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1) https://github.com/soapbox-pub/soapbox https://github.com/soapbox-pub/soapbox is a frontend that works atop either mastodon, pleroma, or the rebased backend

1) https://github.com/soapbox-pub/soapbox https://github.com/soapbox-pub/soapbox is a frontend that works atop either mastodon, pleroma, or the rebased backend 2) https://github.com/soapbox-pub/rebased https://github.com/soapbox-pub/rebased the rebased backend is a fork of pleroma but it's much better maintained than pleroma

noirscape 4y ago
I would advise against soapbox actually. The developer got kicked off the Pleroma project after badgering other maintainers[1] (which he admits to doing) for reverting a technical decision he forced through after it was deemed to be not very useful to the project and encouraged bad practices (the fediverse uses a protocol called WebFinger to find other users, the developer wanted to add a bunch of alternate endpoints to avoid having to use WebFinger for his personal frontend). He also had a history of more bad technical decisions to make Pleroma's backend cause problems with with the rest of the fediverse if the rest of the fediverse doesn't use his custom frontend and insulting developers who pushed back on that decision[2]. Better maintenance seems like a really dubious claim when the lead maintainer is this unwilling to co-operate with the existence of other tooling and openly insults anyone disagreeing with his technical decisions. There's also a couple of PR reasons to not want to associate with him, but those are largely off-topic. The rest of the Pleroma project by contrast is fairly stable and it's developer team has been nothing but polite when it comes to handling support issues. [1]: https://blog.alexgleason.me/pleroma-is-dead/ https://blog.alexgleason.me/pleroma-is-dead/ [2]: https://hacktivis.me/articles/Update%20on%20Pleroma%20Maintainance https://hacktivis.me/articles/Update%20on%20Pleroma%20Mainta...
- knewter 4y ago
  I know Alex. He's a really good dude.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  Can we stop villifying people we disagree with? I've seen it so much, I'm more inclined to believe it absolutely didn't happen that way.
  - afavour 4y ago
    Is it vilifying when you provide sources of a person's negative behavior? "I'd recommend against this open source project because it has a solo author who has a track record of not playing well with each others" strikes me as statement of fact, not vilifying.
    - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
      About a month ago I had a mechanic call me pissed and tell me they didn't want to work with me anymore if I didn't trust them. I had been asking questions over text. That this happened is a statement of fact. I'm taking my old ford explorer over to him this weekend. Do you know why? Because I asked him what was wrong and explained the intent of the questions. We've had a working relationship for over 2 years, he was obviously having a bad day. No harm, no foul, humans are humans. And yet, his negative behavior is a statement of fact. Imagine if I then went around town telling everyone not to use this man because he "doesn't play well with others". I mean, it's only a statement of fact, right? Point of fact, the engine light in the truck came on earlier this week, I called him up and then drove it over so he could check codes (O2 sensor needs replacing). Had a conversation with him, where he told me his wife is living in Arizona to be a live-in baby sitter for their kids new baby, and he drives over there every other weekend (I knew his wife was in Arizona, but didn't know why). You're campaigning against a piece of software because you don't like the author. Not for technical reasons, but because the author "forced" (your words) stuff onto other people, then after these innocents reverted it back in defense of the whole of fediverse and he got mad and said mean stuff, so now we need to defend the reader (me, and everyone else) from his meanness. If you say so.
      - afavour 4y ago
        I feel like this is personal for you somehow and I don't know why. I'm not "campaigning" against anything, I posted one comment on a message board. Let's try to avoid bringing hysteria into the conversation. I'm glad you ended up having a working relationship with your mechanic but I don't think it's really relevant here. Your mechanic is not maintaining an open source project. He's fixing your car. Which is a great solo project. I think you're confused about my perspective so let me be clear: I'm not concerned with "defending" the reader from "meanness". I'm suggesting that investing in any project run by a single person is risky: more than likely if that person quits then the project is dead. That's strike one. The fact that the single author has a history of being combative with open source collaborators suggests it might be harder for the project to ever move beyond being a solo project. That's strike two. All of this is just common sense. I'm sorry if it rubs you the wrong way. If your mechanic decides to stop maintaining your car in the future there will be hundreds of other mechanics waiting to take the job (and, importantly, your money). A solo open source project depending on volunteers is a lot less likely to have that.
