6 ms·

Yep and there’s already a paid service offering hosted instances! https://masto.host/ https://masto.host/ There’s also an open and active GitHub issue on mast

Yep and there’s already a paid service offering hosted instances! https://masto.host/ https://masto.host/ There’s also an open and active GitHub issue on mastodon discussing how to separate server hosting from domain name so you can point DNS at an existing instance and use it from that domain: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/2668 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/2668 Many thanks to my friend on twitter for pointing me to both of these: https://twitter.com/__jesse_li/status/1592006641897320448 https://twitter.com/__jesse_li/status/1592006641897320448

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
I just had nightmares of internal corporate instances. >Mastodon by Teams (tm), please log in with your active directory credentials to see the latest posts from HR!
- trelane 4y ago
  At least they'd (Microsoft) have to make the changes publicly available, since it's AGPL. So they can't have secret shenanigans that others don't have.
  - doctor_eval 4y ago
    Genuinely don’t understand. Is the ActivityPub protocol AGPL? Is there something stopping MS from just building their own server from scratch?
    - codefreakxff 4y ago
      They would also make a Microsoft owned version of the protocol to support features only their client and server supported
      - sitkack 4y ago
        Why wouldn't they just implement SOAP over JSON?
    - esarbe 4y ago
      ActivityPup is an API. APIs are not protected by copyright.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    The AGPL only applies if they make it available externally though. If they have their own internal instance the AGPL only says that Microsoft employees must be able to access the source code.
    - mr_toad 4y ago
      Microsoft hosts teams for their customers. So if they modified the code all their customers users would be entitled to see it.
    - LinuxBender 4y ago
      While I agree with this, I've interfaced with many lawyers that interpret AGPL differently mostly due to following license dependency trees. They nuked any project that went anywhere near AGPL even if the project was internal-only. This was not limited to places I worked either. There are others in my circle that had their projects shot down for using AGPL code. I do not fully grasp the logic the lawyers arrive at. Perhaps they are treating it the same way I treated PCI compliance, in that anything touching it gets infected by the zombie virus and must also be compliant.
  - JAlexoid 4y ago
    https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ - It's not AGPL
- alisonatwork 4y ago
  This already existed. It was called Yammer, and nobody used it, and then Microsoft bought it anyway. Apparently it's rolled into Teams now, but since my last few companies were Slack shops I don't know how many people use the Teams-branded Yammer feature. Probably still nobody. Unlike chat, email and wiki, I don't think microblogging has ever proved to be useful in the workplace.
  - lmm 4y ago
    Yammer was pretty nice for what it did. It felt more structured and formal than Slack, but wasn't as painful to edit as wikis tend to be.
    - happymellon 4y ago
      Teams is already more structured and formal than slack. And it's an absolute pain to send team messages. Everyone always just starts a group chat instead, as the reply is always so small and hidden, and the card system makes it hard to manage more than one or two threads at a time.
  - Angostura 4y ago
    Yammer is separate from Teams, still
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    > Apparently it's rolled into Teams now Yes, and still nobody uses it
    - jackvalentine 4y ago
      It is absolutely massive at my org. The comms team religiously using it, and the ‘what’s happening’ digest being on by default meaning posts are surfaced in to people’s inboxes regularly until they unsubscribe means everyone knows about it.
  - MattDemers 4y ago
    Oddly, I know a few EVE Online corporations used it.
- selfhoster11 4y ago
  That don’t sound too bad. I would use it, if it meant avoiding the Teams client application.
nikolay 4y ago
Having a specilized hosting company means that self-hosting Mastodon is challenging! So, it's MastoDon't, basically!
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  I mean, yes self hosting a Linux computer in the cloud requires certain skills and time. This is the basis of the business model for the biggest companies on the internet - we will run a service for you so you don’t have to run your own server. This is true even for hosting a basic HTML web page - a whole lot of people do not want to operate their own server, and this in no way means the service is bad.
  - nikolay 4y ago
    Wrong! Hosting Mastodon is a different type of challenge, not to mention how much wasteful it is due to the poor choice of Ruby! Yes, Oracle Labs are trying Truffle, but it's not officially supported yet.
    - derefr 4y ago
      What does the choice of programming language for a reference implementation have to do with the cost/benefit analysis of the protocol it implements?
      - nikolay 4y ago
        Oh, it's now a reference implementation... since when?! Do those people who climb on the Mastodon bandwagon know this is just a POC turned into a Product, which now competes with Twitter?! The language makes a huge difference as you need to deploy the whole Ruby toolchain, and front it with all the hard choices Rubyists had to deal with for ages to make it kinda work! You don't make a distributed competitor of Twitter following its own wrong design chocies! Mastodon is old, and it's a shaky foundation, and it should be rebuilt from scratch instead of disappointing the millions of people who suddenly like Dorsey more than Musk... although Dorsey is working on Bluesky, not Mastodon, or ActivityPub!
echelon 4y ago
What's old is new again! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezboard
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Oh man, memories and flashbacks...
skinnymuch 4y ago
Do you know if Masto Host will open their doors to customers again?
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  I don’t know.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  The owner/admin of Masto Host has made various statements that he doesn't want to host more than a small target % of users and instances at any given time, because he wants to keep the fediverse diverse in hosts/doesn't ever want to be the single-point-of-failure in a federated network. (Which truly is a great attitude and one of the things I like about supporting masto.host.) So the impression I have here is that he is waiting for some of this massive influx of users to slough off a bit and give him a better idea of something resembling the new steady state before deciding on if masto.host's hosted percentage still fits within his self-imposed cap. All of this also coincides with a massive migration to Mastodon v4 adding to current maintenance burdens. So the short answer is: masto.host probably will open its doors again if it doesn't seem to be hosting too much of the Fediverse, and it will probably be at least a few more days if not a few more weeks before registrations open back up if they do. (There are some alternative hosts to consider if you don't want to wait on masto.host.)
solaceb 4y ago
A really, really deep irony that you found these cool new Masto things on twitter. The king still reigns
- JAlexoid 4y ago
  Twitter is free, operational, easily accessible and known. Finding a mastodon instance is a pain today. And "run your own" is not a great option. (It's a pain to run your own publicly accessible anything, these days. I will never go back to running my own email server ever again)
  - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
    Also I have 20x the followers on Twitter because I’ve been using it longer! And I still get a lot out of mastodon.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  I suppose. I’ve also got 20x the followers on Twitter because I’ve been using it actively for years, but I’ve only recently started using mastodon. I can certainly say I’ve learned more about mastodon from posts on mastodon, but in this instance a user from twitter was helpful. Notably that user is also on mastodon. I’ll have to check to see if we’re following each other there. Every day I find more of my twitter friends on mastodon, and it’s a lovely feeling.
weinzierl 4y ago
Actually there are several and some are listed on the Mastodon website[1]. Look in the "So you want to run your own Mastodon server" section. I have only heard the best about masto.host but they have closed subscriptions for now (which only speaks for them IMHO). I have personal experience with Ossrox and Weingärtner IT, they are both excellent and I can recommend them without hesitation. I have no affiliation with any of those companies except being a customer of the later two. EDIT: The price of a small instance is less than a Twitter subscription. So, if you want your own instance - which as pros and cons - nothing is holding you back. [1] https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/run-your-own/ https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/run-your-own/

