Diaspora (social network)
Diaspora (stylized as diaspora*) is a nonprofit, user-owned, distributed social network. It consists of a group of independently owned nodes (called pods) which interoperate to form the network. The social network is not owned by any one person or entity, keeping it from being subject to corporate take-overs or advertising. According to its developer, "our distributed design means no big corporation will ever control Diaspora."
Example of a Diaspora pod | |
Type of site | Social networking |
|---|---|
| Available in | Afrikaans, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Interlingua, Italian, Macedonian, Malayalam, Norwegian, Nynorsk (New Norwegian), Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Sardinian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Taiwanese Chinese, Tamil, Turkish |
| Owner | Diaspora's web presence is owned by FSSN. Each pod (node), however, is owned and operated by a different provider. |
| Created by | Dan Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer, Ilya Zhitomirskiy |
| URL | diasporafoundation |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | Yes |
| Users | 859,000+ |
| Launched | November 2010 |
| Current status | Active |
| Stable release | 0.7.18.2
/ 10 July 2023 |
|---|---|
| Repository | github |
| Written in | Ruby on Rails |
| License | GNU-AGPL-3.0 |
| Website | diasporafoundation |
The project was founded by Dan Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer and Ilya Zhitomirskiy, students at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. The group received crowdfunding in excess of $200,000 via Kickstarter. A consumer alpha version was released on 23 November 2010.
Diaspora software is licensed under the terms of GNU-AGPL-3.0. Its development is managed by the Diaspora Foundation, which is part of the Free Software Support Network (FSSN). The FSSN is in turn run by Eben Moglen and the Software Freedom Law Center. The FSSN acts as an umbrella organization to Diaspora development and manages Diaspora's branding, finances and legal assets.