We're well on the way to #GoToSocial 0.14.0 release candidate 1!

Based on the sheer amount of fixes and improvements included, 0.14.0 will probably be the biggest release we've done so far 

It will also (probably, unless something goes wrong) be the first GoToSocial release to include support for the Move activity, which will let you migrate an existing account to or from a GoToSocial instance, while keeping your followers and following relationships intact :) We waited a long time to write this functionality because we wanted to make sure GoToSocial was in a decent state before people start migrating accounts to it.

So, very exciting! If all goes well, expect more news on the first release candidate in a couple weeks (we're still fixing some bugs, as always).

At some point in this first quarter of 2024 we plan to mark the Alpha development phase of GoToSocial as completed, and "officially" enter the Beta phase. This will happen prettymuch whenever we get account migration working properly via the Move activity, and also implement a basic sign up flow to augment the current manual account creation process done via the CLI tool.

Every software development process is different, but in our case, Beta will mean that we consider most of the very basic features to be complete, the software is reasonably stable, and we can then start adding other cool stuff like better moderation tools, better oauth tooling, status edits, and that sort of thing (see our roadmap for more details).

It's been a long and interesting alpha period. tobi started GtS as more or less a hobby project during a period of day-job burnout at the start of 2021. They got GtS federating fairly quickly, started seeing the potential in it for more than just a hobby project, and then other folks like kim, daenney, f0x, and maloki jumped in to work on the project too, as well as a whole bunch of semi-regular and drive-by contributors. tobi kept working on the project during their absence from work, and then kept going after they left their job and started taking unemployment benefits, and then continued (spending their last savings) after the benefits dried up.

In late 2022 when Twitter shat the bed for the umpteenth time, we saw interest in GoToSocial skyrocket, which was both scary and exciting. Suddenly way more people were running the software and finding bugs and reporting issues, which was overwhelming and stressful but also very, very helpful for the stability of the software.

In 2023, we managed to get funding from NLnet to continue working on the project, which couldn't come soon enough since tobi was, by the start of 2023, completely broke. Thanks to NLnet, tobi could now work on GoToSocial full time without worrying excessively about money, which was a huge relief.

Now in 2024, kim is also working full time on GoToSocial, having also got an NLnet grant, which gives us a lot more confidence in terms of the sustainability of working on the software. It's going to be a good year for GtS :) Big thank you to NLnet for believing in us.

Throughout this whole period, people donated over and over to our liberapay and opencollective, which helped us to pay for our CI/CD development machine, and gave us a buffer for unexpected bills and shocks. Thank you so much!

Over the course of alpha we discovered a whole bunch of weird bugs, leading to many headaches and late nights toiling over fmt.Printf statements and writing tests. We made the software way more resilient and flexible in terms of how it federates, poked through the code of other AP implementations to discover and work around edge cases, and generally worked very, very hard on stability and compatibility. We're not 100% there yet in terms of which other softwares GtS can properly communicate with, but given how divergent AP implementations are from each other, and how many softwares do wacky undocumented things, we think it's going pretty damn well.

And we found time to add features too! In 2023 we merged support for:

• hashtags
• polls
• status language tags
• allowlist federation
• account notes
• timeline markers
• lists
• partial search
• profile fields
• request tracing
• prometheus metrics
• pinned posts
• (most) mp4 videos
• bookmarks

So, there you go! A little potted, messy history of GoToSocial so far. Probably missing a bunch of important things that happened but memory is fickle.

Thanks for your ongoing support and kindness, and here's to a fun upcoming beta development period in a few months  

Now that #GoToSocial 0.13.0 is out, we are preparing to take a break :)

If you've been following us for a while, you'll know that every year over the holidays we like to make our github repository and matrix channels read only for a while. This lets us step back from support work for a few weeks, and focus on things other than GoToSocial (seeing friends and family, playing video games, reading, cuddling our pets), in order to recharge our mental and emotional batteries and come into the new year feeling fresh and excited again.

This year, we'll take our holiday from (and including) the 19th of December, up to (and including) the 2nd of January. During this time:

• the three GtS matrix channels will be read only
• the github repo will be read only for non-members of the org (though you may still see us pushing commits and whatnot)
• we will be less active on this account

So, if you spot any issues with v0.13.0, please file them before the 19th, or save them until after the 2nd.

Thanks for reading! ❤️