Securepub is a proof of concept built by a career software developer seeking to build meaningful things in the hope of encouraging people to build applications where users retain control over their data.
After years of working on "backend" technologies, the author was inspired by Elm ↗︎ to learn how to write frontend applications. At first they didn't have a specific application in mind but they recalled helping connect FreeBSD webservers with Solaris databases back in 1998 at an early social network known as eCircles ↗︎. eCircles was an advertising-sponsored business that provided a free service for friends and family members to share simple things like todo lists with each other.
When a family member told them about helping the California Air Resources Board ↗︎ (CARB) exchange compliance documents with commercial harbor craft operators whose technical resources were limited, they thought CARB could make it easier for commercial operators if a simple to use service like eCircles was available.
Unfortunately eCircles enabled private sharing without encryption, in essence offering privacy without security. While users could only access data from other members in their private "circle", the eCircles software wasn't open source and users had no way to verify their information was kept secure.
Later when the author discovered Userbase ↗︎ they thought it would be a good platform for a secure private collaboration service and in the summer of 2023 decided to make Securepub︎. The collaboration features were also motivated by friends︎' job search experiences and the author's desire to have a secure way to share and discuss a confidential RFD 151 ↗︎ portfolio with recruiters and potential employers.