4 ms·

I feel like I want to strongly agree on this sentiment but what is the concrete point here? What should be the focus of projects like these??

throwanem 9y ago
Not OP. But the argument seems to be: Start by being maximally useful to one person. When you have enough people using your software that they want to use it together, that's the time to start investing a lot of effort in helping them do so.
- TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
  The Wordpress model - only better? Put together a distro with a complete solution - mail server, web server, media and social servers. Make it one-click easy to set up. Keep security tight. Maybe do some deals with cheap hosting providers. Then federate and connect.
  - worldsayshi 9y ago
    > Put together a distro I think this is kind of a good point. It's too hard to set up these 'solves-one-thing-well'-suits to work together in the right way. Having collections of services that are super simple to set up and works well together is probably a good way to do it. Like one media platform, one search engine, one social platform. Or perhaps having a couple of alternatives but having integrations in between up and running in a plug and play way. Then again, if you want all this to work in a decentralised fashion you probably have to think about how to achieve that early on.
  - edraferi 9y ago
    Isn't that what Sandstorm[1] was trying to do? It was a very cool project, but got hung up on enterprise sales and ran out of steam. [1] https://sandstorm.io/ https://sandstorm.io/
    - ar-jan 9y ago
      And still is a very cool project, just moving a bit slower now. I just moved my calendar from a large email provider to a self-hosted Radicale server on Sandstorm (syncing with Thunderbird, and DAVDroid on my phone). Small steps, but it was surprisingly easy.
    - cheshire_cat 9y ago
      MediaGoblin is available through Sandstorm: https://apps.sandstorm.io/app/70awyqss6jq2gkz7dwzsnvumzr07256pzdt3hda9acfuxwh6uh7h https://apps.sandstorm.io/app/70awyqss6jq2gkz7dwzsnvumzr0725...
  - coreyp_1 9y ago
    Oddly enough, this is what I was trying to do with my Defiant project (http://BeDefiant.io http://BeDefiant.io). I wanted it to be a one-step installation framework to combat proprietary systems (better description on the website). The bad news is that I am the only person working on it, and while I am an experienced developer, I am also a grad student. In other words it is not ready for production at all. I have presented it to quite a few people for the purpose of finding help in the development, and everyone thinks it's a good idea, but everyone also wants to see a finished version of it before seriously considering helping out. Unfortunately, I can only work on Defiant in my free time, so developing the basic functionality is steady, but slow, progress.
    - throwanem 9y ago
      I love the motivation, but this is way too generic - I don't see anything that distinguishes it, for this use case or honestly for any other, from any other JS application framework I might choose, and there are a lot of other ones out there that are much more thoroughly baked than this one. (Another way to say this might be "it's a good idea, but I want to see a finished version of it before seriously considering helping out.") Sorry to be that guy, and I know it's not a nice thing to hear. But I'd hate to see you burn a ton of time on something that's born under the cloud of "there are a million other ones just like it and no reason anyone can see why this one is worth investing effort into". I'd rather see you take all that effort and skill, find a project that's already got some momentum behind it, and get behind that and push - everybody saying "I'll build my own!" is half the reason we've got where we are in the first place. On the other hand, maybe your framework has a genuine USP that I'm just not seeing. In that case, you'll have an easier time getting interest if you find a way to surface that, front and center, so that even the most disinterested professional engineer who's skimming HN by way of procrastination before the next code review can't help but see it. Either way, hope this helps, and good luck in your future endeavors!
s_kilk 9y ago
Just focus on being a maximally useful media hosting server, with a really simple accounts system for admins and so forth. Make it easy for me to stand up a server, upload a video of my kid, then share the link to that video on the internet. Leave all the community/social/commenting stuff to community/social/commenting software. I'd rather have both an open-source media server and an open-source equivalent to twitter, than have both of them rolled poorly into one.
BugsJustFindMe 9y ago
> I feel like I want to strongly agree on this sentiment but what is the concrete point here? What should be the focus of projects like these?? You could say that Mediagoblin has 2 stated goals: Stated Goal 1) Organize and share user media, which is what people actually want it for. Stated Goal 2) Federated social something mumble, which no real world users actually want but which free software projects seem to get big e-rections over anyway. I think that Mediagoblin should have 1 stated goal, the first one. All news for the past several years has been about goal 2, and I just don't think that anyone in the real world actually wants or cares about that. Most people don't even know what the hell federation is supposed to mean. People just want to be able to stop relying on Flickr to organize their damn photos. Chasing this federated social something mumble dragon has seriously gotten in the way of making the thing that people would actually use, and it's frustrating to watch because there was so much potential. Their official linked-from-the-landing-page "Easy Deployment" page (god, I'm already terrified by the word "deployment") has bold "WARNING: OUT OF DATE" messages all over it. Their official site for (Not-Easy) "Deployment", right at the very top, says "GNU MediaGoblin is fairly new, and so at the time of writing there aren’t easy package-manager-friendly methods to install it." The project is now 6 years old. 6 years isn't new anymore. There isn't an installer?
- worldsayshi 9y ago
  I think there can be a useful interpretation for the federation idea though. There is sort of a problem with there being an over abundance of communication channels that makes the social media landscape very unweildy. Not sure if this actually address this kind of problem though.
  - BugsJustFindMe 9y ago
    Can be, but I just cannot see how a media organization platform has any sane role in that.
    - dublinben 9y ago
      Instagram is both a "media organization platform" and social network. 700 million people each month consider that a reasonable combination of features in a single app. The efforts behind Mediagoblin think similarly. One use case I imagine is to add media files to my local Mediagoblin instance, and then have them show up on my friends's federated social media feeds on various platforms (GNU Social, Mastodon, Pump.io, etc.).

throwanem 9y ago

Not OP. But the argument seems to be: Start by being maximally useful to one person. When you have enough people using your software that they want to use it together, that's the time to start investing a lot of effort in helping them do so.

TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
The Wordpress model - only better? Put together a distro with a complete solution - mail server, web server, media and social servers. Make it one-click easy to set up. Keep security tight. Maybe do some deals with cheap hosting providers. Then federate and connect.
- worldsayshi 9y ago
  > Put together a distro I think this is kind of a good point. It's too hard to set up these 'solves-one-thing-well'-suits to work together in the right way. Having collections of services that are super simple to set up and works well together is probably a good way to do it. Like one media platform, one search engine, one social platform. Or perhaps having a couple of alternatives but having integrations in between up and running in a plug and play way. Then again, if you want all this to work in a decentralised fashion you probably have to think about how to achieve that early on.
- edraferi 9y ago
  Isn't that what Sandstorm[1] was trying to do? It was a very cool project, but got hung up on enterprise sales and ran out of steam. [1] https://sandstorm.io/ https://sandstorm.io/
  - ar-jan 9y ago
    And still is a very cool project, just moving a bit slower now. I just moved my calendar from a large email provider to a self-hosted Radicale server on Sandstorm (syncing with Thunderbird, and DAVDroid on my phone). Small steps, but it was surprisingly easy.
  - cheshire_cat 9y ago
    MediaGoblin is available through Sandstorm: https://apps.sandstorm.io/app/70awyqss6jq2gkz7dwzsnvumzr07256pzdt3hda9acfuxwh6uh7h https://apps.sandstorm.io/app/70awyqss6jq2gkz7dwzsnvumzr0725...
- coreyp_1 9y ago
  Oddly enough, this is what I was trying to do with my Defiant project (http://BeDefiant.io http://BeDefiant.io). I wanted it to be a one-step installation framework to combat proprietary systems (better description on the website). The bad news is that I am the only person working on it, and while I am an experienced developer, I am also a grad student. In other words it is not ready for production at all. I have presented it to quite a few people for the purpose of finding help in the development, and everyone thinks it's a good idea, but everyone also wants to see a finished version of it before seriously considering helping out. Unfortunately, I can only work on Defiant in my free time, so developing the basic functionality is steady, but slow, progress.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    I love the motivation, but this is way too generic - I don't see anything that distinguishes it, for this use case or honestly for any other, from any other JS application framework I might choose, and there are a lot of other ones out there that are much more thoroughly baked than this one. (Another way to say this might be "it's a good idea, but I want to see a finished version of it before seriously considering helping out.") Sorry to be that guy, and I know it's not a nice thing to hear. But I'd hate to see you burn a ton of time on something that's born under the cloud of "there are a million other ones just like it and no reason anyone can see why this one is worth investing effort into". I'd rather see you take all that effort and skill, find a project that's already got some momentum behind it, and get behind that and push - everybody saying "I'll build my own!" is half the reason we've got where we are in the first place. On the other hand, maybe your framework has a genuine USP that I'm just not seeing. In that case, you'll have an easier time getting interest if you find a way to surface that, front and center, so that even the most disinterested professional engineer who's skimming HN by way of procrastination before the next code review can't help but see it. Either way, hope this helps, and good luck in your future endeavors!

s_kilk 9y ago

Just focus on being a maximally useful media hosting server, with a really simple accounts system for admins and so forth. Make it easy for me to stand up a server, upload a video of my kid, then share the link to that video on the internet. Leave all the community/social/commenting stuff to community/social/commenting software. I'd rather have both an open-source media server and an open-source equivalent to twitter, than have both of them rolled poorly into one.

BugsJustFindMe 9y ago

> I feel like I want to strongly agree on this sentiment but what is the concrete point here? What should be the focus of projects like these?? You could say that Mediagoblin has 2 stated goals: Stated Goal 1) Organize and share user media, which is what people actually want it for. Stated Goal 2) Federated social something mumble, which no real world users actually want but which free software projects seem to get big e-rections over anyway. I think that Mediagoblin should have 1 stated goal, the first one. All news for the past several years has been about goal 2, and I just don't think that anyone in the real world actually wants or cares about that. Most people don't even know what the hell federation is supposed to mean. People just want to be able to stop relying on Flickr to organize their damn photos. Chasing this federated social something mumble dragon has seriously gotten in the way of making the thing that people would actually use, and it's frustrating to watch because there was so much potential. Their official linked-from-the-landing-page "Easy Deployment" page (god, I'm already terrified by the word "deployment") has bold "WARNING: OUT OF DATE" messages all over it. Their official site for (Not-Easy) "Deployment", right at the very top, says "GNU MediaGoblin is fairly new, and so at the time of writing there aren’t easy package-manager-friendly methods to install it." The project is now 6 years old. 6 years isn't new anymore. There isn't an installer?

worldsayshi 9y ago
I think there can be a useful interpretation for the federation idea though. There is sort of a problem with there being an over abundance of communication channels that makes the social media landscape very unweildy. Not sure if this actually address this kind of problem though.
- BugsJustFindMe 9y ago
  Can be, but I just cannot see how a media organization platform has any sane role in that.
  - dublinben 9y ago
    Instagram is both a "media organization platform" and social network. 700 million people each month consider that a reasonable combination of features in a single app. The efforts behind Mediagoblin think similarly. One use case I imagine is to add media files to my local Mediagoblin instance, and then have them show up on my friends's federated social media feeds on various platforms (GNU Social, Mastodon, Pump.io, etc.).