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Movim: A social network on XMPP

movim.eu

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Re: Movim: A social network on XMPP

#31
post #12
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.

you mean like how myspace was AGPL.

Re: Movim: A social network on XMPP

#32
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I don't think it was the downturn that did it. Companies look at successful companies for hints on how to succeed. What has been the most successful company on the planet for more than a decade? Apple.

Apple are not shy about "owning" their platform, and they aggressively leverage their walled gardens. The market did not punish them; in fact, users raved about their "refined" experience. Other companies took note and ran with it.

Re: Movim: A social network on XMPP

#33
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I don't think it was the downturn that did it. Companies look at successful companies for hints on how to succeed. What has been the most successful company on the planet for more than a decade? Apple. Apple are not shy about "owning" their platform, and they aggressively leverage their walled gardens. The market did not punish them; in fact, users raved about their "refined" experience. Other companies took note and…

That Apple thing might have been a reason. Another one might have been that if you don't follow a standard it's easier to debug your code and add the features management craves so much. I've seen that at work projects before where the developers pretty much enforced removing standard interfaces to get more freedom to resolve their tasks. It's a pity when not even developers see the advantages of interoperability of their services, but it happens just as often.

Re: Movim: A social network on XMPP

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know that. What I say is that it seems to me AGPL stifles code reuse more than it powers it.

The alternative to AGPL software isn't necessarily no software or only non-free software but often code with much simpler licenses.

Re: Movim: A social network on XMPP

#35
post #26

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 for reading and considering me feedback :-), much appreciated.

And don't get me wrong, generally, I'm pro (A)GPL and copyleft. But for a social network kind of project one might have to think about tradeoffs to get the neccessary adoption.

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