Advisory:
Please do not harass anybody who was involved in Artemis, no matter what. Everyone’s got their own lives going on and nobody knows the full extent behind actions or lack thereof. If any does occur, we vehemently condemn it without question.
Let’s get straight to the point:
@Lilkev and I (@w8l) are formally stepping down as moderators of the Artemis app communities (Discord, Matrix, and kbin), due to a lack of communication from project lead and founder @hariette.
Many people in the Artemis community have been patient and understanding of the lack of activity, ever since a prior period of radio silence was justified by Hariette saying that she was recovering from chronic pain. However, this has gone on for long enough that the official Artemis Camp instance has failed over and never recovered. This is a problem for Artemis app users, since it is the only instance that is supported. We are also unable to continue performing our duties as moderators in the Camp instance as a result. This effectively means that the entire project is dead.
We also want to deeply apologise for not pushing open-sourcing the application code sooner. The original rationale for not doing so immediately (according to Hariette) was a fear of showing poor quality code in public. In hindsight, bad quality code in the open would’ve been preferable to nothing at all; this would’ve allowed the app to continue in some form in an event like this. And even if the project remained active, the code quality would’ve likely improved with contributions anyways.
Multiple attempts at communication from us and the rest of the OG squad, both publicly and privately, have occurred with the founder to no avail.
We advise moving to directly using kbin or mbin on web, using Lemmy with its many clients, or supporting Lunar for iOS. Lunar is a Lemmy client currently in the process of implementing support for the kbin/mbin API and is already open-source, so it is considerably less likely to meet the same fate as Artemis. There is a kbin community for Lunar at m/lunar on the main kbin instance.
The journey was great while it lasted, but all journeys come to an end. We hope to see you all somewhere else, on some other day…
Will the API be opened on Kbin.social prior to the release of your mobile app, so that other app developers also have a chance to try it out before there’s an “official” solution? I feel strongly that having a single developer in control of the only client is going to end up with a lot of people waiting and possibly being disappointed again. Much better to let people experiment early and have several available options.
The API will be made publicly available in the coming days. Essentially, everything is ready except for one technical issue where I need Piotr’s assistance, but he is currently quite busy. However, I’m trying to resolve it as quickly as I can.