GNU social is a social communication software used in federated social networks. It is widely supported and has a large userbase. It is already used by the Free Software Foundation.

Mikael Nordfeldth 5c6b98e821 Bug tracker link updated. 9 years ago
actions 7cea3f9f11 Add 'statusnet_textarea' backward-compatibility 9 years ago
avatar acea534044 Disable the send-notice form at the top of the page OStatus subscription confirmation page to work around bugs in Cloudy theme. 14 years ago
background 90344e55d4 Add background dir 14 years ago
classes 56d431320d Replace one instance of LOG_ERR with LOG_DEBUG 9 years ago
db 68143ff916 DirectMessage moved into a plugin, not done yet 9 years ago
doc-src 5c6b98e821 Bug tracker link updated. 9 years ago
extlib 69e04e5cbd extlib Michelf\Markdown updated 1.4.0 to 1.4.1 9 years ago
file d4fd1c505e Add some .gitignore files to keep the dirs available 15 years ago
js 1c478768ad True isn't true in Javascript. 9 years ago
lib c81cd18796 I hereby dub thee 1.1.3 - The Spanish Invasion 9 years ago
local 0570c16e6c Add local directory for plugins, themes, etc. 15 years ago
locale f79aec36fe Merge remote-tracking branch 'statusnet/master' 10 years ago
mail-src 17424f49cd better indenting in invite email 13 years ago
plugins e9457db8b2 DirectMessages backed up properly for UAS 9 years ago
scripts ff004c5912 Avoid CLI printing some PEAR::DB deprecated stuff 9 years ago
socialfy-your-domain 5478e387db Added note on socialfying for HTTPS sites. 9 years ago
tests 7e597ea7cc More Favorite pluginification (favecount, cache, menus(favecount, cache, menus)) 9 years ago
theme 61992dd9a2 CSS to align the notice footer (thanks fnadde42) 9 years ago
.gitignore cc85afda3a Added a couple dirs to .gitignore 12 years ago
CONFIGURE b3cb53c84f Document "process_links" option for attachments 9 years ago
COPYING b6cfd2dffe license block for source code 16 years ago
EVENTS.txt a063bb43a8 EndSetApiUser will always contain a User 9 years ago
INSTALL 68df780c59 Clarify in INSTALL that MySQL must be 5.5+ 9 years ago
Makefile 4b5e977a7b New _m() gettext wrapper with smart detection of plugin domains. Plugin base class registers your gettext files if present at initialization. 14 years ago
PLUGINS.txt 9535f0d0e3 Rename plugins README so it doesn't conflict with plugins directory on case insensitive files systems (Mac/Windows) 12 years ago
README.md 561e098b53 1.1.3 not 1.1.3 beta3 9 years ago
TODO.SOCIAL cba2c6d3c6 add todo list 14 years ago
UPGRADE 1076a5e2eb UPGRADE file fixed, forgot to mention PHP modules 9 years ago
apple-touch-icon.png 91b0fb8028 Add `apple-touch-icon.png` support; favicons for the iPhone OS. 15 years ago
favicon.ico c5c4bc10dc Favicon updated to match new theme images 10 years ago
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README.md

GNU social 1.1.3

February 2015-02-27

(c) Free Software Foundation, Inc (c) StatusNet, Inc

This is the README file for GNU social, the free software social networking platform. It includes general information about the software and the project.

Some other files to review:

  • INSTALL: instructions on how to install the software.
  • UPGRADE: upgrading from earlier versions
  • CONFIGURE: configuration options in gruesome detail.
  • PLUGINS.txt: how to install and configure plugins.
  • EVENTS.txt: events supported by the plugin system
  • COPYING: full text of the software license

Information on using GNU social can be found in the "doc" subdirectory or in the "help" section on-line, or you can catch us on IRC in #social on the freenode network.

About

GNU social is a free social networking platform. It helps people in a community, company or group to exchange short status updates, do polls, announce events, or other social activities (and you can add more!). Users can choose which people to "follow" and receive only their friends' or colleagues' status messages. It provides a similar service to sites like Twitter, Google+ or Facebook, but is much more awesome.

With a little work, status messages can be sent to mobile phones, instant messenger programs (using XMPP), and specially-designed desktop clients that support the Twitter API.

GNU social supports an open standard called OStatus https://www.w3.org/community/ostatus/ that lets users in different networks follow each other. It enables a distributed social network spread all across the Web.

GNU social was originally developed as "StatusNet" by StatusNet, Inc. with Evan Prodromou as lead developer.

