4 ms·

what has "software"do do with views of creators? i find this unsettling that people are choosing between projects not based on merits, is one faster, less reso

what has "software"do do with views of creators? i find this unsettling that people are choosing between projects not based on merits, is one faster, less resource hungry, in a safer language, is compatible with standards, is easy to use or manage or update, can be modified or not, can be piped with other software or not but no. people are concerned about "views of one developer/team"..... so what has "Soapbox creator's view on politics." got to do with "Soapbox[1] is probably the most mature alternative to Mastodon". you are saying both things in one sentence yourself. if soapbox is mature alternative, use it. why should there be a "general consensus" to avoid it?

lou1306 4y ago
A piece of social networking software that gets popular does bring a certain audience/reach to its creator. So "The software is good but I don't want the views of its creator to reach a broader audience" is a valid stance as far as I'm concerned.
- leereeves 4y ago
  > A piece of social networking software that gets popular does bring a certain audience/reach to its creator. Does it? I have no idea who created Mastodon.
  - smcn 4y ago
    You don't? https://time.com/6229230/mastodon-eugen-rochko-interview/ https://time.com/6229230/mastodon-eugen-rochko-interview/
    - Tomte 4y ago
      The name didn't seem to be prominently reported until the Twitter exodus lately. I was surprised he's my countryman, I think I would have remembered had he come up in the earlier Mastodon discussions on HN. I always assumed it's a mostly American thing.
      - lou1306 4y ago
        > The name didn't seem to be prominently reported until the Twitter exodus lately But that kind of proves my point now doesn't it? When "his" platform became popular he got featured on the national press. I can totally see that some people do not want to offer that kind of platform to someone with whom they disagree politically.
        Tomte 4y ago
        > But that kind of proves my point now doesn't it? Yes.
- rglullis 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - lou1306 4y ago
    My remark was about social networking software. Besides that, and luckily, any journalist worth its salt can instantly classify rms as someone you don't want to feature on mainstream media. With new folks it's not as easy.
    - rglullis 4y ago
      > My remark was about social networking software. That is still a senseless distinction. His code is licensed AGPL3. Anyone is free to use it and modify it as they see fit. I don't need to agree with Alex on anything to recognize that his software is better than any of the current alternatives. I could set up a Soapbox instance to make a "BBQ pit masters and meat-eaters community" instance, and Alex (vegan activist) would have absolute zero recourse against it. > instantly classify rms as someone you don't want to feature on mainstream media. Why? RMS may be an idiot on a huge number of topics, that does not invalidate what he has to say about the issues of closed software, or how Big Tech has co-opted Free Software by using "the cloud" to exploit users, and so on. If anything, any decent journalist should be able to bring to mainstream media and should be able to make the distinction about which part of RMS is important to listen.
  - iudqnolq 4y ago
    GNU is a doomed project, and you've correctly identified on of the reasons. The number of people using Emacs rounds to zero, and is trending in the wrong direction.
    - rglullis 4y ago
      Emacs is still getting periodic releases and it's getting better every time. I can not think of any other project that is over 40 years old and that could be around 40 years from now. It has become an institution. It will outlive RMS. Anyone rejecting Emacs because of RMS but ends up using (e.g) VS Code is either ignorant, hypocrite or simply trying to find a post-hoc rationalization for their choice of tool.
noirscape 4y ago
Soapbox isn't any more mature than Pleroma or Akkoma in terms of software. It's a hostile fork of Pleroma that regularly merges upstream patches from Pleroma. The lead developer, Alex Gleason, got kicked off of the Pleroma project when he called other contributors names for reverting a patch he made that introduced code smell[0]. Said patch was controversial at the time of introduction, but got bludgeoned into being merged because Gleason was by far the most active contributor. It was removed with consensus when other developers became more active, although from what I can tell, Gleason didn't bother to participate in that discussion. Soapbox is his "taking the ball and going home" answer. If you want a non-technical reason to avoid it/consider it immature; Gleason cried "cancel culture" when removed from the Pleroma project, even though it pretty much has nothing to do with it. He's a demagogue who used his getting removed from the project to further advocate for his own political beliefs (which is being a TERF). This in particular means that the overwhelming majority of Soapbox instances tend to be maintained by the people that think that Pleroma is maintained by the people Gleason dislikes[1], to the point where some instances automatically defederate from instances using Soapbox's frontend[2]. [0]: Pleroma uses a RESTful API for routing. Gleason wanted to add a bunch of alternative endpoints for no other reason than "this is what users are familiar with on Twitter and my frontend for Pleroma wants to rely on those". The patches were reverted eventually on the simple reason that they're cruft. [1]: Which is extremely funny considering an early criticism of the Pleroma project was that due to it being easy to host, it wound up hosting a lot of instances that would fit this bill. Now most of those migrated to using Soapbox. [2] Funny for the exact same reason as [1].
- rglullis 4y ago
  Can we agree at least that Soapbox is a much better frontend (as in, it is more suited as a Twitter-alternative, more user-friendly and relies on UX/UI that is more familiar to the general audience) than whatever crap is the default FE from Pleroma? Alex is also the first one to push for Quoted objects. None of the Pleroma devs wanted, the Mastodon devs even less. Now that Mastodon is reaching some semblance of mainstream, I am seeing every day someone writing about how QT is the one feature they miss from Twitter. For everyone that responds with "Soapbox has it, you should take a look", there will be at least 3 others saying "Soapbox is developed by a TERF, stay away from it".

