Funkwhale Community Spotlight - Gordon

It's the first Monday of the month again! Time for another community spotlight!

• Name: Gordon
• Location: Britain (France)
• Pronouns: He/Him
• Links: https://gordon.re (a blog that didn’t receive updates for years), @gordon@gluten.space on the fediverse

How did you discover Funkwhale? I don’t remember exactly, but i’m pretty sure that I saw a toot speaking about the project. Since i’m quite interested in fediverse technologies, and that I’m familiar with Funkwhale’s technologies (Python/Django), it immediately grabbed my eyes.

What do you think of fediverse development as a whole right now? Where do you think we should be directing our energies?** We’re currently searching for a more community-driven development. Historically, Eliot created the project, and still today, he’s by far the main contributor, and this has to change, because for various reasons the project cannot depend on him alone, on a technical level. I truly believe we’ve made the right decisions in order to facilitate contributions: the Code of Conduct that explicitly forbids (and takes measures against) toxic behaviours that can be found in other projects, the Contribute page, and the Foundation that ensures that the project’s direction is decided by the community. We still have a lot of work to do to make sure that people want to contribute.

What kind of work are you doing on the project? I’d like to contribute more on the code, but i’m struggling to find time for this. Instead, I helped a lot with the Collective creation, because I have some experience with non-profit structures. So I helped with the statuses, code of conduct, and various advices for the structure. For the same reason, I was elected secretary of the association.

What is your favorite part of the project so far? I really like to share my passions, so being able to put my favorites artists online and share them with people I know is amazing. I’m really impatient to try some new sharing feature. Also, i’m extremely proud of the fact that moderation features are at the core of the project. We don’t build anything without thinking about the ways that it could be exploited to harm people, and we design barriers and countermeasures at the core of thoses features. It’s rare to see in free software projects, and I hope that Funkwhale will show a more human way to create things.

What part of the Funkwhale roadmap are you most looking forward to? THe possibility to share all music between instances (not just on a library level) will enable more sharing. And given that we have the right moderation tools, i’m excited to see social interactions, such as recommendations from people

What's not yet on the Funkwhale roadmap that you'd like to see? Funkwhale uses ActivityPub for federation, but cannot really interact with other software (like Mastodon/Pleroma, Pixelfed, Peertube, Reel2bits…). I don’t know how it would work, honestly, what interactions would you expect between a music sharing service and a gallery one? What do you mean, i’m not supposed to be the one asking questions? Oh, ok, sorry.

What do you do when you aren't Funkwhaling? (interests, hobbies, work, etc.) My main professional activity is being a development trainer. But these days, I could say that my new job is being a vegan cheesemonger, because I spend most of my time in my kitchen, experimenting on how to use the rich cheese culture of France without any cruelty. I’m also listening to a lot of music, I’m a huge Devin Townsend fan, and, uh, I guess that computing is also a passion, but more like a love/hate relationship.

Who's your favorite Funkwhale mascot? Otto, because octopuses are so cool. I’m dreaming about a world where the dominant species are octopuses. This would be so great.

Some people think octopuses are from another planet. Do you think Otto might be an alien? In any case, we should be the aliens from Otto’s viewpoint.

Describe your perfect Sunday Spending hours in my kitchen for some gourmet meals, and optionnally not wearing any clothes.

Thank you Gordon, and thank you to all of our Funkwhale friends. If you are part of our community and would like to be in one of our spotlights, let us know!