[HN Gopher] Open Source Twitch for Developers
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       Open Source Twitch for Developers
        
       Author : selvan
       Score  : 134 points
       Date   : 2024-08-30 03:28 UTC (19 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | pzmarzly wrote:
       | Per Tigris Pricing[0]:
       | 
       | > While other cloud providers tax you for each GB of data
       | transferred, we don't. At Tigris, we don't charge for regional
       | data transfer, region-to-region data transfer, or data transfer
       | out to the internet (egress) in the majority of use cases.
       | However, if your bandwidth requirements are extraordinary, please
       | reach out to us at sales@tigrisdata.com to discuss your
       | requirements.
       | 
       | I wonder if a successful live video platform would count as
       | extraordinary usage, I would assume so.
       | 
       | [0] https://www.tigrisdata.com/docs/pricing/
        
         | PhilippGille wrote:
         | They seem to have partnered in the past, which sounds like
         | Tigris is on board with Algora's usage:
         | 
         | > Every time Tigris partnered with Algora for live media &
         | distribution we saw more developers try Tigris and experienced
         | increased inbound from prospective customers.
         | 
         | (from a testimonial by Tigris' CEO on
         | https://tv.algora.io/partner)
        
           | stanleykm wrote:
           | For now they havent had anyone build a successful
           | livestreaming site but they have had some punters try so
           | theyre happy to take the money.
        
             | ovaistariq wrote:
             | That depends on what you would qualify as successful :)
             | It's early days but AlgoraTV is seeing a lot of success in
             | my opinion. I am generally happy to support folks in
             | however way I can.
        
         | ovaistariq wrote:
         | Tigris CEO and co-founder here. Unless it is in tens of PB
         | range we don't count it as extraordinary. And even then the
         | goal is not to tax for bandwidth.
        
       | pzmarzly wrote:
       | The link points to the code, but for me the more interesting part
       | is the public instance. https://tv.algora.io/
        
         | bosky101 wrote:
         | https://tv.algora.io/docs/streaming/quickstart
        
       | drpossum wrote:
       | Titling this as "open source Twitch" makes me think this is
       | somehow related to twitch. Why not just say "open source
       | streaming platform for developers"?
        
         | croes wrote:
         | >open source streaming platform
         | 
         | Like Netflix?
         | 
         | Naming the comparable known service sets the expectations
         | straight.
         | 
         | But I wouldn't just it in the title for IP reasons.
        
           | prmoustache wrote:
           | The actual github repo has a different title: The interactive
           | livestreaming & video sharing service for developers.
        
             | croes wrote:
             | If you scroll down, but a the top it says Open source
             | Twitch for developers
        
           | drpossum wrote:
           | No, it doesn't. There's an important difference between
           | wording like open "source twitch" and "open source twitch-
           | like"
        
             | croes wrote:
             | To me Twitch was obviously used as a deonym.
        
           | jsnell wrote:
           | "Livestreaming" is an established term for this kind of
           | service that also naturally sets the right expectations.
        
         | CYR1X wrote:
         | What makes it specifically for developers? Why couldn't gamers
         | use this?
        
           | prmoustache wrote:
           | I don't think they couldn't but maybe they aren't targetting
           | that on purpose for various reasons.
        
           | giancarlostoro wrote:
           | I was wondering the same, maybe the goal is more features
           | specific to gamers? But I could see this being useful to more
           | than just programmer streamers.
        
       | prmoustache wrote:
       | The dependency on github is giving me pause. I think it is nice
       | to give the option for developpers to connect with github, but
       | local accounts should always be a possibility imho.
       | 
       | Also it is not clear from the readme if Tigris is a requirement
       | or if any S3 API compatible storage can be used. It doesn't seem
       | to be the case according to the environment variables given so I
       | find it strange that Tigris is even mentionned.
        
         | zcesur wrote:
         | Duly noted, we're probably going to add local accounts at some
         | point. For the time being, limiting to GitHub auth has been
         | really helpful to keep the platform focused on developers and
         | combat spam.
         | 
         | Any S3-compatible storage should work fine! That being said it
         | would require a lot more work to set it up as you also need to
         | worry about caching, replication, distribution etc. For a
         | livestreaming platform it's super important to ensure
         | livestreams are available globally to minimize latency for
         | viewers.
         | 
         | Tigris has all of this built-in, so it already behaves like a
         | CDN. It's what we use on https://algora.tv and we wanted to
         | make getting started as easy as possible for our contributors
         | and anyone who's looking to self-host.
        
           | prmoustache wrote:
           | Makes sense, thank you.
        
       | fedeb95 wrote:
       | would be interesting to have a local only instance, for use only
       | inside an organization. Will explore if it is possibile.
        
       | dindresto wrote:
       | In the fediverse, owncast is an established selfhosted solution
       | for livestreams with chat: https://owncast.online/
        
         | KronisLV wrote:
         | Didn't PeerTube also have some streaming functionality?
         | 
         | https://docs.joinpeertube.org/use/create-upload-video#publis...
         | 
         | I've used it for hosting videos only so far, but it's a lovely
         | piece of software.
        
