Hello everyone. I can’t believe DotShare has been around for almost 7 years now! We’re happy to see submissions still coming in, even if it’s only a handful a month. Looking towards the future, we’ve started thinking about what a DotShare 2.0 would be and what would serve the community the best.

I think this discussion starts with the question: “What is the goal of DotShare?” In our mind, it’s to provide inspiration for customizing *nix setups.

With that said, our current thoughts are to move away from files and specific programs, the reasoning being twofold. First, most people find it easier to host their dot files on git(Hub). Second, moderating and surfacing submissions per program is unreasonable given how large the ecosystem is for even one category. Also, submitting each program in an entire setup is cumbersome and increases friction to sharing.

So where do we go from here? We think a design that focuses more on sharing complete setups and relies on third party services for distributing files would encourage more to share while utilizing the existing services people are already using.

Well, those are just our thoughts. The main reason for this post is that we’re interested in hearing yours! Let us know in the comments what you like and dislike about the current site and what you’d like to see in a DotShare 2.0.

Lastly, thank you to everyone who has contributed over the years making DotShare what it is today!