In a sense, federation is an attempt to provide online services while restoring the old decentralized structure of the web. Yet, MediaGoblin’s intent is to go further than what has existed before, with search across all federated sites, including the ability to choose between multiple meanings of words in search filters.

Nicholson suggests that federation is a preferred alternative to that available from projects like Friendi.ca, which offers to return control to users by giving them a new site from which to control all the large centralized sites.

Although she finds Friendi.ca useful, Nicholson adds that, “I don’t think it’s the whole solution. It would be great for people to have lots of things to choose from, but there aren’t. There’s a couple. Most people think of one big site that they go to for all their hosting. What’s important now is that there should be multiple places where you can find media.”

In many ways, federation is central to the entire concept of MediaGoblin. For this reason, Nicholson and Webber emphasize it when discussing the project...