It is shared with you in hope that you too make an service available to your users. To learn more, please see the Open Software Service Definition 1.1: http://www.opendefinition.org/ossd

License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License along with this program, in the file "COPYING". If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) has
*different requirements* from the "regular" GPL. In particular, if
you make modifications to the GNU social source code on your server,
you *MUST MAKE AVAILABLE* the modified version of the source code
to your users under the same license. This is a legal requirement
of using the software, and if you do not wish to share your
modifications, *YOU MAY NOT INSTALL GNU SOCIAL*.

Documentation in the /doc-src/ directory is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license, with attribution to "GNU social". See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ for details.

CSS and images in the /theme/ directory are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license, with attribution to "GNU social". See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ for details.

Our understanding and intention is that if you add your own theme that uses only CSS and images, those files are not subject to the copyleft requirements of the Affero General Public License 3.0. See http://wordpress.org/news/2009/07/themes-are-gpl-too/. This is not legal advice; consult your lawyer.

Additional library software has been made available in the 'extlib' directory. All of it is Free Software and can be distributed under liberal terms, but those terms may differ in detail from the AGPL's particulars. See each package's license file in the extlib directory for additional terms.

New this version

This is a security fix and bug fix release since 1.1.3-beta2. All 1.1.x sites should upgrade to this version.

So far it includes the following changes:

Upgrades from StatusNet 1.1.1 will also experience these improvements:

  • Fixes for SQL injection errors in profile lists.
  • Improved ActivityStreams JSON representation of activities and objects.
  • Upgrade to the Twitter 1.1 API.
  • More robust handling of errors in distribution.
  • Fix error in OStatus subscription for remote groups.
  • Fix error in XMPP distribution.
  • Tracking of conversation URI metadata (more coherent convos)

Troubleshooting

The primary output for GNU social is syslog, unless you configured a separate logfile. This is probably the first place to look if you're getting weird behaviour from GNU social.

If you're tracking the unstable version of GNU social in the git repository (see below), and you get a compilation error ("unexpected T_STRING") in the browser, check to see that you don't have any conflicts in your code.

Unstable version

If you're adventurous or impatient, you may want to install the development version of GNU social. To get it, use the git version control tool http://git-scm.com/ like so:

git clone git@gitorious.org:social/mainline.git

In the current phase of development it is probably recommended to use git as a means to stay up to date with the source code. You can choose between these branches:

  • 1.1.x "stable", few updates, well tested code
  • master "testing", more updates, usually working well
  • nightly "unstable", most updates, not always working

To keep it up-to-date, use 'git pull'. Watch for conflicts!

Further information

There are several ways to get more information about GNU social.

Credits

The following is an incomplete list of developers who've worked on GNU social, or its predecessors StatusNet and Free Social. Apologies for any oversight; please let mattl@gnu.org know if anyone's been overlooked in error.

Project Founders

  • Matt Lee (GNU social)
  • Evan Prodromou (StatusNet)
  • Mikael Nordfeldth (Free Social)

Thanks to all of the StatusNet developers:

  • Zach Copley, StatusNet, Inc.
  • Earle Martin, StatusNet, Inc.
  • Marie-Claude Doyon, designer, StatusNet, Inc.
  • Sarven Capadisli, StatusNet, Inc.
  • Robin Millette, StatusNet, Inc.
  • Ciaran Gultnieks
  • Michael Landers
  • Ori Avtalion
  • Garret Buell
  • Mike Cochrane
  • Matthew Gregg
  • Florian Biree
  • Erik Stambaugh
  • 'drry'
  • Gina Haeussge
  • Tryggvi Björgvinsson
  • Adrian Lang
  • Ori Avtalion
  • Meitar Moscovitz
  • Ken Sheppardson (Trac server, man-about-town)
  • Tiago 'gouki' Faria (i18n manager)
  • Sean Murphy
  • Leslie Michael Orchard
  • Eric Helgeson
  • Ken Sedgwick
  • Brian Hendrickson
  • Tobias Diekershoff
  • Dan Moore
  • Fil
  • Jeff Mitchell
  • Brenda Wallace
  • Jeffery To
  • Federico Marani
  • mEDI
  • Brett Taylor
  • Brigitte Schuster
  • Siebrand Mazeland and the amazing volunteer translators at translatewiki.net
  • Brion Vibber, StatusNet, Inc.
  • James Walker, StatusNet, Inc.
  • Samantha Doherty, designer, StatusNet, Inc.
  • Simon Waters, Surevine
  • Joshua Judson Rosen (rozzin)

Extra special thanks to the GNU socialites

  • Craig Andrews
  • Donald Robertson
  • Deb Nicholson
  • Ian Denhart
  • Steven DuBois
  • Blaine Cook
  • Henry Story
  • Melvin Carvalho

Thanks also to the developers of our upstream library code and to the thousands of people who have tried out GNU social, told their friends, and built the fediverse network to what it is today.

License help from

  • Bradley M. Kuhn