Modern Day PioneerFrequently asked questions
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What do you do?
A family gathers its photos, recordings, videos and stories in one application, connects them to the people and places they belong to, and produces a family history that anyone can open in a web browser, with no internet connection, no special software and no account. The aim is for it to stay usable for decades; no technology can guarantee that, so the design focuses on reducing the risks rather than claiming to remove them.
What this project is not.
The project has one focus: telling a family’s story. Some things are deliberately left to other tools, so that the work stays focused enough to deliver a useful first solution. Bringing content in from those tools is still a goal, wherever that is practical.
It is not a family history research tool. Many established tools already help people search records and trace their ancestors. This project starts from what a family already has and knows.
It is not a family tree or genealogy viewer. A family tree can be part of the story, but it is only a small part of a person’s life. The focus is on the photos, voices and stories that show who people were and how they lived.
It is not about public figures or fictional characters. It is designed for telling the stories of groups of people, above all families, whether by birth or by choice. Individual family members can be highlighted, but it is not built for reporting on public figures or invented characters.
Is it free? Is it open source?
Yes. Modern Day Pioneer is free to use, and its source code is open to everyone under the Apache License 2.0, a widely used open-source license.
In plain words, the license lets anyone:
- use the app for free, at home or at work;
- read, copy and change the source code;
- share the app, or their own changed version, with others.
In return, anyone who shares it must keep the copyright and license notice with it and note any changes they made. The app is provided “as is,” without warranty. We work to make it reliable, but no software can promise to be free of problems.
Your family’s content stays yours. The license covers the app’s code, not the photos, recordings and stories you put into it.