kieraneglin
READ: Temporary Development Pause
Hey all, sorry for the radio silence lately.
I've had to temporarily shelve Pinchflat as I've been working on a new project that has the potential to make a real-world change that I feel very strongly about. I'm working on a system to combat recent legislation in the UK/US around age and identity verification required to access certain websites.
I believe this legislation goes against the concept of a fair and open internet, is a privacy nightmare, and imposes an unacceptable cost on many business owners. Obviously I can't change the laws or encourage people to break them, but I think I have something that'll keep private data in the control of the user. I can't say much more at the moment. What I can say is that it's been consuming all of my evenings and weekends for months as this is something I really believe in.
I should've posted an update sooner but it was one of those things that I thought would be a quick digression that ended up snowballing. It kept being something where I earnestly thought "I'll be able to start back up in a week or two" and, well, it's turning out to be hard problem to solve.
I wish I had the foresight initially to know how much of a commitment this new project would be but I suppose we're past that. For now I'll call it a learning experience.
What does this mean practically?
Pinchflat isn't dead! But it is on a development break. I love this project and I have every intention to pick it back up when I can, but that won't be for at least another 4-8 weeks, minimum.
That said, I'm trying to keep apprised of breaking changes (like the yt-dlp + Deno stuff) and I'll hop back in for anything that's hugely breaking. Feature requests and minor bugs will be taking a back seat for now (although I'm going to try and be more on top of PRs).
A final note
I'm hugely appreciative of the community for helping each other out in my absence. Y'all rule and I'm looking forward to picking this back up as soon as I have the chance!
You have volunteered so much your time toward Pinchflat, and for that we are all grateful. It's great to take a break and work on something you believe in 👍 Best of luck
Thanks for the hard work, take as much time as you need and good luck on your project as it's vital for many people!
Can I just ask if, before the actual pause, there will be a Docker version of release 2025.9.26? I see it's currently marked as dev, if that's correct we can just add this caveat to the docs without needing you to rebuild/re-tag the whole image.
thank you @kieraneglin !! Good luck on the project and thank you for everything you have done for this one.
@andreasntr The last build failed because the arm64 image couldn't build with my recent changes. I'm taking a look at it this morning 🤙🏻
Edit: Looks like I'll have to figure something else out for arm64. In the meantime, I'm pushing up the latest to the amd64 platform (which will cover the vast majority of users) and I'll look into the arm64 failures
I hope you will let us know when your new project is out. I agree with you 100% and wish you complete success!
+1 for news on the new project - looking forward to seeing/helping/promoting that! As for now, pinchflat just works for me and is ace, no gripes here.
I've just started using this project early today and noticed the "Pro" item just asking for donations to EFF. I already donate monthly, but thought that was a hugely awesome thing to include in the project- and to not exclude the feature behind any proof, just a notification.
It sounds like you're going a step further with this, and I 100% support it. From my limited time using pinchflat so far it works well for me, I'll continue using it.
Thank you very much for your great performance and this wonderful project. Follow your path. Do your thing. You are amazing. Everything you touch turns to gold. I believe in you. =)
Thank you for all you have done on this project. I really enjoy using it and I wish you the best of luck on your next project. Hopefully I can find something here to help out and give back. Here's to hoping the community helps keep this alive.
