mochela.it is an experimental project: a self-managed, independent server for mail, messaging and video conferencing, tried out by a small group of people, by invitation. It is not a company and sells nothing: it is a piece of free infrastructure, built only with free software, for those who think the net should belong to the people who use it.
Resilient
Three nodes, in three countries, with three different providers. If one breaks down or its provider shuts, the others carry on, and the lost node is rebuilt somewhere else.
Private
Connections always encrypted, a website that does not record who visits it, no cookies. Mail can be locked with a key that is not on the server.
European
Only providers in the European Union, under European privacy law, away from the surveillance laws of other countries. And only free software.
The code is public
Everything that runs mochela.it, that is the server configuration (Ansible playbooks), the scripts and the step-by-step operations guide, is free software, published here, on our own server, with no third-party platform. You can read it, check it and reuse it to set up a server like this one.
Published while it is being developed: what is still missing is listed in the README, under Known gaps. Written largely with an AI assistant, under the direction of the person who runs mochela: how it was made. Code under the AGPL-3.0 licence, texts under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Why
The internet was born open: public protocols, servers run by anyone, programs you can read and change. Today most mail, messaging and meetings go through a few large providers, with closed programs and rules decided elsewhere. mochela.it tries to do the opposite, with the values of free software:
- Free software, everywhere. Every program running here can be used, studied, changed and shared. No black boxes.
- Open standards. Mail with IMAP, SMTP and OpenPGP, chat with SimpleX, video conferencing in the browser with WebRTC: you use the programs you like, and you can leave whenever you want, taking your data with you.
- Transparency. How it is built, and what it cannot do, is written on this website. The complete server configuration is published as free software.
- Many servers, not one big one. A network made of many small, different servers is sturdier, and depends on no one in particular.
mochela.it aims to be one of those servers. It is not the solution, it is a piece of it: 10, 100, 1000 servers. How to take part.
In Europe, by choice
Where data is stored decides which laws protect it. mochela.it keeps everything in the European Union: here privacy is a fundamental right, and getting hold of this data takes a European judge. Data entrusted to American companies, on the other hand, can be demanded by United States authorities wherever the servers are. Why in Europe.
What is being tested
- Mail active
@mochela.itmailboxes, which you can encrypt with your own OpenPGP key. Mail - Checks and backups active
the nodes check each other every five minutes; encrypted copies on disks kept offline. - Messaging active
two SimpleX servers, to chat with no phone number and no user name. How to use it - Video calls active
meetings in the browser with Galène, no app and no account for invited guests; recorded only if the organiser says so beforehand. How they work
The name
Mochela is Milanese dialect. A word rarely heard these days, it means "knock it off", "stop it", "daghen un tai": cut it short.
It is not an elegant name, and that is on purpose. It is what you say to someone who keeps doing something they should have stopped doing. Here it is aimed at one precise idea: that an infrastructure should depend on a single provider, in a single country, which one day can pull the plug with no trial. Mochela: that's enough, cut it.
Contact
To write encrypted or to report a problem: contact.