5 ms·

GNU social and GNU FM

138 points by tvvocold 11y ago

dmritard96 11y ago
So much open source enthusiasm seems to come out of Europe...am I wrong on this observation? Are there reasons behind this (distrust of the US, desire for independence, etc)?
- w0rm 11y ago
  It's only a guess, but I think some OSS projects are more often "based" in Europe as we do not have Software Patents here.
- AceJohnny2 11y ago
  Yeah, it's been my impression as well. And on the opposite end, so little coming out of india, despite the size of the IT industry there. My inkling is that it has to do with wealth of the society and social protection. In many countries of Europe, people aren't as beholden to companies for livelihood, and can thus better afford to spend personal time on projects they care about. There's a better social conscience. In India, at the opposite end, those same skills put you above social average and are a valuable tool that you wouldn't want to give away for free (unless you're from an affluent background). This is, of course, just my feeling and not backed by any actual research :)
- pgeorgi 11y ago
  My guess is that it's because Europe consists of relatively rich societies (so home computers were available since the 80s) that had limited access to US software (pre-Internet, software availability over here was pretty hit and miss). That led to an active European freeware, shareware, and eventually open source software scene.
- bjelkeman-again 11y ago
  Maybe it is because a) it's in the water b) we are a bunch of socialists c) we are trained from when we are young that money is ugly Actually, There is a lot of open source coming out of the US as well. But there are a lot more possibilities in the US to get good funding for software projects and there is a strong culture of "making it" in the US, which probably influences things towards more proprietary.
- nextos 11y ago
  I'm European, and while I appreciate your point, in all fairness there's a lot of stuff coming from the US as well. Arguably, the movement originated there.
- amelius 11y ago
  Corollary: most open source software is created in Europe and monetized in the US.
- jordigh 11y ago
  As these are GNU packages, they probably prefer to be called by the synonym "free software" instead of "open source".
- logn 11y ago
  I'm not sure if it applies in this case, but your point make me think of something William Binney said: "Just the fact that people are being surveilled inhibits their ability or feeling that they have the opportunity to do new and creative and innovative things. So that kind of reduces their risk taking basically, which in turn means you get less and less creativity and innovation and more and more stagnation of civilization. That's what happened in the Soviet Union. That's what happened in East Germany and the Communist plot. They stagnated because people were being so surveilled that they were afraid to do things. It made people afraid to take a risk." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgbJqFrwhbw&t=9m38s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgbJqFrwhbw&t=9m38s When the description of a project is "We are a federation of microbloggers who care about ethics and solidarity and want to quit the centralised capitalist services", I can see why citizens of a police/surveillance state might not be inclined to create or work on it, even if subconsciously. But I could be wrong; Europe seems pretty heavily surveilled too.
- erkose 11y ago
  GNUSocial is based on Status Net which was made in Montreal, Canada https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/statusnet https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/statusnet
  - yarrel 11y ago
    GNU Social and the awesome StatusNet shared a codebase, GNU Social is now continuing its development. It's an international project. The lead developers are in Europe, admins are in North America, servers and users are all over.
    - erkose 11y ago
      There is no leadership, even when Evan was involved. There are enumerable basic feature bugs that aren't addressed. The only real change has been a skin that makes it look like twitter, which I find ironic, but then again, most of the gnusocial users these days are twitter users.
chris_wot 11y ago
What exactly IS GNU Social?!?
- ah- 11y ago
  From https://git.gnu.io/gnu/gnu-social/tree/master https://git.gnu.io/gnu/gnu-social/tree/master: GNU social is a free social networking platform. It helps people in a community, company or group to exchange short status updates, do polls, announce events, or other social activities (and you can add more!). Users can choose which people to "follow" and receive only their friends' or colleagues' status messages. It provides a similar service to sites like Twitter, Google+ or Facebook, but is much more awesome.
- programmernews3 11y ago
  The continuation of StatusNet, which was the codebase behind identi.ca until the owner wrote pump.io in nodejs and migrated to that.
- gobengo 11y ago
  A federated social web implementation
mastax 11y ago
Chrome's giving me a Certificate Invalid Error on this site. Anyone else having problems? [Edit] Interestingly enough, desktop chrome has no problems but chrome on my android phone complains that the certificate authority is invalid. I think I've had problems like this in the past also.
- mayli 11y ago
  Same here, I got a red https on chrome/android.
- yarrel 11y ago
  Thank you for reporting this. I'll (gnu.io admin) take a look.
- yarrel 11y ago
  Which version of Android/Chrome and which network provider? I'm not seeing an issue with Chrome 43 on Android 5.1.1 over wifi.
alecdbrooks 11y ago
gnusocial.de has a better pitch, at least for the Hacker News crowd. My translation: >We are a community of microbloggers, distributed over a worldwide federation of independent GNU Social servers, also known as StatusNet. We're the right choice for users like you, to whom ethics and solidarity matter and who no longer want to use centralized commercial services. A nice touch is that if you mouse over the word for federation ("Verbund"), it explains that you can communicate with gnusocial.de users through any GNU Social instance or even other implementations of the same protocol. It looks like it's open-source, distributed Twitter. The references to a public timeline on gnusocial.de and other sites [0] make me think you can make some tweets private and others public, rather than the all-or-nothing approach Twitter takes. [0]: https://gnu.io/social/try/ https://gnu.io/social/try/
- aaron-lebo 11y ago
  The "official" translation on the English version of the site is: > We are a federation of microbloggers who care about ethics and solidarity and want to quit the centralised capitalist services. Which is a bit more political and perhaps radical. Twitter allows private DMs. Are you sure gnusocial can do that? I'm not sure how you'd keep private data truly private over a federated network.
  - notspanishflu 11y ago
    You beat me by 3 min with the same comment. I wonder why the German version is somewhat more professional than the majority of other versions.
  - shiggerino 11y ago
    Agreed, they should definitely change that. Software freedom is the real goal here, not converting people from one economic system to another.
  - A_COMPUTER 11y ago
    What do they have solidarity with?
- 11y ago
gobengo 11y ago
If you like this, you may also like * http://indiewebcamp.com/ http://indiewebcamp.com/ There are biweekly meetups in SF and other cities https://indiewebcamp.com/Homebrew_Website_Club https://indiewebcamp.com/Homebrew_Website_Club * W3C Social WG - https://www.w3.org/Social/WG https://www.w3.org/Social/WG
reitanqild 11y ago
And I'm still wondering what happened to pump.io and tent.
- dublinben 11y ago
  Pump.io is still being used and developed.
- Sami_Lehtinen 11y ago
  See Cupcake: https://cupcake.io/ https://cupcake.io/
dethos 11y ago
I'm thinking in setting up a gnu social server for personal use. Do you recommend it? Does the federation work well or it has known issues?
- yarrel 11y ago
  GNU social team member here, so I'm biased, but yes people have personal instances (I ran one on a plug server several years ago - http://foocorp.net/projects/fooplug/ http://foocorp.net/projects/fooplug/ ). The federation works well, the only issues I've had are when people's themes for their sites have got in the way.
ilpianista 11y ago
May I suggest Choqok as desktop client? It handles both GNU social and pump.io (and twitter), and I'm working to implement missing features because it seems we lack client here
- listic 11y ago
  Is there another client that is not reliant on KDE? Also, I thought pump.io is GNU Social?
  - LukeShu 11y ago
    GNU social is a fork/continuation* of the StatusNet software (PHP, "OStatus" protocol). pump.io is a similar piece of software (node.js, "Activity Streams" protocol) written by the original StatusNet developers. *It started life as a fork, but in June 2013 they merged and it became the continuation.

