We are developing a Peer Computing Platform called UBOS.

Peer Computing is the architectural computing pattern in which:

  • always-on servers, developed and operated by different parties, communicate with each other as peers using symmetrical protocols;

  • temporarily connected clients interact with those servers in a client-server pattern; and

  • messages from user A to user B flow from A’s client to A’s server, from there to B’s server, and finally to B’s client.

The Peer Computing architecture has been well-established for decades: E-mail uses the Peer Computing architecture, as well as many other systems, such as Jabber/XMPP, Matrix and the many applications in the Fediverse like Mastodon. More details about Peer Computing.

Other architectural patterns have their own computing platforms, such as LAMP for web-based client server systems, or iOS/Xcode for mobile applications. As the world is moving away from closed, single-vendor cloud applications (like traditional social media platforms), to federated systems like the Fediverse, Peer Computing is becoming (again) highly relevent.

We believe it needs to become simpler both to develop Peer Computing systems and to operate them. These two objectives are what UBOS is for.

UBOS is still work in progress. Some parts (UBOS Linux, UBOS Gears) have been running quite reliably for various users in production for a number of years, hosted both on public clouds and individually-owned personal servers behind the firewall. Some others (UBOS Mesh) are still some distance away from a first release.

UBOS is licensed under an OSI-certified open-source license (AGPLv3). For potential users that do not wish to make their own code available as open-source, we are considering to also offer a commercial license.

To learn more about UBOS, go to the UBOS documentation.