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago

I just had nightmares of internal corporate instances. >Mastodon by Teams (tm), please log in with your active directory credentials to see the latest posts from HR!

trelane 4y ago
At least they'd (Microsoft) have to make the changes publicly available, since it's AGPL. So they can't have secret shenanigans that others don't have.
- doctor_eval 4y ago
  Genuinely don’t understand. Is the ActivityPub protocol AGPL? Is there something stopping MS from just building their own server from scratch?
  - codefreakxff 4y ago
    They would also make a Microsoft owned version of the protocol to support features only their client and server supported
    - sitkack 4y ago
      Why wouldn't they just implement SOAP over JSON?
  - esarbe 4y ago
    ActivityPup is an API. APIs are not protected by copyright.
- fragmede 4y ago
  The AGPL only applies if they make it available externally though. If they have their own internal instance the AGPL only says that Microsoft employees must be able to access the source code.
  - mr_toad 4y ago
    Microsoft hosts teams for their customers. So if they modified the code all their customers users would be entitled to see it.
  - LinuxBender 4y ago
    While I agree with this, I've interfaced with many lawyers that interpret AGPL differently mostly due to following license dependency trees. They nuked any project that went anywhere near AGPL even if the project was internal-only. This was not limited to places I worked either. There are others in my circle that had their projects shot down for using AGPL code. I do not fully grasp the logic the lawyers arrive at. Perhaps they are treating it the same way I treated PCI compliance, in that anything touching it gets infected by the zombie virus and must also be compliant.
- JAlexoid 4y ago
  https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ - It's not AGPL
alisonatwork 4y ago
This already existed. It was called Yammer, and nobody used it, and then Microsoft bought it anyway. Apparently it's rolled into Teams now, but since my last few companies were Slack shops I don't know how many people use the Teams-branded Yammer feature. Probably still nobody. Unlike chat, email and wiki, I don't think microblogging has ever proved to be useful in the workplace.
- lmm 4y ago
  Yammer was pretty nice for what it did. It felt more structured and formal than Slack, but wasn't as painful to edit as wikis tend to be.
  - happymellon 4y ago
    Teams is already more structured and formal than slack. And it's an absolute pain to send team messages. Everyone always just starts a group chat instead, as the reply is always so small and hidden, and the card system makes it hard to manage more than one or two threads at a time.
- Angostura 4y ago
  Yammer is separate from Teams, still
- ekianjo 4y ago
  > Apparently it's rolled into Teams now Yes, and still nobody uses it
  - jackvalentine 4y ago
    It is absolutely massive at my org. The comms team religiously using it, and the ‘what’s happening’ digest being on by default meaning posts are surfaced in to people’s inboxes regularly until they unsubscribe means everyone knows about it.
- MattDemers 4y ago
  Oddly, I know a few EVE Online corporations used it.
selfhoster11 4y ago
That don’t sound too bad. I would use it, if it meant avoiding the Teams client application.

