Micropelago
After weeks sailing the digital sea, an infinity of islands appears on the horizon. You see cozy homes lining the beaches, hammocks resting between trees, and small boats waiting at the docks. People are shuffling to and fro, crafting their homes, visiting friends on other islands, and surfing the waves in their free time.
Your boat beaches itself on an empty island and you hop down to the sand. Looking around, you see a perfect spot for a small house facing the sea.
What Is This Place?
Micropelago is an open-source project which allows a group of people to join all their computers and phones together into one big network, like a network of islands in the ocean. Members of the network can then rely on it for useful services that are normally provided by tech companies. Services like:
- Backing up files and syncing them across devices
- Sharing links, images, and other kinds of files with friends
- Hosting a website, be it a professional profile, travel blog, or community message board
- Instant messaging with anyone around the world
- Secure, cross-device password management
- ...and anything else you can imagine!
Micropelago makes this possible by giving members of a network the ability to easily share resources, such as disk space, in such a way that the overall network is more reliable than any one person could manage on their own.
Is it a big dream? Yes! But it's an achievable big dream, we only need to build the tools to bring it to reality. You can see the latest and greatest that's going on with the project on the news page.
Current Status
Development is still in very very early stages, best described as "alpha", aka "tech wizards only". What's currently implemented is only the foundation of the overall vision: the ability to form networks of devices and share storage space between them using a simple CLI. The current focus is expanding the number of operating systems and devices supported, and then beginning work on a GUI.
The roadmap provides a bird's-eye view of where Micropelago is going.
The current primary focal point of development is Isle, which forms the foundation of all other aspects of Micropelago.
About the Project
Micropelago is committed to remaining an indie open-source project for its lifetime. This means no business plans, sponsorship agreements, premium services, or crypto tokens. In short: no money, no third-parties.
Development is being primarily carried out by mediocregopher, with betamike providing code hosting. The "Micropelago & Friends" network currently has upwards of 3 (!) members, with more on the way.