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> This, you can't understand it without being aware that the founder got #cancelled for his (unrelated to urbit) right-wing blogging, so most of the responses i

> This, you can't understand it without being aware that the founder got #cancelled for his (unrelated to urbit) right-wing blogging, so most of the responses in this thread will be from people who really dislike that guy and dismiss urbit as a result. I think you can, although I admit a lot of the discussion here is likely to focus on Yarvin himself. That is, there is a good argument that Urbit reflects Yarvin's politics in itself and as these politics are, clearly, broadly distasteful it's entirely reasonably that someone opposed to Right Libertarianism and ignorant of Yarvin would find Urbit undesirable on its own merits.

ineptech 4y ago
shrug there are giant for-profit corporations relying on software written by Richard Stallman. I don't think the intentions of the founder matter much. I don't like Yarvin either, but I do want a product that meets this use case. At this point I wish someone would clone urbit, since the hatred for the founder seems to mean it'll never get traction no matter what it does or how it works.
- sanderjd 4y ago
  Yep, a fresh start with no association to the founder, and ditching the obfuscations that are not useful while keeping the best ideas, would be interesting.
- themikesanto 4y ago
  I've been following Urbit for years, and honestly I still don't see the use case. It seems like its intended use case is to be a network where you can't disseminate your data across the network unless the "lord" that issued you your address space allows you to do so.
  - tern 4y ago
    The same is true of Facebook, Google, Twitter and your ISP. The difference with Urbit is you can switch providers if you're censored, or reciprocally if you want a censored experience, you can virtually move to somewhere with a blocklist.
  - ineptech 4y ago
    The use case is that you can host your blog on it and store your bitcoins in it and it won't crash, can't get hacked, and is easy to move from one VM host to another. The network architecture is an implementation detail to get messaging to work reliably, not some kind of ideological statement.
- troutwine 4y ago
  > shrug there are giant for-profit corporations relying on software written by Richard Stallman. I don't think the intentions of the founder matter much. I mean, the left politics of Stallman _very much_ influence how Free Software ends up being used and incorporated. Consider how the GPL encodes the norm of working in common with one another, dragging profit seeking corporations into that as well, or into defending against it. It's like a whole thing. > At this point I wish someone would clone urbit, since the hatred for the founder seems to mean it'll never get traction no matter what it does or how it works. Right, what I'm saying is, even cloned, Urbit's going to be a non-starter for a lot of people. Rigidly hierarchical, rent-seeking obscurantism isn't, uh, popular. I _do_ think Kelvin versioning is compelling though. TeX comes to mind there as an excellent example.
  - tern 4y ago
    > Rigidly hierarchical, rent-seeking obscurantism isn't, uh, popular. What is the current state of the web? Rigidly hierarchical All internet governing bodies wield absolute power. Most of the computing experience is completely controlled by a handful of global corporations that are more powerful than many nation states. You don't control or have any influence over most of this. Rent seeking AWS, domain names, social networks? The web is rent-seeking at every level. Obscurantism Most of the code we use is worse than obscure, it's literally proprietary. I would say these qualities are very popular today.
    - troutwine 4y ago
      > What is the current state of the web? Sure. I think the important difference here is the web has _become_ this way; the things you point out are problems to be solved. Whereas, Urbit encodes these norms as a social good.

ineptech 4y ago

shrug there are giant for-profit corporations relying on software written by Richard Stallman. I don't think the intentions of the founder matter much. I don't like Yarvin either, but I do want a product that meets this use case. At this point I wish someone would clone urbit, since the hatred for the founder seems to mean it'll never get traction no matter what it does or how it works.

sanderjd 4y ago
Yep, a fresh start with no association to the founder, and ditching the obfuscations that are not useful while keeping the best ideas, would be interesting.
themikesanto 4y ago
I've been following Urbit for years, and honestly I still don't see the use case. It seems like its intended use case is to be a network where you can't disseminate your data across the network unless the "lord" that issued you your address space allows you to do so.
- tern 4y ago
  The same is true of Facebook, Google, Twitter and your ISP. The difference with Urbit is you can switch providers if you're censored, or reciprocally if you want a censored experience, you can virtually move to somewhere with a blocklist.
- ineptech 4y ago
  The use case is that you can host your blog on it and store your bitcoins in it and it won't crash, can't get hacked, and is easy to move from one VM host to another. The network architecture is an implementation detail to get messaging to work reliably, not some kind of ideological statement.
troutwine 4y ago
> shrug there are giant for-profit corporations relying on software written by Richard Stallman. I don't think the intentions of the founder matter much. I mean, the left politics of Stallman _very much_ influence how Free Software ends up being used and incorporated. Consider how the GPL encodes the norm of working in common with one another, dragging profit seeking corporations into that as well, or into defending against it. It's like a whole thing. > At this point I wish someone would clone urbit, since the hatred for the founder seems to mean it'll never get traction no matter what it does or how it works. Right, what I'm saying is, even cloned, Urbit's going to be a non-starter for a lot of people. Rigidly hierarchical, rent-seeking obscurantism isn't, uh, popular. I _do_ think Kelvin versioning is compelling though. TeX comes to mind there as an excellent example.
- tern 4y ago
  > Rigidly hierarchical, rent-seeking obscurantism isn't, uh, popular. What is the current state of the web? Rigidly hierarchical All internet governing bodies wield absolute power. Most of the computing experience is completely controlled by a handful of global corporations that are more powerful than many nation states. You don't control or have any influence over most of this. Rent seeking AWS, domain names, social networks? The web is rent-seeking at every level. Obscurantism Most of the code we use is worse than obscure, it's literally proprietary. I would say these qualities are very popular today.
  - troutwine 4y ago
    > What is the current state of the web? Sure. I think the important difference here is the web has _become_ this way; the things you point out are problems to be solved. Whereas, Urbit encodes these norms as a social good.