I’m currently building an open source Kbin/Lemmy clone that will eventually replace the Kbin software at kglitch.social. It is still in very early stages of development so I expect the current Kbin setup will continue unchanged for about another 6 months. Maybe longer. There is no need to immediately move.
The new system is written in Python, using the Flask framework and a MySQL/PostgreSQL database. It’s code is simple and clean with few dependencies making it easy to deploy and maintain. The code will be accessible enough to new and intermediate developers that they can contribute productively with only a small familiarization effort.
The UI design draws inspiration from old.reddit, current reddit, kbin and lemmy, in that order. The issues around onboarding and discoverability are top of mind.
Rather than aiming for massive scale and cloud deployment (and all the complexity and cathedral code that come with that) it will be for small to medium servers. This will help keep the system simple and friendly.
The codebase is still too young for others to get involved - I’m still laying the foundations that will set the tone for how to proceed. Once it starts to become more real I’ll share more about it.