Mozilla discontinues support for Mozilla Hubs (but the open source Hubs Community Edition continues) – Ryan Schultz

Housekeeping Notice: Today is the first of 12 consecutive Mondays I dedicate to research days while working full-time as an academic librarian at the University of Manitoba. During this time, I finally got around to getting two long-delayed tasks done.

1. We update and reorganize the list of social VR, virtual worlds and metaverse platforms (we add new platforms as we write on the blog).
2. We’re updating and reorganizing a more detailed spreadsheet, a comparison chart of social VR platforms (here’s a direct link to a read-only copy of that spreadsheet).

Of these two, I decided to immediately start working on the second project, one I haven’t worked on since 2019 (but I’d like to thank Dr. Fran Babcock for some updates to this spreadsheet in 2021). This task long It is overdue, and the spreadsheet contains many entries from the Metaverse platform that have since been shut down.

• AltspaceVR, which closed nearly a year ago, on March 10, 2023;
• NeosVR announced via its Discord server on September 21, 2023 that most of its software development team had officially parted ways with CEO Karel Hulec (the departed employees are now working on a new social VR platform called Resonite);
• Tivoli Cloud VR (closed on February 20, 2022) is a social VR platform based on the original open source code of High Fidelity, a company led by Philip Rosedale that closed in 2019 with Metaverse Platforms and chose to . Refocuses on the company’s spatial audio technology. However, two other social VR platforms that use HiFi’s codebase, Vircadia and Overte, are still running, at least when I last checked!
• Helios, an Unreal-based social VR platform that was actually coming and going before I even had a chance to add it to my spreadsheet!

But the saddest service closure this month occurred when Mozilla announced it in a blog post on February 15, 2024.

On February 13, 2024, Mozilla announced an organization-wide restructuring affecting multiple products within Mozilla Corporation. Unfortunately, Hubs is one of the affected products and is scheduled for retirement later this year. This is a multi-month process with three members of the Hubs team overseeing the transition.

We look forward to spending more time reflecting on the overall history of the Hubs project, where we succeeded, where we fell short, our feelings about the ending, and Hubs’ overall legacy. However, as we have received so much love after hearing this sad news, our only goal for now is to support you. Over the past 6 years...

We hope that Hubs will have a vibrant life outside of Mozilla, but there are many Hubs that will be shut down due to the shutdown. These include: Hub Demo Server (hubs.mozilla.com) and Managed SubscriptionsThese are two services actively maintained by Mozilla that most users rely on.

Last October, Mozilla announced its decision to discontinue its Hubs Cloud hosting service, which runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Instead, the company announced Hubs Cloud Community Edition.

The Community Edition is designed to allow developers to deploy the entire Hub stack on any Linux-based infrastructure, including AWS, Google Cloud, and your computer. Just as Hubs Cloud mimics the way the Hubs team runs servers managed by Mozilla, Community Edition mimics the infrastructure our team uses for our managed subscription service. Community Edition uses Kubernetes, a containerized software orchestration system, to simplify and automate much of the complex deployment process.

The obvious benefit of a solution like Community Edition is that it gives developers more choices for hub hosting. A less obvious advantage is that it provides greater flexibility when handling significant updates to your hosting platform. In the past, when there was a major update to the AWS platform, Hubs Cloud developers had to wait for our team to release a new version of the AWS launch configuration. Community Edition removes this limitation.

Unlike Hubs Cloud, Community Edition saturated The hub is stacked and comfortably navigates cloud hosting platforms. We will provide examples and instructions on how to host Community Edition, but we will not specify the underlying hosting platform as we did with AWS for Hubs Cloud. Community Edition users are responsible for researching, evaluating, and staying informed about available hosting options.

Setting up Community Edition requires more effort than many current Hubs Cloud customers may be accustomed to. However, we believe this direction best empowers the developer community. Many of you have already chosen to bootstrap and self-host your codebase instead of using Hubs Cloud. We hope that the Community Edition can provide a simpler approach to achieving your goals.

In a February 15 announcement, Mozilla stated that Hubs Cloud’s sunset plans and schedule have not changed. The company has already discontinued support for Hubs Cloud on AWS starting January 1, 2024, but existing Hubs Cloud instances won’t It will automatically terminate as described in the FAQ section of the October 2023 announcement.

Starting January 1, 2024, support for Hubs Cloud on AWS will be discontinued. Existing Hubs Cloud instance won’t It automatically ends on January 1st. On that date, we will remove the Hubs Cloud listing from AWS Marketplace, disabling new sign-ups. Existing customers will then have at least 90 days to migrate to another Hubs service before their Hubs Cloud subscription ends. The earliest your subscription will end is March 30th…

Developers can continue to use their subscriptions and manually maintain instances until Hubs Cloud is completely removed from AWS Marketplace (at the earliest possible March 30, 2024). Given the volatility of current Hubs Cloud instances, it is difficult to predict whether AWS platform updates released after January 1 will impact current Hubs Cloud customers. Many customers whose instances were created years ago may not have kept their code up to date with released updates. However, if you have AWS development experience, there is no reason why you can’t manually fix these issues yourself to continue using your existing instances.

We are currently developing tools to automate the data migration process from existing Hubs Cloud instances to Community Edition and Managed Subscription instances. These tools may vary by platform, but are expected to be released before January 1st. Stay tuned by joining our Discord server and checking out the #community-edition channel!

Here’s the shutdown timeline that Mozilla provided in a February 2024 blog post:

• March 1, 2024: Creating new subscriptions is disabled. Existing subscriptions can continue to use instances until full termination is complete. The demo server continues to function normally.
• April 1, 2024: A tool to download your data is coming soon. Demo users and subscribers can start downloading data.
• May 31, 2024: Existing subscription instances and demo servers will be turned off. All community resources and platforms operated by Mozilla will also be turned off.

Going by this timeline, it looks like the official Mozilla Hubs Discord server will also be shutting down on May 31st (But I just posted a question on that Discord to check that assumption, and I’ll report back.). I’m also a bit concerned that all the links to join the Mozilla Hubs Discord server in the February 15th blog post are giving me an error, but I’ve created a new invite link here (I reported the issue to Discord.):

So all this means that Hub users will have to make some difficult decisions over the next few months as the sunset date approaches. However, in the future it looks like the hub will continue to be an open source, community-run initiative. Mozilla says in its sunset blog post:

Hubs’ code is open source, This means it can have a life outside of Mozilla as well. Following the announcement (February 15th), many former Hubs team members returned to our Discord server to remind the community: The Hub was built with life outside of Mozilla in mind.. The project’s commitment to open source and focus on a self-hosted version of the Hub means that no one entity can decide the future of Hubs. Only this community can do that.

And there is already precedent (with varying degrees of success!) for moving metaverse platforms from corporate to community-run (as seen with High Fidelity-born Tivoli Cloud VR, Vircadia, and Overte). I wish the Mozilla team and the Hubs community all the best during this transition period and look forward to participating in the Hubs Community Edition.

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