Snikket

After a couple of months building the technical infrastructure, we launched the first version of our paid hosting service to a handful of enthusiastic early adopters. Their feedback will be invaluable as we move towards a public release in the coming months!

People are starting to understand what the project is about, and understand its goals. And most notably, want to help us achieve them!

We chose to launch on the open-source sponsorship platform Liberapay. They share a lot of values with the open-source community.

After a lot of reflection on what I wanted Snikket to become, I set some boundaries:

• No venture capital. Having previously been down this path, I wanted Snikket to grow sustainably and without profit-seeking objectives.

• Privacy-first. It should go without saying, but Snikket exists to escape the dark patterns of other messaging providers, and must not repeat them. This means we avoid collecting data where possible, and we don't mine or share the data that we do need to collect. Oh yeah, and no advertising.

• Open-source, fully. I believe in open-source, but a number of similar projects go with an "open core" model, where certain features are kept only in a separate commercial version of the software. No thanks.

After researching not-for-profit entities in the UK, I founded Snikket as a CIC: https://snikket.org/blog/snikket-cic/

Unveiled the project to the crowds at FOSDEM 2020, Brussels.

Reception was very positive, and the hands-on demo doubled as some initial user testing (pro tip: fewer people are familiar with QR codes than you think!).

At least several users are now self-hosting their own Snikket services.

Starting on a quest to bring normal everyday users onto free and open communication networks such as XMPP, I formed a general idea of what Snikket should be, and began work on the prototype.

The goal is to launch an MVP of the self-hostable server and an Android mobile app by FOSDEM in February.