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Ask HN: What happened to “Ferdi” – the “multi-messenger”?

20 points by FabianBeiner ↗ HN
The website (https://getferdi.com/), as well as the GitHub repo (https://github.com/getferdi/ferdi) and the Twitter account (https://twitter.com/getferdi), is gone. Log in to the service is not working as well, of course.

Does anyone know why this well-used open-source tool is gone?

21 comments

[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 55.2 ms ] thread
k_
I have no idea why it happened, but there are still some forks [0] around, the last updated one I saw being [1], updated 5 months ago. The opencollective page [2] seems to be still up, with a balance of zero.

[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20201027131828/https://github.co... [1]: https://github.com/aarongraham9/ferdi [2]: https://opencollective.com/getferdi

FabianBeiner
The Open Collective page is archived by now.
k_
Strange =/ I still have it open, with the last $96.71 USD withdrawal 11 days ago. Can't find much more about what happened.
rahpuser
Now it seems like getferdi.com redirects to https://rambox.app/.. looking very similar to what ferdi was. Is this like a new version ?
oehpr
no, ferdi was just a fork of franz, stripping out the monetization stuff. Rambox... I don't know? It hasn't reached much success in HN.

But as a strange coincidence they posted this article 5 days ago: https://rambox.medium.com/how-to-start-with-rambox-and-simpl...

They've never posted a 'getting started' before... https://rambox.medium.com/

rahpuser
yeah... pretty weird, and if you look at the interface is pretty similar to ferdi/franz... makes me thing if it was a branch move or something.
[dead] dpdbqb
roo54
Agree. I opened Ferdi this morning and it just flat out refused to function without the cloud services.
santiagon610
Yeah, I was caught off-guard and figured that it was something wrong on my network. It was only once I went to the website that I realized that it was basically the equivalent of someone closing their business doors without clearing out first.

I just grabbed the server image from Docker Hub (https://hub.docker.com/r/getferdi/ferdi-server/tags), but I'm worried that I won't be able to grab the desktop app anymore, thereby rendering it useless, even if I selfhost the backend.

Riuaux
I'll post this "just in case", and hoping something helps.

Someone made a mirror of the docker server: https://hub.docker.com/r/ericreeves/ferdi-server/

Also this is a fork of the fork: https://github.com/pacstah/ferdium

And the WayBackMachine for the github: https://web.archive.org/web/20220313212244/https://github.co...

Some users are saying that you can logout, delete and re-add all the services, then it works again: https://www.reddit.com/r/getferdi/comments/u2swcs/you_can_st...

Finally, you can dnownload Ferdi here and set the server to Franz, it's supposed to work too: https://sourceforge.net/projects/ferdi.mirror/

mdaniel
Ha, my r/DataHoarder tendency shines through; my local mirror of the "getferdi" org has up until Mar 21st

    $ git --git-dir=ferdi/.git log -1 origin/develop
    commit e300c01b46ec94fa46c91ce60c548335d5e30fab (origin/develop, origin/HEAD)
    Author: github-actions <github-actions@github.com>
    Date:   Mon Mar 21 00:29:48 2022 +0000

        Update submodules, browserslist data updates and linter fixes [skip ci]

    $ git --git-dir=server/.git log -1 origin/master
    commit 3a3860c65a1a492ff9ab1515731cd0c8e12b30e9 (tag: v1.3.2, origin/master, origin/HEAD)
    Author: kytwb <kytwb@pm.me>
    Date:   Mon Mar 14 15:36:34 2022 +0100

        1.3.2
justforferdi
I found a mirror. Who wants to join me? Copy&Paste needed...

PS: has the last push from 20h ago

steveharman
Website is back and login to Ferdi is now possible again. This morning I can login to my Ferdi account and https://getferdi.com/ seems to be working again. Similarly Twitter. https://twitter.com/getferdi

Go figure....

dpdbqb
yeah my ferdi worked again out of nowhere - does anyone know what happened? it seems like they're doing a total migration - might be a change of ownership? their old repo is obviously gone but there's a new (empty) account linked to from their website