Five Years Later, Mobilizon “Reaches Maturity”
Don't worry, it's a new beginning!
Framasoft, the French open source non-profit responsible for projects such as PeerTube, reports that, after 5 years of development, Mobilizon has reached maturity. The project was originally announced in December 2018, with the goal of creating a group events platform as an alternative to the offerings of Facebook and Meetup.
Over the years, the project has added multiple updates, such as federation and cross-instance event searching. This month, they are releasing v4.0 with a variety of new features. It will be the final release contributed by Framasoft.
What’s New?
Event admins can now send private announcements to attendees, allowing them to directly contact everyone that’s registered for an event. This feature works as a broadcast system for information via a one-way communications channel.
Complementing this feature is a federated conversation system for attendees, which can communicate across instances. For Mastodon users, conversations will appear as Private Mentions on their end.
Event Import is another new feature, offering Mobilizon users the ability to pull in events created on other platforms, such as Meetup and EventBrite.
Given the dominance of these platforms in the space, the ability for Mobilizon users to import and synchronise event data is a huge win. iCal event feeds are supported too, so Mobilizon now works with most calendar tools.
The “Mobilizon Import System” was deliberately developed outside the Mobilizon core. It is therefore a separate piece of software. In fact, we think that this software is likely to need a lot of modifications (for example, to correct bugs or to add new platforms such as Démosphère or Agenda Militant) and that there might be an interest in hosting this application outside Mobilizon instances…
Mobilizon v4 Release Announcement
The big platform for importing events from is Facebook. Here, Framasoft has put in a significant effort to make everything work, but the ball is now in Facebook’s court to allow it. Framasoft is clear that they don’t have a timeline on when that might happen, and remain unsure if Facebook will commit to it.
We still have to go through several validation steps, and… we have absolutely no hand in it. It’s Facebook’s kingdom, so Facebook decides. Maybe it’ll work for 5 years, 5 months, 5 days. Maybe it won’t work at all. 🤷
Mobilizon v4 Release Announcement
The Road Ahead
While Framasoft sees Mobilizon has having completed their vision, it is far from over for the project. Framasoft will hand over the keys to the French association Kaihuri, who has been maintaining a Mobilizon presence for a while.
Kaihuri recently received funding from NLnet to continue development work on Mobilizon, focusing on the user experience and improving interoperability. Meanwhile, Framasoft is betting big on PeerTube for next year, and is currently organising their yearly donation drive.
