Bonfire Networks: An open-source framework for building federated digital spaces

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Bonfire is an open source framework for building modular federated digital spaces. It’s built entirely with Elixir, including LiveView (and Surface) for the frontend, and we’re excited to experiment with LiveViewNative to develop native apps.

Think of Bonfire as WordPress for federated social networking. You can set up a digital home for yourself or your community, which can start as a basic blog or microblogging platform (similar to Mastodon—another platform Bonfire federates with, along with dozens of other ActivityPub-enabled apps). From there, you can customise the experience through extensive settings and by toggling extensions to add, replace, or even remove any functionality (since all “core” features are also packaged as small modular extensions). Developers can also create custom extensions for specific use cases and contribute new possibilities to the community.

These extensions aim to enrich and diversify federated networks, going beyond the default microblogging experience. They can enable a range of activities, from organizing events and making decisions to assigning tasks and collaborating on projects.

Bonfire’s mission is to empower communities to avoid platform enshittification and centralisation, giving them the agency to self-host and self-organise in a federated environment and to not be confined to a walled garden.

Relevant links

Official website: https://bonfirenetworks.org

Documentation: https://docs.bonfirenetworks.org

Source code: Bonfire · GitHub

Published libraries: bonfire | Hex

Open Bounties: GitHub - bonfire-networks/bounties

Issues: Milestones - Good first issues

License: AGPL-3.0

Technical stack: ActivityPub, Phoenix with LiveView and Surface, Tailwind CSS, DaisyUI, Alpine.js, Graphql, PostgreSQL, etc.

Chat: This forum, Matrix, or #bonfire on Elixir Slack

Support the project: Bonfire on Open Collective

FAQS

(Read all the FAQs here)

Can I create my own social network with Bonfire? Who controls and moderates the users and content?

Yes, you can create your own social network using Bonfire, much like setting up a forum with Discourse (the software powering the Elixir Forum). As with Discourse, it’s up to the administrators to define the privacy policy, code of conduct, features, themes, and moderation practices. Bonfire includes roles and boundaries (ACLs) to empower moderators and allow users to control who can view, interact with, or collaborate on content.

What makes Bonfire unique is its modular platform, which you can customize and extend to fit your needs, combined with the network effects of federation.

What does “federated” mean?

Unlike centralized platforms, Bonfire allows you to interact with users across different servers, as long as they support the ActivityPub protocol. This means that once you join or set up a Bonfire instance, you can communicate with users on other instances without needing multiple accounts.

Federation refers to the decentralized nature of Bonfire and similar platforms. Instead of being controlled by a single entity, multiple independent servers (instances) can communicate with each other using a common protocol, like ActivityPub.

This is similar to how email works: users on different email providers can still send and receive messages across platforms. In the fediverse, you can join one Bonfire instance and interact with users across the entire network, including those using other apps such as Mastodon, Pixelfed, or Peertube.

What is a modular ecosystem?

Bonfire stands out from other microblogging platforms such as Mastodon by being a modular framework. Each component of Bonfire is open-source and is packaged as an individual building block that can be enabled, disabled, customised, or forked to create specialised apps. This allows you to mix and match features to build tools tailored to your needs while leveraging federation and open data formats.

Bonfire can be compared to WordPress in this way, enabling admins and developers to integrate or create custom features and functionalities, such as:

  • Custom user-controlled algorithms to sort timelines.
  • AI integrations within the social network.
  • Features like event management, calendars, or issue tracking.
  • Custom themes or third-party service integrations.

Bonfire’s modular nature makes it a versatile platform, particularly appealing to developers familiar with Elixir, offering a robust framework to experiment with and build unique digital spaces. Whether you need a basic social app, a collaborative federated blog, a decentralised forum, or a mutual aid platform, the community can continually develop new features to address diverse needs.

Any community already adopting Bonfire?

Bonfire has gained traction on the fediverse, especially among communities looking for more than just microblogging. Notably, scientists are working with Bonfire to develop features for the Open Science network initiative. This effort aims to create a Bonfire-powered digital space for the scientific community, with tools for universities, labs, and collectives to produce, discuss, and share papers in a decentralized environment.

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Introducing the Bonfire Networks Bounty Programme

We’re happy to announce the launch of the Bonfire Bounty Programme, an initiative to inspire developers to learn and improve the Bonfire framework while contributing to its development. Bonfire is an open-source framework written in Elixir that enables communities to create their own federated digital spaces.
We’ve just kicked off two bounties aimed at addressing current technical blockers. These bounties are crucial for making Bonfire more widely usable and adoptable.

Current open bounties are:

-Improve DB query performance
-Improve feed rendering performance

For comprehensive details about the bounty program, including:

  • Our collaborative approach
  • How to participate
  • Support and resources

Please visit our blog post: Bonfire Expeditions - Camp! A bounty programme

Fediverse thread: Bonfire: “:dart: Calling all Elixir developers to take on a boun…” - Indieweb.Social

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Other than extensions (which extend Bonfire by adding some functionality, such as labeling of misinformation, or federated event planning, etc), we also sometimes find ourselves needing to build lower level functionality which we package into libraries so they can also be used in non-Bonfire projects, I’m listing the ones which are already posted to the forum here (and will be sharing a few more over the following weeks):

  • Arrows: OK-piping plus the ability to pipe into any argument position of the following function (or nested function).
  • Untangle: alternatives for IO.inspect and the macros in Elixir’s Logger to output code location information
  • Iconify: Phoenix components for 100,000+ icons from 100+ icon sets from iconify.design
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I’ve posted another library, this is one that Bonfire relies on heavily for handling feeds of social activities and other core features like boundaries:

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Sharing the first post in a series where we will share insights, challenges, and progress on our journey of building the native Bonfire apps using LiveView Native

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I have an existing app which needs a user feed. Can I use bonfire for this?

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Bonfire extensions are primarly designed to work within a bonfire app - If you want to use it in your own app you’ll need to write / refactor / add some integration glue ( eg, to represent users using Needle so they can be used as activity subject’s)
If your app is in early stage and the social feature is a relevant one you may consider turning it into a bonfire extension?

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2# entry of our journey of building the native Bonfire apps using LiveView Native

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Thanks. I’m thinking of using graphql to communicate with bonfire from my app but I couldn’t find the docs

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GraphQL schema documentation is built-in, you can find it at localhost:4000/api/ if you run the app with WITH_API_GRAPHQL=yes in env.

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3# entry of our journey of building the native Bonfire apps using LiveView Native:

Understanding Navigation in LiveView Native

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We’re excited to launch Mosaic: a new initiative from the Bonfire team that empowers organisations by creating their own customised and federated digital space - built just for them.

:sparkles: Learn more about Mosaic: Bonfire
:mega: Read our announcement post: Introducing Mosaic - Partner with the Bonfire Team to Create Your Own Federated Digital Space
Toot: Bonfire: "We’re excited to launch Mosaic: a new initiative …" - Indieweb.Social

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