- wizzwizz4 4y ago
  > There's also a couple of PR reasons to not want to associate with him, but those are largely off-topic. They're more than PR reasons if you're one of his "wrong sorts"; personally, I'm not confident trusting (for practical reasons) or comfortable using (for emotional reasons) a piece of software whose MDfL doesn't think I should exist. It's probably off-topic for this discussion, but it's important to keep in mind if you're building a little community on the Fediverse: your choice of software ties your community's culture – at least partially – to the community of the developers. Your users will want to submit bug reports, and so on.
  - noirscape 4y ago
    I do agree with you completely there, it's just that HN doesn't tend to take well to pointing out that particular stripe of awfulness and that makes it a non-starter as a reason. He's definitely a case where I would broadly recommend marginalized groups to stay far away from his tooling if they are planning on interacting with the development team in any way. The man is an demagogue (and openly proud of it) and an understated element to his bad behavior in co-operating with others is that it's in part driven by that demagoguery (just reference the blogpost in the previous comment and how much of it is dedicated to crying about "cancel culture" where the reality is really just that he was an asshole to people and they showed him the door[1], very little about it had to do with his (IMO shitty) opinions. As far as software choices go; Fully agreed, although I always recommend people to not just go by public reputation and to always investigate before making a decision (in the case of Soapbox, you'll notice I linked both the developers resignation post and the post that caused relations with him and other maintainers to seriously start souring, so that one can make their own assessment). Pleroma for example got initially accused of being developed by neonazis due to an early instance modifying their source code to ignore incoming message privacy flags, everything was just set to be on the public timeline, all of the time. It's in reality completely wrong; in fact numerous developers to the software have been rather staunchly anti-fascist even since its very beginning, but that wasn't known by the public so the reputation of the project got tarred for years. Similarly, one admin blamed not removing hateful content on not having the tools, again, completely wrong, but then Pleroma got tarred with "not having basic moderation tools", even though it ironically has the must fine-grained moderation tools compared to anything else out there (you can literally write your own bit of code to automatically moderate and integrate it in the software itself if you wanted to). Finally when it comes to users submitting bugs: with the fediverse that usually doesn't actually directly go to the developer but instead lands at the feet of the instance maintainer, who makes the decision on whether or not to report it to the developers community. There's a certain sense of connection, but it's usually not as deeply tied as one would think. [1]: https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
- mynameisvlad 4y ago
  As a complete outsider who thrives on drama, everyone sucks here. Alex has shit opinions, 100%. But the back and forths in the Pleroma MRs linked are at the level of high school catty drama. And that applies to everyone in there, on both sides. I feel like every single MR listed would have gone completely differently if the people involved treated the others as humans and actually worked towards building better software. At the end of the day, the commits were simple enough and could have been worked on had the people there actually wanted to do that. But instead they all just turned into name-calling high school kids. In short, everyone there needs to grow up. And while I agree that a one man shop in the form of Soapbox is likely not going to last, I wouldn’t put my support in for Pleroma based on what I read either.
  - dvtkrlbs 4y ago
    That is what I noticed as well. The behavior of most of the people involved in these MRs were really toxic and unwelcoming whatever the reason might be.
    - wizzwizz4 4y ago
      I think the latest "cool" software is Misskey. https://misskey-hub.net/ https://misskey-hub.net/ Mastodon's still the most popular, though. (English version of that website available; just add /en/ to the end of the URL.)

