GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter
1–10 of 259 posts
Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter
#2Neat product but the "familiar user interface" for a Quitter is literally a copy of Twitter. That's not a good look.
Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter
#3Copying the design of Twitter and Facebook. What a great way to make a good first impression and to respect the copyright the GNU project cares so much about. I can't imagine a better way to show everyone just how amazing you are.
The free software community must be truly happy to have such amazing supporters on their side.
Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter
#4Stuff like this is never going to work, because it suffers from the chicken-and-egg problem. Everyone (who cares about Twitter or something like it) uses Twitter because everyone else uses Twitter. You can make an account on Quitter or Diaspora or any other decentralized FLOSS network, but it'll be useless because all your non-nerd friends (and most of your nerd friends too) won't have accounts there, and will continue to use Twitter and Facebook because that's where all their contacts are. There's not really any way around this. The only thing that can happen is that something will somehow become so popular that everyone will just abandon the current service. This is what happened with MySpace: for whatever reasons, everyone moved over to Facebook, and abandoned MySpace, and now it's a dessicated husk that seems to become a place for bands to advertise and that's about it. This could potentially happen with either Facebook or Twitter, but I'm not holding my breath; the masses have shown over and over now that they're happy to chain themselves to highly centralized, proprietary products and services: FB, Twitter, the "app stores", not to mention all the proprietary software out there that intentionally and obviously uses nasty lock-in tactics.
Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter
#5Copying the design of Twitter and Facebook. What a great way to make a good first impression and to respect the copyright the GNU project cares so much about. I can't imagine a better way to show everyone just how amazing you are. The free software community must be truly happy to have such amazing supporters on their side.
Do you understand that GNU got started by copying Unix?
You can copy a product without violating copyright, although there have been several court cases on this topic.
Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter
#6Stuff like this is never going to work, because it suffers from the chicken-and-egg problem. Everyone (who cares about Twitter or something like it) uses Twitter because everyone else uses Twitter. You can make an account on Quitter or Diaspora or any other decentralized FLOSS network, but it'll be useless because all your non-nerd friends (and most of your nerd friends too) won't have accounts there, and will contin…
I would have felt the same way about MySpace.
The reality is, alternatives can arise. Facebook won't last forever, and Twitter even less so (although one of my favorite attempted "Myspace killers" was a social network for karaoke singers)
Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter
#7The https://quitter.se anti-capitalist message didn't resonate with me, so I joined the https://gnusocial.no federation. Much friendlier :)
Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter
#8Stuff like this is never going to work, because it suffers from the chicken-and-egg problem. Everyone (who cares about Twitter or something like it) uses Twitter because everyone else uses Twitter. You can make an account on Quitter or Diaspora or any other decentralized FLOSS network, but it'll be useless because all your non-nerd friends (and most of your nerd friends too) won't have accounts there, and will contin…
> it'll be useless because all your non-nerd friends (and most of your nerd friends too) won't have accounts there
Call it Eternal September, the unwashed masses, the quality of online communities dropping as they grow, call it whatever, I'm ready for a reboot, desperate even.
You are probably right — there'll be a chicken and egg problem even with hardcore nerdy gnu fans, but if new networks are created that attract nerdy passionate people, they will already be an interesting place, and if they ever happen to go mainstream then we will have at least taken our online "town squares" and public spaces back from private ownership.
An exciting new world where people aren't forced to use their real name (and prove it with government ID), where people can post their photos even if they contain nipples, where you might even have control over who can access your data.
I'm ready to jump ship, just looking for the boat to jump to.
Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter
#9Is there a good way to publish to this at the same time as twitter, so I'm already established and can drop twitter when it dies?
Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter
#10Stuff like this is never going to work, because it suffers from the chicken-and-egg problem. Everyone (who cares about Twitter or something like it) uses Twitter because everyone else uses Twitter. You can make an account on Quitter or Diaspora or any other decentralized FLOSS network, but it'll be useless because all your non-nerd friends (and most of your nerd friends too) won't have accounts there, and will contin…
I signed up and am having a great time. 3 people responded to my first message within a minute.
Sure it doesn't replace existing communities or networks. But it's creating new ones right now.
You just have to believe in it!