Owncast Newsletter November 2026
A newsletter about the developers and users of Owncast, an FOSS streaming server built with the Fediverse in mind.
In This Issue
A Note From The Editor
No surprise, when I work on the newsletter, the editor's note is always the final part I write. That likely shouldn't come as a surprise; an editor's forward in a magazine exists to set the tone for the rest of the content or to discuss something about the broader or deeper themes in the community or culture. It's also a place to remark on the state of the publication itself.
Which is why it's very amusing to me to have hustled through these two features only to wonder to myself...didn't I start writing the first Owncast Newsletter in November? Is the newsletter turning two?! No, friends. The newsletter is turning three. Our first edition was December 2023, which I started in November 2023. And so, completely unremarked in my mad schedule of projects, as I sit here at the ungodly hour of 00:45 to get things wrapped up before a work trip, it dawns on me I've kept this going for 3 years now.
Every newsletter has been its own, crazy little hill to climb, and clearly I've lost count. My sincerest thanks to everyone who's read it over these 3 years. In this time, we've promoted and documented a genuine growth in independent streaming, seen Owncast and its related apps mature, and seen wonderful new experiments in content and community form.
I'm likely to take off the festive period of December, so thanks again, and onward into 2027!
On with the newsletter. We have some serious talk about the role of funding and sponsorship in Owncast, and then we've got a feature of a streamer who's become one of my favorite late night TV companions.
Owncast Loses DigitalOcean Sponsorship
It's often hard to talk about money in open source software. There's a sort of mythologized history of FOSS as vast collective of hackers and power users, each of them giving a small piece of their efforts to make something much larger possible. And, while there is truth within the myth, the myth overstates the number of critical central actors in any FOSS project, and it skips over the fact that machines need to run and hackers need to eat, and so all those community contributions have some sort of direct or indirect sponsorship involved. If you're reading this and thinking "Well, my project has no financial sponsors. I just work on it in my spare time," then...I do hate to editorialize, but your project's financial sponsor is you.
And so, I'm sad to reiterate what is now 6 weeks old news, but Owncast has been dealt a serious blow in the pocketbook, as DigitalOcean has ended its Open Source Credits Program. Through that program, Owncast had established the vast majority of the project infrastructure on DigitalOcean. This isn't just project internals, but critical public-facing things like the new project website, the Owncast Channel, and the Owncast Directory.
According to Owncast founder Gabe Kangas over chat, the cost comes out to approximately $150 a month. That's not massive piles of money, so the Owncast lights will stay on in the short term, but it's also genuinely important to know that, in addition to the massive gifts of his time Gabe gives (and I happen to know he has previously lived off of his savings to maximize the time he could work on Owncast), this is a new "forever bill" he's being asked to carry.
This is why it's important to talk about money in FOSS. If it's not part of the conversation, it can't be in the community response. After nearly 30 years in FOSS myself, I've heard (and said) this myself so many times – "I want to contribute but I'm not able to contribute code to this project, so I don't know what to do." Friends, if you really love a small FOSS project and see it doesn't have some sort of big institutional support...sending money is a way to contribute. Even $1 could mean a lot. The Owncast Directory shows about 70 channels live at any one point. $2 from each channel could cover this loss.
Owncast can receive community financial support through Owncast's new donations page, where you can also see the current state of the project's financial support. You can give one time or set up recurring donations. Let's help do our part to keep Owncast funded by the people who use it so it hurts less when a large institutional partner chooses to withdraw support.
Featured Streamer: The Old Timey Computer Show
It'll come as no surprise that, as one of the maintainers of Owncasts For Roku, I keep an eye on the channel count in the "Now Live" row and periodically leaf through the entries on there. I've gotten a decent working knowledge of the 24/7 streams as a result, and when a new-ish one catches my eye, I'll typically check it out for a bit and drop by here and there to get a sampling of its programming. It's hard to maintain 24/7 content, especially as an indie streamer, so there's a general set of genres I see...music, online versions of radio/TV stations, cam streams, and sometimes information services. It's pretty rare to find one that has a variety of programming, let alone one that has an overarching concept and vision.
The Old Timey Computer Show (OTCS) is one such of these rare breeds, though. Creator Gong Xian (who is better known online as The Opponent) produces it in a manner similar to a standard linear TV station, with a repeating 8-hour block of programming, a published daily schedule, and rules regarding repetition of content. Indeed, it's quite likely that OTCS is the most lovingly hand-crafted 24/7 stream in the Owncast ecosystem, boasting a hand-charted 350 day schedule. "The challenge that takes the most time is charting the schedule," The Opponent explained to me over email. "It takes weeks to chart the schedule, as I have to ensure that continuous series are played in order and certain subjects don't get shown too frequently."
As the name of the stream might already imply, the stock in trade of OTCS is historical videos about computers and related technology. There's a long history of this content, from TV shows to instructional videos to trade materials to ephemera. In the era before cheap and ubiquitous online video, these materials were essential to getting the word out about a technology or product; these were physical media video, and their preservation is a historical service. Preservation without presentation is incomplete, though, and this is where something like OTCS comes in. "The ultimate purpose of preserving [these videos] is to make sure they can be seen at all," The Opponent said. "The efforts of the people who find and preserve this material cannot be overstated"..."Even then, much of what they upload only gets seen by people seeking it out, and that's a privilege only enjoyed by videos of high-interest topics related to the largest names in technology and video games."
The OTCS scheduling and streaming is managed through Mr. OTCS, an open source project inspired by a digital signage project The Opponent knew well from his professional life. The software handles the playlist management, scheduling, encoding, and publishing of a programming guide. If you're looking to assemble your own 24/7 "TV station style" stream, this might be of interest! Otherwise, the Owncast stream is running on a standard Owncast server. The Opponent mentioned to me making some source modifications to provide a custom "stream is offline" video, but the server software is otherwise stock.
One particular interesting thing to learn while I was emailing with The Opponent is that OTCS began as a Twitch project that later transitioned to Owncast. Due to a proliferation of blatant TV/movie piracy streams, Twitch cracked down heavily on the unattended 24/7 stream format, and unfortunately, creative works like OTCS were hit by the hammer. This is, of course, the challenge with streaming on someone else's platform – they make the rules, and the rules change.
The Opponent migrated to Owncast after Twitch delivered the final strike; fortunately, much of the audience moved with. Unfortunately, while the audience has held, it hasn't grown. One of the bigger challenges with Owncast streams is social discoverability. OTCS was able to grow a viewer base on Twitch via the "raid" feature; OTCS was a raid destination for vaporwave artists and other personalities with large audiences. On Owncast, "The only means to grow the channel now is word of mouth," The Opponent explained. "I still occasionally find a former viewer of the Twitch channel unaware that it was closed down and moved to a new location."
Hopefully, I've done enough to pique your curiostiy. OTCS has definitely moved into the favorites row on my Roku. Check it out for yourself; the content is widely varied both in style and in language, there's something new almost every day, and sometimes you really just want to satisfy nostalgia or set the vibes. It's a treat to get to revisit this content the way it was intended to be experienced.
Closing Remarks
This newsletter is something done with love by a single person, but it tries to reflect back a community I find important. I don't have help locating events, building a calendar, or even getting quotes for the articles. I rely extensively on people in the community sharing their announcements and stories with me. Please, if you want to see something in the newsletter, get in touch with me. I might just decide to release an edition because of what you bring to me.
Additionally, if you'd like to help build the social fabric of the Owncast community, please consider checking out the #owncast-community channel on Matrix or the Owncast community on Lemmy.
Until then, be good to each other and keep the streams running!