Radicle: A better, peer-to-peer, home for Open Source

A presentation on Radicle, a peer-to-peer code forge given at J-Fall 2025.

The presentation included a live demo of Radicle. Slides have been added in place of that demo.

Try out https://radicle.dev today!

Transcript

1. The Problem with GitHub …why we need a better home for Free/Libre and/or Open Source Software (FLOSS) Yorgos Saslis | @yorgos@chaos.social (mastodon)
2. Yorgos Saslis Software Engineer for 20+ years Ex - Red Hatter Open Space UNconference Disorganiser Software Craft & Testing Crete (socrates-crete.org) JCrete.org devstaff.gr co-founder
3. Executive Summary
4. Who remembers this?
6. …the problem
7. Questions (?)
8. … but is that all? Ok, so the “Musk” factor is clearly a problem.
9. WE choose to host Public Goods on a Proprietary Platform (GitHub)
10. Open Source Software as a PUBLIC GOOD
11. Public Goods Definition nonexcludable non-rivalrous
12. WE choose to host Public Goods on a Proprietary Platform (GitHub)
13. Proprietary Platform GitHub is not open source. Owned by a single company megacorp Can decide to exclude ban users, based on its Terms of Service (ToS) (that nodody reads!) Forced to comply with US legislation MUST comply with “US trade sanctions” Can just change its mind about what it offers e.g. it’s GitHub is now all-in on “AI”
14. Microsoft …oh, and, one more problem:
15. –Yorgos Incompatible.
16. Existing Solutions Self-hosted open source forges: GitLab Gitea / Forgejo Sourcehut Gogs, etc. etc. Overkill for solo maintainers **AND** contributors Usually deployed by orgs supporting open source e.g. Foundations
17. Plenty of examples
18. Did we solve the problem? To an extent, yes: forge is open source ! no single entity controls access / can block users Musk can’t buy all the Foundations / independent orgs a single govt can’t shut them ALL down but one particular govt can affect most
19. Did we solve the problem? … but not really… Do I need 4242 separate accounts? Do I have to search 4242 times for a project?
20. Introducing radicle.dev ! A p2p forge Peers can seed projects! A gossip protocol tells you about all available projects. You track (and seed) only the ones you trust!
21. Introducing radicle.dev ! p2p network … but… Local-first ! all the data you care about is on your machine Uses git as storage backend. No central database.
22. Introducing radicle.dev ! Privacy - first ! All you need to start contributing is an Ed25519 key pair Selectively reveal your identity Contribute to FLOSS without fear of retribution from $oppressor private repositories !
23. Radicle Repository How does it work ? Code Issues Patches (Releases) …more (all stored inside a git repository)
24. How does it work ? Storage Radicle Node Storage Storage Repositories gossip gossip gossip fetch fetch fetch
25. How do I use it? Storage copies Working copy push pull normal git operations with `rad` git remote 2 different folders on your disk
26. Sounds great! Can I try it out? Sure!! Peer2peer network has been stable since 1.0 release ~1 year ago UX being worked on now Start from https:/ /radicle.dev We welcome your questions on our Zulip! https:/ /radicle.zulipchat.com #support stream ; ) protip: zulip rocks!
27. Demo time Create a radicle identity (rad auth) Start the radicle node (rad node start) Create a radicle repository (rad init) Clone the radicle repository from node2 (rad clone) Create an issue (rad issue open) View issue on the web (skip) Create a patch from CLI (git push rad HEAD:refs/patches) “refs/patches” - a magic ref Review and merge the patch (rad patch checkout $patch_id) (git merge patch/$patch_id) Adding delegates (rad id update) Governance (making changes to project settings)
28. Create a radicle identity export RAD_HOME=/whatever/folder/works/for/you rad auth
29. Start the radicle node rad node start
30. Create a new repo rad init
31. Clone the repo rad clone
32. Create a new Issue rad issue open
33. Create a new Patch git push rad HEAD:refs/patches
34. Edit settings rad id update
35. One more thing! We’re working on an easier way to try it out: Similar to bluesky - but better: no centralised “app” Join the waitlist - or come ask me for a demo later ;) https:/ /radicle.garden
36. thanks for listening & caring !! Yorgos Saslis | @yorgos@chaos.social (mastodon)