A free and open 💕 Small Web SaaS platform for Kitten-based apps.
Getting started
Running your own Catalyst instance involves setup in three areas:
For organisations to serve individuals
Organisations can use Catalyst to make Small Web apps easily accessible to their communities.
The nature of the service provided can be:
A commercial activity
Our not-for-profit Small Technology Foundation is planning on charging ~€12/month for small web places on small-web.org in order to fund ongoing development of Kitten, Catalyst, Yarn, and our other work. We encourage other micro organisations to do the same and have tried to make Catalyst as simple as possible to set up for this purpose.
For the public good, funded by public money
A municipality, for example, could provide free Small Web places to its citizens via tokens. Small Technology Foundation actually prototyped such a system with the City of Ghent a few years ago.
A hyperlocal or more personal initiative
Providing Small Web apps/sites for your neighbourhood or your own family via a private instance.
Individuals can use a Catalyst instance to set up their own Small Web place without any technical knowledge.
Small Web places
A Small Web place is a personal Kitten site/app hosted on its own server. The server is owned and controlled by the owner of the site/app.
A Small Web place is reachable at a Web Number.
Apps
Catalyst installs Small Web apps and sites written for Kitten.
By limiting to scope to apps written in Kitten we enable the following properties:
Generation of a secret and an identity that only the person who owns the site being commissioned knows, which they can use both within the app they’re installing and to administer their hosting relationship with the Catalyst instance of their Small Web host (e.g., to cancel their subscription, etc.)
The identity is useful when creating peer-to-peer Small Web sites/apps like Yarn.
Integrated server administration functionality in the Small Web app via server-to-server communication between the Small Web host and the person’s Small Web place.
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Small Technology Foundation is a tiny, independent not-for-profit.
We exist in part thanks to patronage by people like you. If you share our vision and want to support our work, please become a patron or donate to us today and help us continue to exist.