newsletter:2025 Spring edition

Welcome to the 2025 Spring edition of the FreeSewing newsletter.

Grab a drink, because this edition is no filler, all killer:

• 🎉 FreeSewing v4 was released today (1-minute read by Joost)
• 🤓 Announcing the new FreeSewing Studio (1-minute read by Joost)
• 👋 Bye bye Vercel/NextJS (1-minute read by Joost)
• 😟 Putting some distance between our users and the new US administration (2-minute read by Joost)
• 💬 Announcing the FreeSewing Forum (1-minute read by Joost)
• 🔐 FreeSewing as an OIDC provider (1-minute read by Joost)
• ✊ Don't Panic - Organize! (2-minute read by Joost)

Let's go.

 

 

 

 

🎉 FreeSewing v4 was released today

The next major version of FreeSewing, version 4, has been in the works for a while, and I really wanted to get it out the door before sending out this newsletter, so that's exactly what I did.

As this is a major version, there are breaking changes, but we've really kept it to a minimum. There's only one real breaking change:

• FreeSewing now requires NodeJS 20 or newer

In other words, we've dropped support for NodeJS 18, which will reach end of life at the end of next month.

A lot of work went into this new major release, especially in the realm of our frontend code, where we made a huge effort to make it more maintainable. This is the kind of thing that mostly happens under the hood, but will allow us to increase the project's volatility and shorten our (non-major) release cycle.

What this means is that everything's changed, and nothing has changed. I've compared it to your favorite restaurant moving across the street. It's a different building, different kitchen, different everything. But your favorite waitress is still there serving that same food you've know and love.

That, in a nutshell, is FreeSewing v4.

🤓 Announcing the new FreeSewing Studio

We have created a new standalone development environment named FreeSewing Studio. In practical terms, this means that we have replaced @freesewing/new-design with @freesewing/studio.

If you're unfamiliar, this is our development environment that people can use to generate FreeSewing designs. In v3, this development environment only supported a single design, and so new-design made sense.

Now in v4, our development environment not only ships with all FreeSewing designs on board, but you can add your own, and as many as you want.

In addition, it also integrates with the FreeSewing backend, so you do not only have access to all your measurements, you can also store your patterns in our backend, even from your custom designs.

To try it out yourself, run:

npx @freesewing/studio

👋 Bye bye Vercel/NextJS

We have been using NextJS for several years now for the FreeSewing frontends. However, as I mentioned in an earlier edition of this newsletter, Vercel (the company behind NextJS) has revoked their sponsorship. This was nothing against FreeSewing, they've revoked all open source plans, but without their sponsorships, the cost of hosting our websites on Vercel is rather steep, and it was not sustainable for us to stay with them.

Furthermore, Vercel is also increasingly tying NextJS to their hosted offering, making it harder to just go elsewhere.

Since documentation is a critical (and large) part of both our website for makers and developers, we've decided to migrate to Docusaurus, which is highly optimized for documentation, but flexible enough that we can still do all the more advanced stuff that we need.

To improve maintainability and facilitate code reuse between our websites and new studio, we've abstracted all of our frontend logic into various components in our new @freesewing/react package which now underpins all our frontends.

This was a huge effort, and we are lagging behind with developer documentation, which is something which we'll work on going forward.

Apart from that, I'm certain there will be some rough edges, but things should just work and if not, make sure to let us know.

😟 Putting some distance between our users and the new US administration

Part of the reason that we were only able to drag v4 over the finish line at the very last minute is that our planning was thrown into turmoil by the need to put distance between our user's data and the US administration.

I will talk about our reasons for doing so at the end of this newsletter. Here, I will instead focus on what we actually did.

Essentially, we have moved everything that is potentially sensitive to brand new infrastructure in Europe, using European companies, rather than US-based companies. Specifically:

• We've moved our backend systems from DigitalOcean in the US to Scaleway in Germany
• We've moved our software repositories from GitHub in the US to Codeberg in Germany
• We've moved our transactional email service from AWS in the US to Scaleway in Germany (ongoing)
• We have put a de-facto freeze on our Instagram account, and recommend you follow our accounts on freesewing.social, our Mastodon instance hosted in Germany.
• We have re-visited our choice to use Discord as the de-facto place for the FreeSewing community, and have instead decided that here too we would step both to safeguard the data of our users, as well as embrace the open web. So we've created a forum for the FreeSewing community (more on that below).
• While freesewing.org will continue to work as expected, we will henceforth use freesewing.eu as our main domain name.

