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We need a federation of forges

blog.tangled.org

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Re: We need a federation of forges

#141

Post by zeafoamrun »

I really like the concept of federated social networks and it's the next thing I want to get into. Maybe even work on it as a job but I doubt there are any that pay well.

I think sovereignty over what information you consume is more important than ever. I had to use Twitter for work to get news about but the amount of virulent propaganda, totally unrelated to , that you end up absorbing is unforgivable. Even if you think you're smart and don't pay attention to propaganda, by design it hits you at the subconscious level so you can't block it. The only social media I have left is LinkedIn and I really hate it but it has made a direct positive material impact in my life ($$$) so I try to hold my nose while I use it. I really would rather use some kind of federated LinkedIn, but when I last checked nothing like that existed yet.

Re: We need a federation of forges

#143

Post by curious_cat_163 »

icy wrote: post #47
code-blooded wrote: post #36

Tangled is VC sponsored. It doesn't scream stability to me, but rather "we need to grow at all cost". I don't see the appeal. Even though it's federated, when development stops, who will be there to fix bugs and maintain it?

Tangled is built entirely in the open: https://tangled.org/tangled.org/core , and our primary goal is to be "permanent software"—i.e. be fully reproducible and entirely self-hostable at minimal cost. VC money is a means to an end. We're both Indian founders in Europe, and grants are nigh on impossible to find (4–12+ months for anything to materialize). VC is quite simply the quickest way for us to build a team, setup…

Hey! Love the idea. I think a lot of skepticism here would be addressed if you discussed your plans to monetize. People just want to know how you will (eventually) make money in a way that is aligned with how they expect this to evolve.

Re: We need a federation of forges

#144

Post by jauntywundrkind »

madamelic wrote: post #41

The problem I feel with federated solutions is basically the 'cold start' problem. When you are wanting to join a federated network, you have two choices: join a pre-existing server thereby creating the exact same problem you are escaping, ie: a giant server that holds you to its whims, BUT you do get a big network to begin with. Or you start your own server but your network is zero, discoverability is zero, your fee…

The CTO @pfrazee had a lovely New Year's Eve post that talks about Atmospheric Computing and specifically raising the cold start problem and addressing how atproto tackles it. https://www.pfrazee.com/blog/atmospheric-computing

Tangled here is a great example. An existing user base of a social network was able to rapidly join and start using a new app, a git forge, to share repos and collaborate. PRs and comments show up like any other record on the network.

As for how the network works: atproto tackles the cold start problem by layering architectural concerns. Each person is their own server ("personal data server" aka PDS). But aggregation layers ("relays") collect all PDS activity they can find and relay it to consumers. Then applications such as Bluesky or Tangled ("appviews") can be built by reading records of interest (of the right "lexicon" type) from the relays. Each person owns their data, relays make all data available, appviews distill out user experiences appropriate to the records they cover.

Re: We need a federation of forges

#145

Post by 999900000999 »

sambuccid wrote: post #117
999900000999 wrote: post #105

You will never get around the free rider problem. If I want to create 100 repos of vibe coded projects every month someone will have to pay for it. At this point, just give me an honest version of GitHub that tells me what things actually cost. 5$ a repo, and another 1 per gb stored in LFS, cool.

Similar UI but donation based and public repo only: codeberg.org Fixed low cost but different UI: sourcehut.org

Source Hut looks cool, the website is confusing though. What build systems do I get for 4$ a month ?

Getting my friends to feel comfortable moving ( so they can view the UX ) too will be a challenge.

Re: We need a federation of forges

#146

Post by whereistejas »

horsawlarway wrote: post #95
whereistejas wrote: post #2

tangled is a really cool project; the most important feature it provides is that it is jujutsu first.

I don't really see it. I used JJ for a bit, but I personally really, really dislike the anonymous branch approach it forces you into. Branches are just useful conceptually, at least to me. For the same reason I like my documents grouped into folders. Frankly - I think JJ just ended up taking up far more mental bandwidth than git. Simple operations need generated ids, commands require complicated input (ex - the entir…

First of all: you do you and as long as you are happy, I am happy.

`jj` is a tool trying to amplify the strengths of git and strengthen its weaknesses. `git rebase` being just one of the many quirky commands. Yes, `jj` requires some rewiring of your brain, but once you get over the initial bump its pretty slick.

Also, I use `jj` everyday exclusively. And I have written `revsets` like 4 times in total.

Re: We need a federation of forges

#147

Post by code-blooded »

zachlatta wrote: post #116
shimman wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VC money is absolutely not a means to an end, what is signals is that the company doesn't care about community and only cares about profit. I'm with the OP you're replying to. Taking VC is an albatross that means a large portion of devs will never trust you or use your services (outside of bleeding your funds dry). If this place truly cared about community they should have made a non-profit or some type of NGO, basic…

This kind of absolutism is crazy. People who are doing 90% of what we want them to do should be greatly celebrated and rewarded. Else we penalize idealistic people who are not perfect instead of penalizing the people who are actually doing the opposite of what we care about (ex. Autodesk). Do you want software to become as closed source as mechanical engineering? No! So let's celebrate people building software that's…

The problem with VC-founded projects is that there's some kind of rug-pull, ads, privacy violation (e.g. using repos to train AI) or "feature enhancing" subscription likely coming.

As a user who would need to invest time and effort in using Tangled, I think it's fair to ask to have the plan explained. I'd rather see explicit price for services than see enshittification happen.

Re: We need a federation of forges

#149

Post by Synthetic7346 »

ddosmax556 wrote: post #119
hauleth wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that any company would struggle in such case. The thing is that everyone see that GH is pushing for more agents, their Copilot thingy, and AI everywhere, while basic functionality that people relies on is constantly failing. If you push a lot of new features but your baseline is constantly failing, then something is wrong.

If you're seriously using agents, you'll know that if they didn't offer that then people would rapidly switch platforms if they didn't. Maybe not all of them yet, but soon it will be all.

Switch platforms to what?

Re: We need a federation of forges

#150

Post by zachlatta »

code-blooded wrote: post #147
zachlatta wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of absolutism is crazy. People who are doing 90% of what we want them to do should be greatly celebrated and rewarded. Else we penalize idealistic people who are not perfect instead of penalizing the people who are actually doing the opposite of what we care about (ex. Autodesk). Do you want software to become as closed source as mechanical engineering? No! So let's celebrate people building software that's…

The problem with VC-founded projects is that there's some kind of rug-pull, ads, privacy violation (e.g. using repos to train AI) or "feature enhancing" subscription likely coming. As a user who would need to invest time and effort in using Tangled, I think it's fair to ask to have the plan explained. I'd rather see explicit price for services than see enshittification happen.

Just like engineering, monetizing is an iterative process. As long as they don't make it hard to move off their platform, IMO it's completely fine for them to try different monetization models.

We should celebrate people building open source stuff and in the public. The alternative is for the software tooling ecosystem to look like EE or mechanical engineering tools - all closed source, proprietary, and with super expensive licensing.

It's easy to take open source for granted - 'information wants to be free', but we are at risk of the open source movement dying with proprietary AI completely changing everything about software.

If we penalize people who are working toward the right goal, we contribute to that decline.

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