lou1306 4y ago

A piece of social networking software that gets popular does bring a certain audience/reach to its creator. So "The software is good but I don't want the views of its creator to reach a broader audience" is a valid stance as far as I'm concerned.

leereeves 4y ago
> A piece of social networking software that gets popular does bring a certain audience/reach to its creator. Does it? I have no idea who created Mastodon.
- smcn 4y ago
  You don't? https://time.com/6229230/mastodon-eugen-rochko-interview/ https://time.com/6229230/mastodon-eugen-rochko-interview/
  - Tomte 4y ago
    The name didn't seem to be prominently reported until the Twitter exodus lately. I was surprised he's my countryman, I think I would have remembered had he come up in the earlier Mastodon discussions on HN. I always assumed it's a mostly American thing.
    - lou1306 4y ago
      > The name didn't seem to be prominently reported until the Twitter exodus lately But that kind of proves my point now doesn't it? When "his" platform became popular he got featured on the national press. I can totally see that some people do not want to offer that kind of platform to someone with whom they disagree politically.
      - Tomte 4y ago
        > But that kind of proves my point now doesn't it? Yes.
rglullis 4y ago
[flagged]
- lou1306 4y ago
  My remark was about social networking software. Besides that, and luckily, any journalist worth its salt can instantly classify rms as someone you don't want to feature on mainstream media. With new folks it's not as easy.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    > My remark was about social networking software. That is still a senseless distinction. His code is licensed AGPL3. Anyone is free to use it and modify it as they see fit. I don't need to agree with Alex on anything to recognize that his software is better than any of the current alternatives. I could set up a Soapbox instance to make a "BBQ pit masters and meat-eaters community" instance, and Alex (vegan activist) would have absolute zero recourse against it. > instantly classify rms as someone you don't want to feature on mainstream media. Why? RMS may be an idiot on a huge number of topics, that does not invalidate what he has to say about the issues of closed software, or how Big Tech has co-opted Free Software by using "the cloud" to exploit users, and so on. If anything, any decent journalist should be able to bring to mainstream media and should be able to make the distinction about which part of RMS is important to listen.
- iudqnolq 4y ago
  GNU is a doomed project, and you've correctly identified on of the reasons. The number of people using Emacs rounds to zero, and is trending in the wrong direction.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    Emacs is still getting periodic releases and it's getting better every time. I can not think of any other project that is over 40 years old and that could be around 40 years from now. It has become an institution. It will outlive RMS. Anyone rejecting Emacs because of RMS but ends up using (e.g) VS Code is either ignorant, hypocrite or simply trying to find a post-hoc rationalization for their choice of tool.

noirscape 4y ago

Soapbox isn't any more mature than Pleroma or Akkoma in terms of software. It's a hostile fork of Pleroma that regularly merges upstream patches from Pleroma. The lead developer, Alex Gleason, got kicked off of the Pleroma project when he called other contributors names for reverting a patch he made that introduced code smell[0]. Said patch was controversial at the time of introduction, but got bludgeoned into being merged because Gleason was by far the most active contributor. It was removed with consensus when other developers became more active, although from what I can tell, Gleason didn't bother to participate in that discussion. Soapbox is his "taking the ball and going home" answer. If you want a non-technical reason to avoid it/consider it immature; Gleason cried "cancel culture" when removed from the Pleroma project, even though it pretty much has nothing to do with it. He's a demagogue who used his getting removed from the project to further advocate for his own political beliefs (which is being a TERF). This in particular means that the overwhelming majority of Soapbox instances tend to be maintained by the people that think that Pleroma is maintained by the people Gleason dislikes[1], to the point where some instances automatically defederate from instances using Soapbox's frontend[2]. [0]: Pleroma uses a RESTful API for routing. Gleason wanted to add a bunch of alternative endpoints for no other reason than "this is what users are familiar with on Twitter and my frontend for Pleroma wants to rely on those". The patches were reverted eventually on the simple reason that they're cruft. [1]: Which is extremely funny considering an early criticism of the Pleroma project was that due to it being easy to host, it wound up hosting a lot of instances that would fit this bill. Now most of those migrated to using Soapbox. [2] Funny for the exact same reason as [1].

rglullis 4y ago
Can we agree at least that Soapbox is a much better frontend (as in, it is more suited as a Twitter-alternative, more user-friendly and relies on UX/UI that is more familiar to the general audience) than whatever crap is the default FE from Pleroma? Alex is also the first one to push for Quoted objects. None of the Pleroma devs wanted, the Mastodon devs even less. Now that Mastodon is reaching some semblance of mainstream, I am seeing every day someone writing about how QT is the one feature they miss from Twitter. For everyone that responds with "Soapbox has it, you should take a look", there will be at least 3 others saying "Soapbox is developed by a TERF, stay away from it".