Proprietary garbage
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
136 points (89.1% liked)
Fediverse
28480 readers
768 users here now
A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!
Rules
- Posts must be on topic.
- Be respectful of others.
- Cite the sources used for graphs and other statistics.
- Follow the general Lemmy.world rules.
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I don't mind proprietary software - it seems it's what a lot of people want, and I simply won't use it.
Promoting proprietary software named "OpenSomething" should, however, be banned as false marketing.
Openvibe is anti-libre software, malware. We do not control it. It fails to include a libre software license text file, like AGPL.
If a communication software has terms of service, run away!
What do you use?
I host 2 ejabberd servers. One casual, federated, the other one standalone, for work.
- Conversations is a decent android client that supports modern XMPP standards
- Dino on the desktop. It just happen to support the same subset of standards as Conversations, so they work pretty well together.
For Mastodon, I'm using an Akkoma instance hosted by a frind of mine
- Tusky works pretty well with it. There were certain annoying bugs when I combined the official Mastodon app with Akkoma.
Every once in a while I try Matrix, but each time I try to log in, Synapse is is fucked in a different way. I have to scrap it up and start from the ground up some day.
- Only the element based clients so far, because every alternative lack certain features.
I'm a big fan of Nostr, because of one particular feature - You control your identity without having to selfhost a server. The network seems to be occupied by the christian-carnivore-bitcoin-conservatives so far, therefor it's pretty bland when it comes to content.
- Amethyst on Android
- Gossip on the desktop. This one requires a certain knowledge of the protocol. Each action needs to be manually triggered.
For some special use cases I have Signal, but most of the time, Telegram is the best the average person can do to meet me in the middle.
Thanks for the info. :)
Does it really matter that much? You still control your profiles on each actual site it's just an aggregator.
"Private equity always finds a way"-Jeff Goldblum
Its interesting that they plan to profit off of the Fediverse but they aren't paying for running instances themselves. At least they aren't now.
The only thing that is actually valuable in all this is the data generated by Fediversers themselves though, lets say 90 percent, and a nifty container around the content to make it more viewable/accessible/prettier, 10 percent.
They want to make profit off of memberships and probably ads, off of Fediversers content, and then they can leverage and monetize their new "social network" by some astronomical valuation in the market.
Good playbook, its been done many times now by Reddit, linkedin, Facebook, and all the rest, and maybe they will pull it off, but after more than 10 years of Social Media abuses, the Fediverse is filled with people who no longer want to be exploited in this way anymore. How about just paying for some instances, or supporting some FOSS projects already in the works?
Y'all remember Pidgin?
That proggie was the bomb for all your AOL, ICQ, MSN, etc so you can keep up with your homies while you update your live journal.
Trillian masterrace checking in.
Pff, Pidgin, Trillian... The true master race was Miranda IM. Only the real pros remember.
Pidgin was decent, but remember Miranda? The community around it was fantastic. The plugin system was an absolute blast. Not only there were plugins for any communication network you could think of, the UX was fully customizable.
At one point, somebody even bothered to implement the ICQ flash animations. There has not been anything like it ever since.
Miranda IM was the best messaging software ever. Enormously configurable and super light weight. The installer was like 1Mb or something.
Apparently Miranda-NG (Next Gen) is a thing.
This takes me back. Y'all made me recall running Trillian Pro with a cracked loader. Oh, and what about DeadAIM?! I feel ashamed (as a current FOSS fan) that I didn't switch to Pidgin until after pirating all the popular AIM alternatives.
Trillian Pro cracked gang!!! What a great program that was. Stylish and functional!
Good old days
The pre-seed stage startup is backed by angel investors and NYC accelerator Wolf, which Openvibe attended last year.
Openvibe is available as a free app on iOS and Android, but plans to experiment with a desktop version. The app will later introduce a subscription plan to generate revenue.
Have any services like this managed to develop a sustainable business model, especially after taking on investment?
Doubtful. They always are optimistic how many people would subscribe, it turns out that nobody subscribes, and then it's either them folding or speed-running enshittification and spying.
Sure, they make a new product get more venture capital shut down the old product, then wash, rinse, repeat.