138 points by tvvocold 11y ago

So much open source enthusiasm seems to come out of Europe...am I wrong on this observation? Are there reasons behind this (distrust of the US, desire for independence, etc)?

w0rm 11y ago
It's only a guess, but I think some OSS projects are more often "based" in Europe as we do not have Software Patents here.
AceJohnny2 11y ago
Yeah, it's been my impression as well. And on the opposite end, so little coming out of india, despite the size of the IT industry there. My inkling is that it has to do with wealth of the society and social protection. In many countries of Europe, people aren't as beholden to companies for livelihood, and can thus better afford to spend personal time on projects they care about. There's a better social conscience. In India, at the opposite end, those same skills put you above social average and are a valuable tool that you wouldn't want to give away for free (unless you're from an affluent background). This is, of course, just my feeling and not backed by any actual research :)
pgeorgi 11y ago
My guess is that it's because Europe consists of relatively rich societies (so home computers were available since the 80s) that had limited access to US software (pre-Internet, software availability over here was pretty hit and miss). That led to an active European freeware, shareware, and eventually open source software scene.
bjelkeman-again 11y ago
Maybe it is because a) it's in the water b) we are a bunch of socialists c) we are trained from when we are young that money is ugly Actually, There is a lot of open source coming out of the US as well. But there are a lot more possibilities in the US to get good funding for software projects and there is a strong culture of "making it" in the US, which probably influences things towards more proprietary.
nextos 11y ago
I'm European, and while I appreciate your point, in all fairness there's a lot of stuff coming from the US as well. Arguably, the movement originated there.
amelius 11y ago
Corollary: most open source software is created in Europe and monetized in the US.
jordigh 11y ago
As these are GNU packages, they probably prefer to be called by the synonym "free software" instead of "open source".
logn 11y ago
I'm not sure if it applies in this case, but your point make me think of something William Binney said: "Just the fact that people are being surveilled inhibits their ability or feeling that they have the opportunity to do new and creative and innovative things. So that kind of reduces their risk taking basically, which in turn means you get less and less creativity and innovation and more and more stagnation of civilization. That's what happened in the Soviet Union. That's what happened in East Germany and the Communist plot. They stagnated because people were being so surveilled that they were afraid to do things. It made people afraid to take a risk." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgbJqFrwhbw&t=9m38s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgbJqFrwhbw&t=9m38s When the description of a project is "We are a federation of microbloggers who care about ethics and solidarity and want to quit the centralised capitalist services", I can see why citizens of a police/surveillance state might not be inclined to create or work on it, even if subconsciously. But I could be wrong; Europe seems pretty heavily surveilled too.
erkose 11y ago
GNUSocial is based on Status Net which was made in Montreal, Canada https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/statusnet https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/statusnet
- yarrel 11y ago
  GNU Social and the awesome StatusNet shared a codebase, GNU Social is now continuing its development. It's an international project. The lead developers are in Europe, admins are in North America, servers and users are all over.
  - erkose 11y ago
    There is no leadership, even when Evan was involved. There are enumerable basic feature bugs that aren't addressed. The only real change has been a skin that makes it look like twitter, which I find ironic, but then again, most of the gnusocial users these days are twitter users.

chris_wot 11y ago

What exactly IS GNU Social?!?

ah- 11y ago
From https://git.gnu.io/gnu/gnu-social/tree/master https://git.gnu.io/gnu/gnu-social/tree/master: GNU social is a free social networking platform. It helps people in a community, company or group to exchange short status updates, do polls, announce events, or other social activities (and you can add more!). Users can choose which people to "follow" and receive only their friends' or colleagues' status messages. It provides a similar service to sites like Twitter, Google+ or Facebook, but is much more awesome.
programmernews3 11y ago
The continuation of StatusNet, which was the codebase behind identi.ca until the owner wrote pump.io in nodejs and migrated to that.
gobengo 11y ago
A federated social web implementation

mastax 11y ago

Chrome's giving me a Certificate Invalid Error on this site. Anyone else having problems? [Edit] Interestingly enough, desktop chrome has no problems but chrome on my android phone complains that the certificate authority is invalid. I think I've had problems like this in the past also.

mayli 11y ago
Same here, I got a red https on chrome/android.
yarrel 11y ago
Thank you for reporting this. I'll (gnu.io admin) take a look.
yarrel 11y ago
Which version of Android/Chrome and which network provider? I'm not seeing an issue with Chrome 43 on Android 5.1.1 over wifi.

alecdbrooks 11y ago

gnusocial.de has a better pitch, at least for the Hacker News crowd. My translation: >We are a community of microbloggers, distributed over a worldwide federation of independent GNU Social servers, also known as StatusNet. We're the right choice for users like you, to whom ethics and solidarity matter and who no longer want to use centralized commercial services. A nice touch is that if you mouse over the word for federation ("Verbund"), it explains that you can communicate with gnusocial.de users through any GNU Social instance or even other implementations of the same protocol. It looks like it's open-source, distributed Twitter. The references to a public timeline on gnusocial.de and other sites [0] make me think you can make some tweets private and others public, rather than the all-or-nothing approach Twitter takes. [0]: https://gnu.io/social/try/ https://gnu.io/social/try/

aaron-lebo 11y ago
The "official" translation on the English version of the site is: > We are a federation of microbloggers who care about ethics and solidarity and want to quit the centralised capitalist services. Which is a bit more political and perhaps radical. Twitter allows private DMs. Are you sure gnusocial can do that? I'm not sure how you'd keep private data truly private over a federated network.
- notspanishflu 11y ago
  You beat me by 3 min with the same comment. I wonder why the German version is somewhat more professional than the majority of other versions.
- shiggerino 11y ago
  Agreed, they should definitely change that. Software freedom is the real goal here, not converting people from one economic system to another.
- A_COMPUTER 11y ago
  What do they have solidarity with?
11y ago

gobengo 11y ago

If you like this, you may also like * http://indiewebcamp.com/ http://indiewebcamp.com/ There are biweekly meetups in SF and other cities https://indiewebcamp.com/Homebrew_Website_Club https://indiewebcamp.com/Homebrew_Website_Club * W3C Social WG - https://www.w3.org/Social/WG https://www.w3.org/Social/WG

reitanqild 11y ago

And I'm still wondering what happened to pump.io and tent.

dublinben 11y ago
Pump.io is still being used and developed.
Sami_Lehtinen 11y ago
See Cupcake: https://cupcake.io/ https://cupcake.io/

dethos 11y ago

I'm thinking in setting up a gnu social server for personal use. Do you recommend it? Does the federation work well or it has known issues?

yarrel 11y ago
GNU social team member here, so I'm biased, but yes people have personal instances (I ran one on a plug server several years ago - http://foocorp.net/projects/fooplug/ http://foocorp.net/projects/fooplug/ ). The federation works well, the only issues I've had are when people's themes for their sites have got in the way.

ilpianista 11y ago

May I suggest Choqok as desktop client? It handles both GNU social and pump.io (and twitter), and I'm working to implement missing features because it seems we lack client here

listic 11y ago
Is there another client that is not reliant on KDE? Also, I thought pump.io is GNU Social?
- LukeShu 11y ago
  GNU social is a fork/continuation* of the StatusNet software (PHP, "OStatus" protocol). pump.io is a similar piece of software (node.js, "Activity Streams" protocol) written by the original StatusNet developers. *It started life as a fork, but in June 2013 they merged and it became the continuation.