Hi everyone,
When I first started the Hyperspace project back in 2019, things were very different than they are now. The fediverse still felt like a small nice community that wouldn’t grow too much, and while a few good clients for it existed, none were quite as polished and friendly for new users like college students. I started Hyperspace to fulfill this role as a friendly Mastodon app for new users or those not well-versed in the fediverse.
It has been about four years since then, and a lot has changed. With Twitter falling from grace due to a man child who shall not be named here and the fediverse growing, more apps have been on the rise to accommodate them. Apps like Elk, Ice Cubes, and Ivory are providing great user experiences that would feel like a dream to have back in 2019. A lot has changed with Mastodon, too, to make the platform much more friendly today.
This brings us back to Hyperspace. Development on our various projects has been slow, and the team and I had come to a long discussion about what’s going on. Suffice to say, Nodar and I have made the difficult decision to sunset the Hyperspace project and its various clients (Desktop, Starlight, and Luna).
It’s been amazing seeing the work that has been accomplished with Hyperspace and the fediverse in general these past four years. We’re thankful for the users and fellow contributors that brought Hyperspace to where it is today, and we hope that Hyperspace’s legacy will continue to live on as the fediverse landscape changes.
What this means for our code
Within the coming weeks, we will begin archiving our current source code repositories on GitHub and making them read-only. You’re more than welcome to clone and fork these repositories to make something new or unique (insofar that the NPL license is respected). Given that Heroku sunsetted its free plan last year, the clients that were available have been taken offline.
We thank everyone for exploring the fediverse with us as we land for the final time and retire the spacecraft that is Hyperspace.
With love, The Hyperspace Team