There were some successful Twitter clients I think. TweetDeck was famous and ended up acquired by Twitter.
So you'd need an account in all of these networks?
And how would cross-posting work?
Once they get Threads support, their target audience will be the non-Twitter universe. This would make it easier for businesses, governments, journalists, and non-technical folks like influencers and celebrities to switch out. That's how you get mass adoption.
I just tried it last week. Good start. Lots of promise.
Is there a good alternative to this? Using one app for Blue sky, mastodon, and even Lemmy sounds cool
I'm not sure something like this will be the killer app for the Fediverse.
I think its more a transition-app as long as we have protocol wars. Most people are good with having access to the majority of the Fediverse and probably dont even know about the others.
Its still a great idea!
very unsurprisingly no twitter
When might it integrate Lemmy?
I use it on occasion between Mastodon and Bluesky. My initial reaction was that I needed to organize my follows better so content wasn’t duplicating in the merged feed.
Mastodon Bluesky Nostr where Akkoma where Iceshrimp where Friendica where Pixelfed
"If it ain't got no for-profit "Inc." and no CEO, we ain't gonna support it."
@JupiterRowland bro mastodon is like 60% of the fediverse, one step at a time
Too many app devs don't know jack about the Fediverse. Or they didn't when they started developing their apps.
It happens again and again that someone jumps into Fediverse app development, maybe even claims to build a, quote, "Fediverse app," end quote. And then they build it hard against Mastodon, only Mastodon and nothing but Mastodon. Not even just the Mastodon API. Straight against Mastodon with both a frontend and a backend that only supports Mastodon.
Usually because at this point they still think the Fediverse is the Mastodon network, and there's nothing else in the Fediverse than Mastodon. Some 99% of all Mastodon newbies come into Mastodon believing that, the vast majority still spends the first months believing that, and my estimation is that every other Mastodon user still believes it.
And when you tell such a dev that the Fediverse is more than just Mastodon, and there's a whole lot of stuff that isn't Mastodon, but that uses ActivityPub, and that communicates with Mastodon like Mastodon communicates with itself, they're taken off-guard.
"What? What do you say? You aren't on Mastodon? How can you talk to me then? Like, black magic or what? Whaddaya mean, that's normal? There's other stuff connected to Mastodon? But Mastodon is the Fediverse. Whaddaya mean, it isn't? The Fediverse is not only Mastodon? So it's Mastodon forks? No? Is it extra stuff glued onto Mastodon then? Not either? Like, WTF? Yeah, sorry, no. I've built my app hard against Mastodon, and if I wanted to support anything else, I'd have to rip everything out and rewrite everything from scratch. 'Sides, it ain't worth doing anyway. Literally nobody uses that stuff. You're, like, literally the first whom I talk to on Mastodon who isn't on Mastodon. Everyone else I see uses Mastodon.* Over 99% of all people in the Fediverse are on the original, Mastodon. Ain't worth supporting those few others."
All this explains why you have tons of iPhone and Android apps for Mastodon that either only work with Mastodon, or that you can connect other Mastodon API stuff to, but only have Mastodon's features at hand. And at the same time, you barely have any apps that support anything beyond Mastodon's features. Exception: Lemmy apps, often written by people for whom the Threadiverse or the Fediverse as a whole is Lemmy.
*No, they don't. But Mastodon users can't see it unless either non-Mastodon users do something that's painfully obviously not possible on Mastodon, or they rub it straight into Mastodon users' faces.
@JupiterRowland okay but see this from their point of view, they even haven't addded threads yet, why would they add something 15 people could potentially use ? I believe at least one mobile client should be developped by the network (just like mastodon) because its the main reason of why I still use mastodon and not iceschrimp for example
Common fallacy that the only thing in the Fediverse that people use is Mastodon.
Misskey, for example, is bigger than Lemmy AFAIK.
@JupiterRowland misskey (firefish & iceshrimp not included) is very little compared to mastodon in terms of popularity
Maybe it isn't as massive as Mastodon in the western world. But add all the users in East Asia, especially Japan where Misskey comes from, and you've got numbers that can't be ignored anymore.