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Movim: A social network on XMPP

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Re: Movim: A social network on XMPP

#21

Post by marquis »

sethhochberg wrote: post #20
SwellJoe wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is XMPP "less and less often used"? I just started using it seriously relatively recently. It's quite nice and there are multiple excellent open server implementations, and I've been thinking on ways to integrate it into some of my own projects. I don't really follow trends in this area, so I don't know what people are doing with it...I do know that Facebook and Google have abandoned XMPP, but that's to be expected.…

At my day job we recently migrated away from XMPP for our internal chat rooms and IM (all on Slack now). XMPP worked fine, but, its one less service for us to maintain ourselves and everybody using a more consistent client by default instead of the mix of Adium / Trillian / Pidgin / etc has been nice from a feature standpoint. I think many other companies are in the same boat, based on Slack and Hipchat and the other…

Hipchat uses XMPP so you answered the parent's question perfectly. Slack, I believe, created a custom protocol.

Re: Movim: A social network on XMPP

#22

Post by reitanqild »

davexunit wrote: post #8
striking wrote: post #4

Unfortunately the AGPL licensing basically guarantees no other social network will be able to integrate with this one using the stock libraries. Which is a shame. It seems like a cool idea for a project, certainly, but it's more of a tech demo than a social network because it doesn't have users yet. I am trying it now, though. And I'll edit this post (or reply to it) with my findings. EDIT 1: Requires a password inst…

The AGPL is a feature, not a bug.

The AGPL makes code less usable than MIT, BSD, LGPL and even GPL:

Anything you can do with a piece of AGPL code you can also do with the same piece of MIT code. The opposite is not true.

The reason GPL works so well on Linux is because it doesn't affect licensing of the software that runs on top of Linux or connnects to it. AGPL works around.

Re: Movim: A social network on XMPP

#23

Post by Animats »

Somebody needs to figure out a way to get this, or Diaspora, or something, going. Setting up servers for the Ivy League schools, and pre-populating them with the student directories, would be a good start. Worked for Facebook.

The problem with scaling any social network is "asshole amplification", or how to design it so a few people can't ruin it for everybody. That's hard to do in a distributed system, especially if you're promoting anonymity. (Yes, IRC channel kick bots sort of worked.) I don't see how Movim addresses that.

Re: Movim: A social network on XMPP

#24

Post by Moyamo »

tacone wrote: post #12
striking wrote: post #4

Unfortunately the AGPL licensing basically guarantees no other social network will be able to integrate with this one using the stock libraries. Which is a shame. It seems like a cool idea for a project, certainly, but it's more of a tech demo than a social network because it doesn't have users yet. I am trying it now, though. And I'll edit this post (or reply to it) with my findings. EDIT 1: Requires a password inst…

The AGPL choice puts them in the very same field of play of the (now dead?) status.net/identi.ca. Was it a good choice? I'd say not.

status.net isn't dead. It turned into GNU Social which is alive and well. https://gnu.io/

Re: Movim: A social network on XMPP

#25

Post by captainmuon »

Instead of the AGPL (which forces users of the code to share their modifications, like the GPL), I'd rather see a license that requires you to offer federation (but doesn't put any other restrictions on you).

With federation I mean that any other service which uses parts of this code should have to offer interoperability with this service. Like email, you can have your account on one server and still write to your friends on a different one.

I wouldn't put other restrictions on the code. I don't care much about having the code copyleft, because the thing that is hard and we need to protect here is not the code, but the social network.

Wouldn't it be great if we had a bunch of social networks (can be closed source as far as I'm concerned) competing to be the best "host" (most features, best UX, free/premium, ...), but all able to talk to each other?