noirscape 4y ago

I would advise against soapbox actually. The developer got kicked off the Pleroma project after badgering other maintainers[1] (which he admits to doing) for reverting a technical decision he forced through after it was deemed to be not very useful to the project and encouraged bad practices (the fediverse uses a protocol called WebFinger to find other users, the developer wanted to add a bunch of alternate endpoints to avoid having to use WebFinger for his personal frontend). He also had a history of more bad technical decisions to make Pleroma's backend cause problems with with the rest of the fediverse if the rest of the fediverse doesn't use his custom frontend and insulting developers who pushed back on that decision[2]. Better maintenance seems like a really dubious claim when the lead maintainer is this unwilling to co-operate with the existence of other tooling and openly insults anyone disagreeing with his technical decisions. There's also a couple of PR reasons to not want to associate with him, but those are largely off-topic. The rest of the Pleroma project by contrast is fairly stable and it's developer team has been nothing but polite when it comes to handling support issues. [1]: https://blog.alexgleason.me/pleroma-is-dead/ https://blog.alexgleason.me/pleroma-is-dead/ [2]: https://hacktivis.me/articles/Update%20on%20Pleroma%20Maintainance https://hacktivis.me/articles/Update%20on%20Pleroma%20Mainta...

knewter 4y ago
I know Alex. He's a really good dude.
P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
Can we stop villifying people we disagree with? I've seen it so much, I'm more inclined to believe it absolutely didn't happen that way.
- afavour 4y ago
  Is it vilifying when you provide sources of a person's negative behavior? "I'd recommend against this open source project because it has a solo author who has a track record of not playing well with each others" strikes me as statement of fact, not vilifying.
  - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    About a month ago I had a mechanic call me pissed and tell me they didn't want to work with me anymore if I didn't trust them. I had been asking questions over text. That this happened is a statement of fact. I'm taking my old ford explorer over to him this weekend. Do you know why? Because I asked him what was wrong and explained the intent of the questions. We've had a working relationship for over 2 years, he was obviously having a bad day. No harm, no foul, humans are humans. And yet, his negative behavior is a statement of fact. Imagine if I then went around town telling everyone not to use this man because he "doesn't play well with others". I mean, it's only a statement of fact, right? Point of fact, the engine light in the truck came on earlier this week, I called him up and then drove it over so he could check codes (O2 sensor needs replacing). Had a conversation with him, where he told me his wife is living in Arizona to be a live-in baby sitter for their kids new baby, and he drives over there every other weekend (I knew his wife was in Arizona, but didn't know why). You're campaigning against a piece of software because you don't like the author. Not for technical reasons, but because the author "forced" (your words) stuff onto other people, then after these innocents reverted it back in defense of the whole of fediverse and he got mad and said mean stuff, so now we need to defend the reader (me, and everyone else) from his meanness. If you say so.
    - afavour 4y ago
      I feel like this is personal for you somehow and I don't know why. I'm not "campaigning" against anything, I posted one comment on a message board. Let's try to avoid bringing hysteria into the conversation. I'm glad you ended up having a working relationship with your mechanic but I don't think it's really relevant here. Your mechanic is not maintaining an open source project. He's fixing your car. Which is a great solo project. I think you're confused about my perspective so let me be clear: I'm not concerned with "defending" the reader from "meanness". I'm suggesting that investing in any project run by a single person is risky: more than likely if that person quits then the project is dead. That's strike one. The fact that the single author has a history of being combative with open source collaborators suggests it might be harder for the project to ever move beyond being a solo project. That's strike two. All of this is just common sense. I'm sorry if it rubs you the wrong way. If your mechanic decides to stop maintaining your car in the future there will be hundreds of other mechanics waiting to take the job (and, importantly, your money). A solo open source project depending on volunteers is a lot less likely to have that.
wizzwizz4 4y ago
> There's also a couple of PR reasons to not want to associate with him, but those are largely off-topic. They're more than PR reasons if you're one of his "wrong sorts"; personally, I'm not confident trusting (for practical reasons) or comfortable using (for emotional reasons) a piece of software whose MDfL doesn't think I should exist. It's probably off-topic for this discussion, but it's important to keep in mind if you're building a little community on the Fediverse: your choice of software ties your community's culture – at least partially – to the community of the developers. Your users will want to submit bug reports, and so on.
- noirscape 4y ago
  I do agree with you completely there, it's just that HN doesn't tend to take well to pointing out that particular stripe of awfulness and that makes it a non-starter as a reason. He's definitely a case where I would broadly recommend marginalized groups to stay far away from his tooling if they are planning on interacting with the development team in any way. The man is an demagogue (and openly proud of it) and an understated element to his bad behavior in co-operating with others is that it's in part driven by that demagoguery (just reference the blogpost in the previous comment and how much of it is dedicated to crying about "cancel culture" where the reality is really just that he was an asshole to people and they showed him the door[1], very little about it had to do with his (IMO shitty) opinions. As far as software choices go; Fully agreed, although I always recommend people to not just go by public reputation and to always investigate before making a decision (in the case of Soapbox, you'll notice I linked both the developers resignation post and the post that caused relations with him and other maintainers to seriously start souring, so that one can make their own assessment). Pleroma for example got initially accused of being developed by neonazis due to an early instance modifying their source code to ignore incoming message privacy flags, everything was just set to be on the public timeline, all of the time. It's in reality completely wrong; in fact numerous developers to the software have been rather staunchly anti-fascist even since its very beginning, but that wasn't known by the public so the reputation of the project got tarred for years. Similarly, one admin blamed not removing hateful content on not having the tools, again, completely wrong, but then Pleroma got tarred with "not having basic moderation tools", even though it ironically has the must fine-grained moderation tools compared to anything else out there (you can literally write your own bit of code to automatically moderate and integrate it in the software itself if you wanted to). Finally when it comes to users submitting bugs: with the fediverse that usually doesn't actually directly go to the developer but instead lands at the feet of the instance maintainer, who makes the decision on whether or not to report it to the developers community. There's a certain sense of connection, but it's usually not as deeply tied as one would think. [1]: https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
mynameisvlad 4y ago
As a complete outsider who thrives on drama, everyone sucks here. Alex has shit opinions, 100%. But the back and forths in the Pleroma MRs linked are at the level of high school catty drama. And that applies to everyone in there, on both sides. I feel like every single MR listed would have gone completely differently if the people involved treated the others as humans and actually worked towards building better software. At the end of the day, the commits were simple enough and could have been worked on had the people there actually wanted to do that. But instead they all just turned into name-calling high school kids. In short, everyone there needs to grow up. And while I agree that a one man shop in the form of Soapbox is likely not going to last, I wouldn’t put my support in for Pleroma based on what I read either.
- dvtkrlbs 4y ago
  That is what I noticed as well. The behavior of most of the people involved in these MRs were really toxic and unwelcoming whatever the reason might be.
  - wizzwizz4 4y ago
    I think the latest "cool" software is Misskey. https://misskey-hub.net/ https://misskey-hub.net/ Mastodon's still the most popular, though. (English version of that website available; just add /en/ to the end of the URL.)