies. If we have a certain number of them, we can continue this project and take it where we would like. Afterwards, we can also have specific developments of the installation. We can imagine that a site will need more than the standard and have income from developments. It can be revenue for Kaihuri, it can also be, if there is an ecosystem, there can be quite a few players.

The distribution of tasks within the Mobilizon project

Walid: And what’s the division of tasks between Stéphane and you? How do you divide up the tasks within the association and in the development of Mobilizon?

Alexandra: I don’t touch the code at all. The developments today are led by Laurent and Guillaume. Stéphane is doing the merge so that’s important. He exchanges with them on all technical points. After that, I’m the one who will decide what we do. So, he will concretely put the issues in the backlog and assign them. Everything that is administrative around the project and the tests too, a lot of tests.

And what we don’t do and what I’d like to do, I’m going to take a leave of absence from starting a business from April 2026 to do all the communication, to make Mobilizon known, to seize opportunities, to look for funding, partnerships too.

So, I forgot to mention it, but there is one part that really interests us and that we will certainly do in the form of a partnership, and that is the management of ticketing. So, clearly, this is a feature that would be useful. We’re in contact with Tibillet, we don’t know what it’s going to be like yet. So, there you have it, there are a lot of things that take time, that are not technical. So, it’s more at home that it falls.

Walid: yes, ok. I saw the discussions with Tibillet, indeed. Super interesting, that’s also why I wanted you to come and talk about it. Because I find it really interesting, the fact that you have an entity that is doing a development, at some point, it feels that it is no longer interested, that it thinks it is coming to the end. And then, let the project start again with other maintainers, perhaps in another form, with other ambitions. That’s what’s interesting too. It goes from hand to hand with people who will take care of it, who will improve it. And everything, it’s great.

Conclusion

We’re coming to the end of the interview and I had, by way of conclusion, two questions to ask you.

The first is what would you say to a user of Facebook, Eventbrite, or Meetup events, to present Mobilizon? In a few sentences, what would you say?

Alexandra: I think it can be used as a complement. I wouldn’t say today to give up everything, to go to Mobilizon. What’s not bad is that today, you can create a group and publish events with the group as an organizer. When we do that, we already have a web page with all the events listed in the form of an agenda. In itself, that’s already quite nice. You can put it on a business card, you can flash it and someone will have an up-to-date vision of all the upcoming events by an association, for example.

So, without necessarily counting on the network effect which is not the same as Facebook today, it can allow, I don’t know, for a bar that organizes nice stuff, someone wants to be kept informed. Give this address, the address of your group, and they will be able to see your events, your activities. And we can — so it’s not necessarily used a lot — it gives an ICS feed and an RSS feed of the group. And that’s not bad, because, there you go, ICS feed, you put it in your diary. If you want to follow what a gym is doing, for example, it’s still super practical.

Walid: It’s also interesting for people who, like me, don’t have a Facebook account and can’t see what’s going on because the internet is not Facebook.

Alexandra: Thank you! There you go!

It offers an alternative. So, not necessarily removing the means today, which are a bit hegemonic, but adding it as an alternative doesn’t take a lot of time. You can duplicate the events and just change a title. Link to the main source of the event if you put them on Facebook. But at least it allows everyone to keep up, regardless of their IT sensitivity, and effectively to disengage, little by little. Especially when it’s cultural, social, environmental.

Alexandra

Sometimes, it goes a little out of a system that is not necessarily the one in which we recognize ourselves.

Walid: Second question, what would you say to a Fediverse user who doesn’t use Mobilizon?

Alexandra: to try. If they organize events, they can try. And if not, we can also put events that we are aware of. We’ll say to ourselves “this thing, it looks nice, I’m going to go for it, here, I’ll put it there, I’ll share the link”. It’s true that Fediverse users are quite open in general, so, give it a try.

Walid: And that’s something, rereading the question, it’s something that is both interesting and at the same time raises organizational questions. Myself, I sometimes add events that are not mine, that are published elsewhere. You can do this without having to ask for people’s agreement. Just, you can add them. It’s also a way to be able to show: look, I did that, you could do it too. And make available to us, who are on the Fediverse, your events at a lower cost.

Alexandra: It’s true that if we want to encourage the use of Mobilizon, I do what I do with my local venues once for them, I show them and then I tell them: you can do it yourself. Because we don’t spend our time publishing things that concern others, but to get them started, it can be quite good. And for the moment, I have never met anyone who complained that they were being made room.

Walid: Yes, that’s clear.

Alexandra: When we publish an event, it’s marked that we’re the organizer, and it’s also something that we’re certainly going to modify, to allow you to be able to display that it’s published by.

Walid: Yes, absolutely.

Alexandra: It’s a bit disturbing.

Walid: We’re coming to the end. I would like to leave you with a traditional last word. Do you want to send a message to the listeners of the Free Projects podcast, either on Mobilizon or not on Mobilizon? That’s your last word. I’ll let you speak.

Alexandra: great. A message to instance administrators. So we have a collaborative directory of instances, it’s super nice if you reference yours. It gives a little visibility to the community, don’t hesitate to do it. And also, we are in a free ecosystem. If you develop things on your own, even if you think “these are small things, that they may not be of a quality that is upstreamable“, don’t hesitate to push your MRs (Merge Requests). Any RM has value in itself, it gives us a clue of what you need, what you are working on. So, really, you don’t censor yourself on that. Declare your instances and push your MRs. And then, more broadly, we will concretely look for influencers of all kinds, not necessarily free software, to make Mobilizon known when we are up and running. Now, I think it’s maybe still a bit early, but we’d like to communicate at the national level. So, if there are people who have a network and want to do something that is just value-added, human, they can also contact us. We will make good use of it.

Walid: Two quick questions before we leave. The first is that I realize that I didn’t even ask you in what language it was written Mobilizon.

Alexandra: So, there’s Elixir and Vue.js.

Walid: The second thing is, can you give the name of the site that references the Mobilizon instances you just mentioned?

Alexandra: It’s instances.joinmobilizon.org. For the moment, it works. It will work at least until October.

Walid: ok. The episode will be released by then. Alexandra, thank you very much for coming to present Mobilizon. I’m very happy because I’ve been following the project for some time now and I ended up taking the plunge. So, thank you so much for coming. It was a pleasure to be able to continue talking about the Fediverse on the podcast as well. I hope we can talk again to do the rest in a while, about where you are with the different NLnet funding you have had.

Alexandra: With pleasure, thank you for the invitation.

Walid: For the listeners of the podcast, I invite you to go and watch Mobilizon. You can follow agenda.projet-libre.org in which you will come across my Mobilizon instance. As long as it’s there — maybe one day I’ll take it off and end up making a group on a bigger instance — but for now, it’s there.

Don’t hesitate to ask your questions, share the episode, make Mobilizon known. So, if you want to know more, I’ll also put links to the episodes with Framasoft, as I said, in the transcript. It’s interesting because there is their point of view. And see you soon, for new episodes. Thank you all.

Thank you Alexandra, and see you soon.

To go further

Episode production

  • Online recording on June 23, 2025
  • Basis: Walid Nouh
  • Editing: Walid Nouh
  • Transcript: Walid Nouh

This article has been automatically translated from the original language into English.

License

This podcast is released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license or later

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