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GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

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Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#61

Post by shmerl »

tete wrote: post #58
shmerl wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noam Chomsky doesn't speak for all anarchists. Anarchism comes in different forms. > I understand anti-capitalism as a criticism of the current economic system (or at least aspects of it), so it's independent to anarchism, just like it is, say, independent to Christianity. That's exactly my point (that it's independent). In case of Stallman, he isn't anti-capitalist per se, but he is definitely an anarchist.

What makes him anarchist?

His core ideas of free software are based on the concept of being free from control over it. The idea is anarchistic since by controlling the software and computing technology one controls society in some way, and the more technology is intertwined with social aspects (which gradually happens the more technology progresses), the higher is that level of control.

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#62

Post by girvo »

jeena wrote: post #48

Reading the comments here it seems that people are missing the point by just joining one of those instances. It is not about just using some alternative to Twitter, the real advantage begins when you host it yourself so that you can own your own content and post whatever you want (not what some company wants you to) and (perhaps) syndicate to other services like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc. I just gave a small tal…

GNU Social is similar in concept to the POSSE (Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere) idea, isn't it?

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#63

Post by calgoo »

DasIch wrote: post #28
ktRolster wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you understand that GNU got started by copying Unix? You can copy a product without violating copyright, although there have been several court cases on this topic.

Of course you can copy the product as such, that's fine by me and I think even necessary. They've gone far beyond that here though, copying not just the product but significant parts of the design. The Quitter thing looks almost exactly like Twitter. If they'd copied the website of a bank like this, it would be considered phishing. This is well beyond copying an idea or a few design concepts.

I thought they where just using bootstrap which was created by twitter. I'd say 50% of the web looks like twitter today...

EDIT: OK, I take that back... After looking at some of these sites, some have really copied the design waaaay to much.

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#64

Post by mikekchar »

dragonwriter wrote: post #44
mikekchar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before the horde descends, I thought I might respond to the suggestion that RMS is anti-capitalist. This comes up frequently and is a bit of a red herring. I won't try to speak for him (he can obviously do that well enough himself), however I think it is worth considering the free software movement in today's reality. Back when they only thing that described free software was the GNU manifesto, we still had the idea…

> I have a hard time seeing it from an "anti-capitalist" position. The FSF position is anti-capitalist in at least one technical sense -- in the domain of software, it morally opposes capitalist model of property rights (and, in practice, uses a hack around the mechanism by which that model is implemented to subvert it.)

I don't agree with your assessment. Although they encourage people not to use the term "Intellectual Property", I think that's from the perspective that ideas are not property. This is not at odds with (my understanding of) the legal definition of IP (the name notwithstanding). The property in IP, is the monopoly it affords, not the idea. You can't own an idea (i.e. it is not legal to do so). You can own the government granted monopoly for implementing that idea.

The FSF is pro-copyright and pro-trademark. You can literally own software. In fact, one of the things the GPL makes very clear is that once you have given/sold someone the software, you can't suddenly revoke their rights to use it in any way they see fit. In fact the FSF is very outspoken about the dangers of using services which remove that right (for example ebooks where the seller can suddenly revoke your right to read the book).

When you receive software under the GPL, you own that copy. It is literally yours. You can modify it. You can study it. You can give it or sell it (for any amount of money) to someone else. Not only that, but you do not own the copyrights. The copyrights are owned by someone else and are not transferred with the software. So this means that you can not change the license, even with a derived work.

They like it that way. They do not want to change the ability to own software or own copyrights. The GPL does not subvert the notion of software as property -- it enforces the normal rights you would have if it were physical property.

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#66

Post by _ak »

jeena wrote: post #48

Reading the comments here it seems that people are missing the point by just joining one of those instances. It is not about just using some alternative to Twitter, the real advantage begins when you host it yourself so that you can own your own content and post whatever you want (not what some company wants you to) and (perhaps) syndicate to other services like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc. I just gave a small tal…

I don't see hosting myself as an advantage. In the end, all you do all day is to maintain all the tools and apps that you host yourself.

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#68

Post by reidrac »

I used StatusNet when it was identi.ca for quite some time, specially because back then Twitter really allowed 3rd party clients and with multi-protocol clients was really easy to use both.

When I was using identi.ca it was pretty much about Linux, Open Source, and basically that was it. I never got the same level of interaction I can enjoy in Twitter; but that's not a technical issue, is just that a social network needs people to interact and identi.ca back then (and I suspect GNU Social today) was not used enough to make it interesting for me.

I tried, because you can argue that is silly to complain about not enough people using a social network if you don't start using it yourself; but at some point identi.ca got flooded with bots and people "abusing" the API instead of using the social network, and I gave up.

I love twitter because I can meet people based on common interests (eg, 8-bit computers), and also broadcast about my current projects (not sure who finds that interesting though).

To be honest, things should get really bad with Twitter for me to leave it, but then I don't think there will be a substitute (and if there's one, having my own infrastructure would be very low priority, in the same way I don't host my own XMPP server).

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#69

Post by reidrac »

Gracana wrote: post #9

Is there a good way to publish to this at the same time as twitter, so I'm already established and can drop twitter when it dies?

In my humble opinion, that's what ruined indenti.ca back in the day. If you're mirroring Twitter and losing the interactions you have in GNU Social, your account is just a bot and you're not really using the social network.

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#70

Post by qznc »

sspiff wrote: post #67

A bit odd to see them all labeled "runs out of Europe". I understand why they do this, but it's not like European hosting is a bullet proof solution for invasive snooping or data requisition.

At least in Germany, we do not have secret courts and gag orders like in the USA.
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