About

oblak is an online platform that brings together the best open source apps so you can enjoy online freedom.

Our goal is to make sure that you, your friends and your family can have reliable, easy and private conversations where ever you may be in the world.

To make this happen we host an integrated suite of open source apps that are based on federated protocols. With these apps you can chat, call, mail and collaborate on documents and media. To learn more about the apps we support visit the Apps section.

The history of oblak

Around 2016 Eddie collaborated with another anonymous engineer on a platform that allowed small businesses to use open source apps to run their operations. However, due to lack of interest by these businesses Eddie and his partner decided to change course. Eddie registered the domain oblak.be in 2018 to repurpose the platform. He was looking for a name that's easy to remember while it also means something. oblak means cloud in Serbian.

Since then the platform caters to individual users (not businesses) that are fed up with being big tech product. At oblak your data is not being collected, sold or abused in any other way.

Eddie strongly believes that eating your own dogfood makes your dogfood better. Until 2021 it was impossible for visitors to create an account themselves, so they had to send an email to Eddie to get access to the platform. From 2021 onward oblak people could sign up easily for an account themselves and enjoy all the apps.

Around 2024 Eddie was joined by Eddi (yes, two Eddi(e)'s, what a coincidence). Together they continue to develop oblak to make it the most useful and exciting cloud platform on the internet.

The operations team

The oprerations team is responsible for operating the platform.

They manage the hardware, networks and software to ensure smooth sailing. If you are curious how it works, or want to help out, use Element to join our Matrix room #social:oblak.be and introduce yourself.

If you are having technical issues with the platform, you can request support via email at operations[at]oblak.be

Our philosophy

Most people are used to an internet dominated by giant corporations, and unknowingly they sell themselves (their most sensitive data) to be able to use the internet. If you warn them for this, a lot of them say "I don't care, I have nothing to hide", but if you dig deeper this is a coping mechanism. They just work with whatever is available because the knowledge and tools to have a dignified experience are lacking.

We believe that people without (much) technical skills should not be the victim of the data economy that has emerged since the internet bubble. It's not because the majority of people is unable to self-host or to figure out how to use PGP encryption, that they don't deserve privacy online. Privacy is still a basic human right that should be honored.

Since the internet became mainstream and the word "cloud" was coined it has become increasingly centralized, censored and silo'd. This comes with a lot of risks:

• Big platforms often suffer data breaches, and regular people can become the victims of phishing, extortion and identity theft
• Unethical advertising companies influence people into unhealthy behaviors like self-harm, bad financial decisions and the likes
• Intelligence agencies running subversion campaigns can spread fear and destabilize communities
• Apps with weak privacy settings can be abused for espionage and threaten a country's national security
• Journalists and whistle-blowers that try to inform the public are often sacrificed by platforms in the name of business continuity

To reduce these risks we think that is very important to promote a free, decentralized and federated internet outside of the strict control of governments and large corporations. We are not anarchists, we don't think there should be no government and we are not communists that want to ban all corporations. We believe in balance and harmony between all the players, communities, governments and small and larger businesses. We believe that for humanity to thrive that access to information should be easy and cheap.

We think the best internet services are designed according to the following three principals:

The internet service does not ask for sensitive personal information

You can sign up for the service without having to share your name, nationality, sex, race or other sensitive information.

Not collecting sensitive data is the best way to secure it. If the service is legally obligated to perform certain checks on its users, the service should:

• perform the checks themselves (no outsourcing to third parties), to mimize the potential for data leaks.
• make use of zero knowledge proofs (a cryptographic technique that proves a statement is true. For example "is the person above 18 years old?").
• do not store the information beyond the duration of the check.

The internet service is federated

The service can be used by signing up any provider supporting the protocol.

For example, if you sign up with a provider that supports Matrix (the chat protocol that Oblak supports), you can chat with anyone that has signed up with another provider that also supports Matrix (like Unredacted or TCHNCS). This way a you are not forced to use a specific provider with a bad terms of service in order to be using the network.

The opposite happens when you sign up with the centralized WhatsApp platform. Then you can only communicate with other WhatsApp users and there is only one provider to choose from.

This can be a problem: imagine the provider blocks you from its platform, while all your contacts are there. Or your government decides to block access to the provider, so that no one in your country can use the platform. Centralized platforms are easy targets for extortion and submission.

The internet service supports end-to-end encryption

The service allows you to enable end-to-end encryption to protect the content of your data.

End-to-end encryption is a technique where the data is encrypted locally on the device of the user, before it is transfered to the service. This way even the service operator can not decrypt the data.

This comes with the caveats that if the user loses the encryption keys, the provider can not help to restore the data. A very old method of enabling E2EE for email is by using PGP (pretty good privacy). However, due to its complexity it is mostly only used by experts.

Reasons to register for an oblak account

A few reasons for creating an oblak account:

• You love open source software but find it hard to install and maintain it yourself.
• You are part of a community and you need a place to meet online.
• You own cryptocurrency but find it frustrating that you barely can buy services with it.
• You are tired of all the advertising, AI slop or spam making its way to your inbox or chat app.
• You have friends and family in countries where the commercial messaging platforms are banned.

If you recognize yourself in these reasons, don't hesitate to go ahead and register

Projects we support

oblak doesn't exist in a vacuum, we support and enjoy also other internet projects that share similar values. If you like what we do, make sure you also check out following projects: