Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Diaspora Developer Release

joindiaspora.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 202 posts

Re: Diaspora Developer Release

#121

Post by danieldon »

dandelany wrote: post #30
patio11 wrote: post #13

Sweet Jesus. Please publish a security reporting page at the earliest possible convenience, because this will have private info on it within a day from now, and that is a very bad idea right now.

What? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like they're just releasing the source code, not taking new users for "the" Diaspora or sharing access to any kind of central database of users. It's just a ruby web app you can download and run locally (or on a web server if you're that dumb...), right? And in that case, how is this any worse than the hundreds of other bits of (unsafe, untested) social networking code floa…

Well, there's at least one glaring security issue that should be obvious to any Rails developer.

Re: Diaspora Developer Release

#122

Post by warp »

bl4k wrote: post #109
vault_ wrote: post #15

It seems to be AGPL licensed. I'm wondering how that will affect adoption.

I think that since the community funded this project that the code should have a more liberal license so that the community can do what they want with it. The project also depends on MongoDB, which is also AGPL licensed, which raises the question of if paid hosting of a diaspora instance is 'commercial' and if it requires a MongoDB license from 10gen, I would think that it does. They should BSD/MIT license their own…

The AGPL (like the GPL) does not allow adding more restrictions. You do not need any further license to use AGPL licensed code in a commercial product, you just have to abide by the license terms of the AGPL.

I assume the 10gen commercial license allows you avoid having to provide source code for your product to your users. (but the mongodb website isn't clear about that).

Re: Diaspora Developer Release

#123

Post by SkyMarshal »

bl4k wrote: post #112
xelfer wrote: post #12

They really need to do something about that name. They seem to be having trouble with it themselves: http://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/commit/708e9f88a55cc3713...

The name reminds me of the holocaust. It doesn't help that the color theme of the app evokes Schindler's List. You can bet for most non-US people that 'diaspora' reminds them of some sort of persecution their people have faced. It is also a word that is used in a lot of languages, I have friends who are Russian, Ukranian, Serbian, Lebanese, Armenian, Jordanian etc. who all refer to themselves being in the 'diaspora'…

"You can bet for most non-US people that 'diaspora' reminds them of some sort of persecution their people have faced."

I like it for that reason. Edgy, accurate, and with the potential to repurpose/reframe the word in the minds of many.

That kind of persecution also tends to cause the persecuted to bond even more strongly and proudly with their cultural identity, so the connotations are not all bad.

Re: Diaspora Developer Release

#124

Post by Raphael »

jat850 wrote: post #4

It looks surprisingly advanced, from a screenshot perspective - more than I admit I would have given them credit for. Is there additional insight into what "aspects" are, though? It confuses me - will it confuse an ordinary user?

Perhaps friend lists

Re: Diaspora Developer Release

#125

Post by againanewacount »

obiefernandez wrote: post #96
xelfer wrote: post #12

They really need to do something about that name. They seem to be having trouble with it themselves: http://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/commit/708e9f88a55cc3713...

It's too hard to pronounce easily.

Lol. If you are German, pronouncing this is no problem at all. I guess this will hold for a lot more languages, except maybe the English ;-)

Re: Diaspora Developer Release

#126

Post by deno »

jarin wrote: post #116
eob wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just downloaded and ran the project, and to be honest, I didn't see more UX work than what could have been done in an afternoon's worth of googling around for some templates.

You obviously haven't noticed all the touches like being able to drag files into the browser to upload them (Gmail-style)

That's for super-power-users, maybe in 5 years for advanced users. If you attempt to do this with either unsupported browser or on unsupported website your browser will act very non-userfriendly, like by opening dropped file. Because of this it would be foolish and dangerous to even inform the vast majority of users of this feature.

From my observation their UI is just copied Facebook UI. And my issue with this is not lack of originality. Rather it's the fact that people will now compare Diaspora functionality with that of Facebook. Furthermore anything working differently will lead to frustration, as certain behaviors are expected.

Re: Diaspora Developer Release

#127

Post by Joeboy »

loire280 wrote: post #102
patio11 wrote: post #13

Sweet Jesus. Please publish a security reporting page at the earliest possible convenience, because this will have private info on it within a day from now, and that is a very bad idea right now.

If you're smart enough to get code from github working on your own box, paranoid enough to worry about facebook's control of your data and be interested in an alternative, and savvy enough to get wind of such an early release, I don't think you're going to put anything that sensitive in this network!

They don't seem to be publicizing it, but there's a live version up at a subdomain of joindiaspora.com, which people are sharing on diaspora's facebook page. Won't link here because of the concerns above and because it's creaking under the load already.

Re: Diaspora Developer Release

#128

Post by ErrantX »

dandelany wrote: post #30
patio11 wrote: post #13

Sweet Jesus. Please publish a security reporting page at the earliest possible convenience, because this will have private info on it within a day from now, and that is a very bad idea right now.

What? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like they're just releasing the source code, not taking new users for "the" Diaspora or sharing access to any kind of central database of users. It's just a ruby web app you can download and run locally (or on a web server if you're that dumb...), right? And in that case, how is this any worse than the hundreds of other bits of (unsafe, untested) social networking code floa…

Trust me; this will not stop someone from using it.

And they will be the same person that complains really loudly when it goes wrong :)

Re: Diaspora Developer Release

#129

Post by ErrantX »

Looks ok, not as good as I was hoping (though I realise they are working on back end stuff).

Fancy front end things, though, are just overkill at this point. Next they must nail the interface or people will not use it. Random example; "all aspects" needs to change to something else (or they need to aggressively teach people what an aspect is).

Post reply on HN