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

[FabianBeiner]

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?

[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.

[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.

[FabianBeiner]

The founder of Ferdi has deleted all his accounts (GitHub, Twitter, Instagram) etc. as well. Let's hope nothing bad happened here.

[k_]

Apparently ferdi started disappearing a while ago? https://twitter.com/EggermontRomain/status/14837540947246243...

[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 <[e-mail]>
    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 <[e-mail]>
    Date:   Mon Mar 14 15:36:34 2022 +0100

        1.3.2

[FabianBeiner]

https://sourceforge.net/projects/ferdi.mirror/files/v5.8.1/

[rid]

Also posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31014222

Website went offline about 30 mins ago, repo and twitter are also gone. Looks like it's been hacked or pulled?

[FabianBeiner]

Sorry, I must have written my post while you submitted.

However, some people are answering on my Twitter thread as well: https://twitter.com/FabianBeiner/status/1514231334977388548

[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

[Riuaux]

Could be a "same password for all sites" kinda hacking issue? https://twitter.com/getferdi/status/1514338991419580420

[justforferdi]

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

PS: has the last push from 20h ago