Generally, software development happens on “forges” like Github, that are online and accessible to decentralized teams of developers. In environments where accessing the internet is difficult or dangerous, software developers can work offline on an application’s source code downloaded from an online forge. However, without a standard offline method to transfer and sync all of the information about how the code was developed, software developers working offline don’t have access to information about vulnerabilities that have already been addressed and added to the current version of the codebase. Any development that happens offline in these situations is inherently less secure.
The Friendly Forge Format (F3), an Open File Format for storing the information about current state-of and changes-to-date about a software project, fills this gap. It will allow developers working in regions where using the internet is dangerous to set up self-contained, self-sustainable development environments with the full knowledge and experience of the project’s global community.
