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Ask HN: Bluesky is #1 in the U.S. App Store. Is this a first for open source?

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Re: Ask HN: Bluesky is #1 in the U.S. App Store. Is this a first for open source?

#11

Post by consumer451 »

damnloveless wrote: post #8
consumer451 wrote: post #2

Bluesky is growing at around 10 accounts/second as of an hour ago. This has put their iOS app [0] in the top position under free apps, [1] in the USA and UK App Stores. The app is MIT licensed open source. Others and myself are wondering, is their #1 position in the iOS free app category a first for an open source app? (please note that this is all apps, not just social media) [0] https://github.com/bluesky-social/so…

user counter: https://bcounter.nat.vg/

Oh, this is great. I was doing it the hard way. This has an accounts per second counter built-in!

Re: Ask HN: Bluesky is #1 in the U.S. App Store. Is this a first for open source?

#12

Post by tartoran »

dyauspitr wrote: post #10
tartoran wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a consistent metric of 10 accounts/second? If that's so it's a decent number. Is this a sudden influx of users? Are people fleeing away from Mr. Musk?

I want to know why too. If they’re fleeing musk then why now?

The timing is weird if it's for that reason. Maybe it has something to do with recent news developments, Id be curious to know too.

Re: Ask HN: Bluesky is #1 in the U.S. App Store. Is this a first for open source?

#13

Post by willcipriano »

dyauspitr wrote: post #10
tartoran wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a consistent metric of 10 accounts/second? If that's so it's a decent number. Is this a sudden influx of users? Are people fleeing away from Mr. Musk?

I want to know why too. If they’re fleeing musk then why now?

Related recent news: https://pagesix.com/2024/11/13/celebrity-news/jamie-lee-curt...

Re: Ask HN: Bluesky is #1 in the U.S. App Store. Is this a first for open source?

#14

Post by damnloveless »

consumer451 wrote: post #11
damnloveless wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

user counter: https://bcounter.nat.vg/

Oh, this is great. I was doing it the hard way. This has an accounts per second counter built-in!

natalie is awesome!

if you're on bsky give her a follow!

Re: Ask HN: Bluesky is #1 in the U.S. App Store. Is this a first for open source?

#15

Post by ferbivore »

consumer451 wrote: post #2

Bluesky is growing at around 10 accounts/second as of an hour ago. This has put their iOS app [0] in the top position under free apps, [1] in the USA and UK App Stores. The app is MIT licensed open source. Others and myself are wondering, is their #1 position in the iOS free app category a first for an open source app? (please note that this is all apps, not just social media) [0] https://github.com/bluesky-social/so…

The license isn't relevant. It's not really "an open source app", it's just an app that happens to be open source. Put it this way: if, say, Godot became the #1 most popular game engine, that would be something for the open source community at large to celebrate. With Bluesky, we have absolutely nothing to celebrate. If anything, this is terrible news; instead of Twitter losing users to a genuinely open platform, they're just going to yet another VC-funded functionally proprietary service.

Re: Ask HN: Bluesky is #1 in the U.S. App Store. Is this a first for open source?

#16

Post by palata »

I was never a big user of Twitter, but I joined a Mastodon server around 2020. I am still using it regularly, but I honestly find it pretty hard to get useful content: it feels like either it's random stuff I don't care about, or always the same people I follow and don't bring me much.

At first I didn't want to try Bluesky (because of some of the founders, I suppose? I don't know, Mastodon seemed more organic), but I eventually did. And I actually like their system of "custom" algos. I have a few very interesting feeds now (international news, national news, ...).

So yeah, positively surprised by Bluesky.

Re: Ask HN: Bluesky is #1 in the U.S. App Store. Is this a first for open source?

#17

Post by Lionga »

consumer451 wrote: post #6
piyuv wrote: post #5

Stretching the definition of “open source” here

How so? I believe every single line of everything is open source, aside from their server-side Discover feed algo. But in any case, the question is about the app, which is 100% MIT licensed open source code.

So everything besides the most important part?

Real "open source" would for me even imply that all data is freely accessible but this stops way, way before and should not be called open in almost any sense.

Just a VC PR play.

Re: Ask HN: Bluesky is #1 in the U.S. App Store. Is this a first for open source?

#18

Post by consumer451 »

ferbivore wrote: post #15
consumer451 wrote: post #2

Bluesky is growing at around 10 accounts/second as of an hour ago. This has put their iOS app [0] in the top position under free apps, [1] in the USA and UK App Stores. The app is MIT licensed open source. Others and myself are wondering, is their #1 position in the iOS free app category a first for an open source app? (please note that this is all apps, not just social media) [0] https://github.com/bluesky-social/so…

The license isn't relevant. It's not really "an open source app", it's just an app that happens to be open source. Put it this way: if, say, Godot became the #1 most popular game engine, that would be something for the open source community at large to celebrate. With Bluesky, we have absolutely nothing to celebrate. If anything, this is terrible news; instead of Twitter losing users to a genuinely open platform, the…

My point here is not to get all into the fedi/bsky/twitter/threads drama. I am not even talking about social media of any kind.

My question is simple and has an objective yes/no answer. Prior to this, has any open source app [0] ever been the #1 app in the US App Store "Top Free Apps" category?

[0] For the sake of this post, let's pretend that an open source app is one where the code is freely available, forkable, and under MIT license.

Re: Ask HN: Bluesky is #1 in the U.S. App Store. Is this a first for open source?

#19

Post by readyplayernull »

palata wrote: post #16

I was never a big user of Twitter, but I joined a Mastodon server around 2020. I am still using it regularly, but I honestly find it pretty hard to get useful content: it feels like either it's random stuff I don't care about, or always the same people I follow and don't bring me much. At first I didn't want to try Bluesky (because of some of the founders, I suppose? I don't know, Mastodon seemed more organic), but I…

Sounds like a problem of reaching critical mass.

Re: Ask HN: Bluesky is #1 in the U.S. App Store. Is this a first for open source?

#20

Post by asadotzler »

If the algorithms for sorting and filtering and discovering aren't open source, a social app is not open. It really is that simple. Some open source artifact on your device wrapping proprietary code on a server is not in the category of "open source products" because the only parts that matter are entirely closed. "My HTML front end is licensed MIT" does not make your product which is entirely dependent on secret sauce in your back end open source. Enough with the bullshit. Labels matter and if the current generation on this site doesn't understand something as fundamental as open vs proprietary, we're all screwed.
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