Source Code of RSS Brain is Available

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2024-07-27 04:00:03

When I first published RSS Brain, I promised the source code will be released (well, I actually said “open source”, but more on that later). After I rewrote the whole Flutter frontend with Javascript, most code is put into a single source repo. I feel comfortable to release it. So here it is on Github.

RSS Brain’s source code is released under SSPL, Server Side Public License. I don’t want to use “open source” as a market point for RSS Brain so I must make this clear first: technically, RSS Brain is a source available software, not an open source one, since SSPL is not recognized as an open source license.

SSPL is mostly the same as AGPL v3, but with a key difference: it requires the user to release the source code of the whole stack if the project is used commercially. If you want to run the code on your own server and use RSS Brain freely, it’s all good. You can even share your server with family and friends. But as long as you start to charge money for that service, you need to release the source code of everything you use for the service, including things like OS, CI/CD, web server and so on. So it basically makes it impractical to use the source code commercially. I chose that feature on purpose.

In a past blog post What Is Wrong about Recommendation System, I mentioned I don’t want to manipulated by recommendation systems. Ant that’s one of the main motivations for me to start write my own RSS reader. While there are still ranking and recommendation algorithms in RSS Brain, it’s aimed to provider better information instead of making the user more addicted to the product. In order to approve that, the algorithm needs to be available so that the users can inspect it and decide whether it’s the right one for them.