nikolay 4y ago

Having a specilized hosting company means that self-hosting Mastodon is challenging! So, it's MastoDon't, basically!

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
I mean, yes self hosting a Linux computer in the cloud requires certain skills and time. This is the basis of the business model for the biggest companies on the internet - we will run a service for you so you don’t have to run your own server. This is true even for hosting a basic HTML web page - a whole lot of people do not want to operate their own server, and this in no way means the service is bad.
- nikolay 4y ago
  Wrong! Hosting Mastodon is a different type of challenge, not to mention how much wasteful it is due to the poor choice of Ruby! Yes, Oracle Labs are trying Truffle, but it's not officially supported yet.
  - derefr 4y ago
    What does the choice of programming language for a reference implementation have to do with the cost/benefit analysis of the protocol it implements?
    - nikolay 4y ago
      Oh, it's now a reference implementation... since when?! Do those people who climb on the Mastodon bandwagon know this is just a POC turned into a Product, which now competes with Twitter?! The language makes a huge difference as you need to deploy the whole Ruby toolchain, and front it with all the hard choices Rubyists had to deal with for ages to make it kinda work! You don't make a distributed competitor of Twitter following its own wrong design chocies! Mastodon is old, and it's a shaky foundation, and it should be rebuilt from scratch instead of disappointing the millions of people who suddenly like Dorsey more than Musk... although Dorsey is working on Bluesky, not Mastodon, or ActivityPub!

echelon 4y ago

What's old is new again! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezboard

dredmorbius 4y ago
Oh man, memories and flashbacks...

skinnymuch 4y ago

Do you know if Masto Host will open their doors to customers again?

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
I don’t know.
WorldMaker 4y ago
The owner/admin of Masto Host has made various statements that he doesn't want to host more than a small target % of users and instances at any given time, because he wants to keep the fediverse diverse in hosts/doesn't ever want to be the single-point-of-failure in a federated network. (Which truly is a great attitude and one of the things I like about supporting masto.host.) So the impression I have here is that he is waiting for some of this massive influx of users to slough off a bit and give him a better idea of something resembling the new steady state before deciding on if masto.host's hosted percentage still fits within his self-imposed cap. All of this also coincides with a massive migration to Mastodon v4 adding to current maintenance burdens. So the short answer is: masto.host probably will open its doors again if it doesn't seem to be hosting too much of the Fediverse, and it will probably be at least a few more days if not a few more weeks before registrations open back up if they do. (There are some alternative hosts to consider if you don't want to wait on masto.host.)

solaceb 4y ago

A really, really deep irony that you found these cool new Masto things on twitter. The king still reigns

JAlexoid 4y ago
Twitter is free, operational, easily accessible and known. Finding a mastodon instance is a pain today. And "run your own" is not a great option. (It's a pain to run your own publicly accessible anything, these days. I will never go back to running my own email server ever again)
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  Also I have 20x the followers on Twitter because I’ve been using it longer! And I still get a lot out of mastodon.
TaylorAlexander 4y ago
I suppose. I’ve also got 20x the followers on Twitter because I’ve been using it actively for years, but I’ve only recently started using mastodon. I can certainly say I’ve learned more about mastodon from posts on mastodon, but in this instance a user from twitter was helpful. Notably that user is also on mastodon. I’ll have to check to see if we’re following each other there. Every day I find more of my twitter friends on mastodon, and it’s a lovely feeling.

weinzierl 4y ago

Actually there are several and some are listed on the Mastodon website[1]. Look in the "So you want to run your own Mastodon server" section. I have only heard the best about masto.host but they have closed subscriptions for now (which only speaks for them IMHO). I have personal experience with Ossrox and Weingärtner IT, they are both excellent and I can recommend them without hesitation. I have no affiliation with any of those companies except being a customer of the later two. EDIT: The price of a small instance is less than a Twitter subscription. So, if you want your own instance - which as pros and cons - nothing is holding you back. [1] https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/run-your-own/ https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/run-your-own/