Hive Condenser code is now open source and public on GitLab!

In my mind, open source infrastructure is one of the most essential aspects of a successful blockchain protocol. For example, Hive was only possible because large parts of the Steem ecosystem were open source, allowing the community to fork the codebase and shatter our serfdom to Justin Sun and the STINC ninja-mined stake.

Initially however when Hive forked repositories from Steem, they were initially kept private. This possibly made sense prior to the fork when the situation was adversarial and secrecy might have helped with a successful execution of the break-away. But now that the fork is over, it's important all critical infrastructure becomes open as soon as possible.

Yesterday, the Hive condenser repository that powers https://hive.blog was made public! It's available at https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/condenser. The repository is released under the permissive MIT License. So this is an event to celebrate.

While I am not involved in this repository (I don't have any special privileges to it), as a Hive stakeholder, I've been lobbying for it to be open sourced. Check out some of my previous statements below.

Twitter conversion

Tweeted by @themarkymark

#steemit extends their censorship of users who even mentioned the name of #hive to blocking on other front ends by completely censoring at the backend level.

https://github.com/steemit/hivemind/commit/0bab9fb47f7e091793c5167cb8e702fb6d7e544d

@justinsuntron aims to completely silence anyone he disagrees with.

Response by @dhimmel (me):

A cautionary tale of centralized infrastructure… which is why it irks me so much that both https://hive.blog and https://peakd.com are closed source. It's like the community is blind to their mistakes that created this problem in the first place.

Response by @themarkymark:

Peakd.com is closed source but I think Hive.blog is only until it gets moved to the public repository. A lot of the tools that got ported have been moved already.

It is just on GitLab not GitHub.

https://gitlab.syncad.com/explore

Response by @dhimmel:

Yes, good to see many tools are already publicly available with an open license. But what's with the delay in making condenser open? Asking users to trust others' goodwill that critical infrastructure will be made open in the future is less than ideal.

Response by @roelandp

afaik condenser will be available asap.

Additional response by @roelandp:

update: Condenser for http://hive.blog now public via https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/condenser

Other comments I've made

From @khaleelkazi/idtxhsoa:

its quite concerning that both major frontends for Hive are closed-source: both hive.blog and peakd.com. While I think the entities that control these sites are more benevolent than Sun / STINC, it's unjust and centralized that continued access to the network relies on the goodwill of a small group of individuals. Frankly, this community has way too much tolerance for closed source code and solutions that rely on trusted centralized entities... which is what got us into this situation in the first place. So hopefully we see the critical frontend infrastructure become open source ASAP.

From @quochuy/my-first-hive-condenser-contributions:

Thanks @quochuy for the explanation. Feel free to pass along my feedback on the important of it being open source ASAP, since this is for the time being one way in which Hive is less open than Steem. Currently, the two main frontends: Peakd and hive.blog are not open source, which does not fit with the decentralized ambitions of Hive.

Conclusion

Leave comments! Happy to answer any questions about open source and licensing. And why it's so important for blockchain projects.