       | construct0 wrote:
       | What's the relation with Twitch?
        
       | jonhohle wrote:
       | I've recently been streaming decompilation on Twitch[0]. I find
       | the intersection of gaming and tech enthusiasts nice (it's pretty
       | basic educational decomp and describing the mechanics of the
       | game).
       | 
       | Ultimately where are people going to watch and discover? Glad to
       | see interest in dev streaming.
       | 
       | 0 - https://m.twitch.tv/madeupofwires/home
        
       | zcesur wrote:
       | Creator of Algora here, thanks for sharing! This was a pleasant
       | surprise :) I posted about our Elixir bounties yesterday on
       | Reddit, and I was not expecting to see it on HN front page the
       | next day.
       | 
       | I've been building this since early this year. Over the past few
       | months, developers like Daniel Roe (Nuxt.com maintainer), Chris
       | Griffing, Andras Bacsai (Coolify.io maintainer) have been
       | livestreaming with Algora their coding sessions, office hours,
       | product launches, podcasts, and more.
       | 
       | Algora TV supports free multistreaming to Twitch, X, YouTube,
       | custom RTMPs [1] and aggregates live comments from these
       | platforms.
       | 
       | I chose to build Algora in Elixir because of a few reasons: 1)
       | Productivity gains from using Phoenix LiveView are unparalleled
       | as a solo developer 2) OTP is super helpful for handling complex
       | streaming pipelines. Things like multistreaming, mirroring chat
       | messages, capturing thumbnails etc. can fail at any time, and OTP
       | makes it easier to build fault-tolerant processes 3) BEAM
       | clustering allows distributing the system across multiple nodes
       | with ease, which helps reduce latency between streamers and
       | viewers.
       | 
       | As the sole maintainer of the project, I'd love to get your help
       | with improving Algora! If you're up for contributing, I've put up
       | a bunch of bounties [2] to prioritize some issues.
       | 
       | In any case, I'd love to hear from you if you have any feedback
       | or questions!
       | 
       | [1]: https://algora.tv/docs/streaming/multicast
       | 
       | [2]: https://algora.io/org/algora/bounties
        
       | ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
       | Why would I use this instead of something like streaming directly
       | on Twitch or YouTube? Since they also bring the audience it helps
       | to stream there.
       | 
       | There used to be a livecoding.tv back in the day which slowly
       | died out so I would love to have something like this but I don't
       | fully get why to use it.
        
         | bluefirebrand wrote:
         | Personally I think it would be useful to have "as well as"
         | Youtube and Twitch streams
         | 
         | Use the bigger established sites to find an audience, direct
         | them to your personal stream if they want to support you
         | without Twitch or YouTube taking a cut
        
         | prmoustache wrote:
         | You may want to not have your content disappear suddently if
         | for some reasons Twitch or Youtube decide unilateraly that they
         | want to get rid of your account. Ditto if at some point you
         | realise you don't want to be associated with them and want to
         | close your account. You would still have that place you control
         | where you can redirect people.
        
         | duskwuff wrote:
         | > There used to be a livecoding.tv back in the day which slowly
         | died out
         | 
         | For a bit of additional context:
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10486476
         | 
         | Anecdotally, they cold-emailed me in 2016 "looking for cool
         | projects developers are building", using an email address they
         | probably scraped from Github. Not a good sign when you're
         | resorting to spamming people to beg for content.
        
           | ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
           | Wow. Thanks for sharing this. I just had no idea or might
           | have just deleted this from my mind. Now I see why they died
           | out. I didn't know YC was involved so much.
        
         | zcesur wrote:
         | Most of our users multistream to Twitch, YouTube and X through
         | Algora! We also support aggregating live chat comments from
         | these platforms and embedding them on your screen, and more
         | recently, livestream monetization via in-video ads
        
       | solarkraft wrote:
       | Please stop directly referring to brands in your descriptions.
       | This is not Twitch. Maybe it's _like_ Twitch, but it is not
       | Twitch.
       | 
       | Not only is it confusing, it also gets you into hot water
       | legally.
        
         | jascha_eng wrote:
         | This isn't even close to twitch right? It's just a middle layer
         | to add ads to the stream without it being adblockable.
        
           | zcesur wrote:
           | You stream from your OBS directly to Algora, just like
           | Twitch. And we let you multistream to YouTube, X, Twitch just
           | like Restream.
           | 
           | The ads is a new feature, the cool thing is they don't
           | interrupt the stream and show across all platforms.
        
             | lolinder wrote:
             | > the cool thing is they don't interrupt the stream and
             | show across all platforms
             | 
             | This is probably the wrong approach to selling this
             | audience on an ads feature. A different approach that would
             | be equally true (I assume) would be:
             | 
             | "The cool thing is that since these ads are embedded in the
             | stream there's no tracking and no client-side JavaScript of
             | any kind--the ads are targeted at the content, not
             | individuals!"
        
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       (page generated 2024-08-30 23:01 UTC)