All of these changes are already active, although some need some time to percolate to completion.

None of this will impact you as a user of the site. So, you may find this overkill. But people trust us with their data, and we feel a moral obligation to safeguard that data even from a potential adversarial administration in the US.

💬 Announcing the FreeSewing Forum

The idea that a good old forum would arguably be a better for for the FreeSewing community than the social network of the day is not new, it's something that has always held true.

However, we were always reluctant to take on the additional burden of operating/maintaining/managing/moderating such a forum, because, well there's only 24 hours in a day.

However, given the efforts we are making to keep our user's data out of the reach of the US administration, it felt like the time was right to do it.

And so we did. The official FreeSewing forum lives at forum.freesewing.eu and you can (and should) use your FreeSewing account for authentication.

It's a bit empty still, so don't be shy and come say hello.

🔐 FreeSewing as an OIDC provider

This is a bit of a nerdy sidebar, but to allow the forum to work with your FreeSewing account, we needed to adapt our backend and turn FreeSewing into an OpenID Connect (OIDC) provider.

This opens the door to sign in with your FreeSewing account functionality on any website, just as on our forum. We do not have any concrete plans for this, or rather, our own needs are met. But if you are interested in letting FreeSewing users sign in with their FreeSewing account (and for example access their measurements) then you can reach out to us to discuss.

✊ Don't Panic - Organize!

Last but not least, I want to talk about why we moved everything to Europe.

With everything that is going on right now — gestures vaguely in the direction of the current US administration — it's tempting to throw up our hands in despair, spend our days doomscrolling, or just check out somehow.

Unfortunately, that's not going to cut it for we are way into uncharted territory here.

I was born long after the end of the second world war, but still, my entire worldview along with everyone around me was shaped by what happened during and in the aftermath of the great war. The atrocities of the Nazi regime are not up for debate. My grandfather fought the Nazis in the trenches. I grew up mere miles away from the only place in Europe were resistance fighters were able to stop a train full of Jewish people on route to the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz. Some real evil stuff happened, and it happened right here where we live, to people who were still around when we grew up.

From their role in defeating the Nazi regime, to the Marshall plan to rebuild post-war Europe, our gratitude, appreciation, and yes admiration of the United States is something that was always there, unquestioned. You can't throw a stone around here without hitting a square named after an American President, a street named in honor of one of its military regiments, and so on. The US could do no wrong. Its status as an ally and the superpower we would be aligned with come what may, was something no sane person would question.

Today, just over two months into the second term of the Trump administration, everything is on the table. Nothing is sacred. Nobody knows how far things will unravel.

It is all very scary, so what do we do?

One of the houses on the street I used to live on had a large banner attached to the back of the house, facing the railroad that passes behind it. The banner protests a planned railroad extension, an extension that calls for the demolition of several houses on the street. I doubt many commuters know the reason that banner is there, because it doesn't explain any of this. Instead, it's a hand-drawn two-panel comic of a big fish chasing some small fish, only for the small fish to assemble in the shape of an even bigger fish in the next panel, and reverse the chase.

Now that I live in Antwerp, I pass that banner every time I commute to work, and I remain impressed by its simple yet effective and timeless message. You see, it's a powerful image on its own, but it really drives the point home with its companion slogan: Niet panikeren - Organiseren which translates as: Don't panic. Organize!

» Click here to see a picture of the banner

Things are wild right now. I do not know what will happen next, but I do know that I am not comfortable with the idea of having our user's data under the legislative reach of an administration that is increasingly authoritarian with a particular penchant to go after trans people, of which we count many among our users.

A lot of people voted for President Trump. Realistically, several of you did too. I am certain you had your reasons, and those reasons are valid. The vote is sacred. You do you.

But if — like me — you are rather worried about everything that is happening right now, I hope you will not panic, but instead organize.

joost