Re: Movim: A social network on XMPP

#26

Post by edhelas »

captainmuon wrote: post #25

Instead of the AGPL (which forces users of the code to share their modifications, like the GPL), I'd rather see a license that requires you to offer federation (but doesn't put any other restrictions on you). With federation I mean that any other service which uses parts of this code should have to offer interoperability with this service. Like email, you can have your account on one server and still write to your fr…

Hi, thanks for your feedback, I've created an issue on Github regarding the AGPL licence https://github.com/edhelas/movim/issues/43 :)

Re: Movim: A social network on XMPP

#27

Post by reitanqild »

edhelas wrote: post #26
captainmuon wrote: post #25

Instead of the AGPL (which forces users of the code to share their modifications, like the GPL), I'd rather see a license that requires you to offer federation (but doesn't put any other restrictions on you). With federation I mean that any other service which uses parts of this code should have to offer interoperability with this service. Like email, you can have your account on one server and still write to your fr…

Hi, thanks for your feedback, I've created an issue on Github regarding the AGPL licence https://github.com/edhelas/movim/issues/43 :)

Thanks, much appreciated.

As much as I support every coders right to choose his license for his work created on his own time I think AGPL prevents a lot of good use cases.

Re: Movim: A social network on XMPP

#28

Post by erikb »

SwellJoe wrote: post #18
erikb wrote: post #11

The question with social networks are never technical. As you can see by nearly all real life examples, the technology can suck, can exploit, can be this or that engine/framework/language. What matters is who is in there. If you build a social network based on a technology you will never achieve a significant size, especially if you choose a chat platform that is less and less often used. Just make it work and then g…

Is XMPP "less and less often used"? I just started using it seriously relatively recently. It's quite nice and there are multiple excellent open server implementations, and I've been thinking on ways to integrate it into some of my own projects. I don't really follow trends in this area, so I don't know what people are doing with it...I do know that Facebook and Google have abandoned XMPP, but that's to be expected.…

It's a technology that you need to be rather firm in to use it. There are many tools, but often they are a little "hacky" to non programmers. That's why it gets more and more replaced by the FB chats, Whatsapps, Skypes, and Snapchats of this world. The same goes for email. Email will die a slow death. Maybe even your children can still build a career out of email know-how. But it's more and more replaced by other technologies. Just look at China were people all didn't know the internet in its youth. The first contact to internet most of the Mainland Chinese had was with mobile solutions like QQ (their ICQ copycat). For them email is like a harder way to do the same thing that you could do just as well with Wechat/QQ. So even the most serious of corps in China have Wechat/QQ support and phone, but they might not even have an email support. This will come to us, too. Just slower because people know email already.

Re: Movim: A social network on XMPP

#29

Post by davexunit »

reitanqild wrote: post #22
davexunit wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AGPL is a feature, not a bug.

The AGPL makes code less usable than MIT, BSD, LGPL and even GPL: Anything you can do with a piece of AGPL code you can also do with the same piece of MIT code. The opposite is not true. The reason GPL works so well on Linux is because it doesn't affect licensing of the software that runs on top of Linux or connnects to it. AGPL works around.

The whole point of the AGPL is to ensure that derivative works give users the exact same rights that they were intended to have. It doesn't make the code less usable unless you'd like to make a proprietary derived work.

Re: Movim: A social network on XMPP

#30

Post by digi_owl »

erikb wrote: post #28
SwellJoe wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is XMPP "less and less often used"? I just started using it seriously relatively recently. It's quite nice and there are multiple excellent open server implementations, and I've been thinking on ways to integrate it into some of my own projects. I don't really follow trends in this area, so I don't know what people are doing with it...I do know that Facebook and Google have abandoned XMPP, but that's to be expected.…

It's a technology that you need to be rather firm in to use it. There are many tools, but often they are a little "hacky" to non programmers. That's why it gets more and more replaced by the FB chats, Whatsapps, Skypes, and Snapchats of this world. The same goes for email. Email will die a slow death. Maybe even your children can still build a career out of email know-how. But it's more and more replaced by other tec…

The crazy thing is that FB and Google used XMPP (Google still may, but had disabled their servers from accepting outside traffic) earlier.

I used to have Pidgin running hooked up to Facebook so i could say a bit in touch with family.

But with the economic downturn everyone has gone back to building silos, in an attempt at maintaining profits/growth...

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