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Sumana Harihareswara [on Mastodon] at
I'm on the #FLOSS microblogging platform Identi.ca
https://identi.ca/brainwane but it's unreliable enough that I can't rec
it as a replacement.
Mike Linksvayer shared this.
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I think the strong attractor being a paid service is best of all worlds -- direct $ for development, incentive for those who might think abut running own to do so.
We may have different goals. I want freedom for the masses, and that requires massive resources to compete with non-free services. You may more highly value pure concepts for the few who opt in. Fine!
Sumana, GNU Social is what used to be StatusNet, which used to be laconi.ca, which was what identi.ca was running on before it was migrated over to pump.io.
Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠) at 2016-04-06T22:17:06Z
Sumana Harihareswara [on Mastodon] likes this.
We do know that, on StatusNet times, the StatusNet network was basically identi.ca. The Diaspora* network was basically joindiaspora.com for a long time (until, hey... they closed registrations there).Do we? I'd love it if anyone has data from the time, but my feeling is that there were a lot more people running (OStatus protocol at the time) instances when identi.ca was a magnet. Some people chose to run their own and that's great. But a really strong attractor is needed for those who don't want to, and for those who want to but want the network to be big so as to be worth the trouble. And a strong attractor is needed so someone/entity has resources to put into development.
I think the strong attractor being a paid service is best of all worlds -- direct $ for development, incentive for those who might think abut running own to do so.
So, I think, if the people trying to get a system to succeed allow this misconceptions to continue, nothing is achieved.
We may have different goals. I want freedom for the masses, and that requires massive resources to compete with non-free services. You may more highly value pure concepts for the few who opt in. Fine!
> We do know that, on StatusNet times, the StatusNet network was basically identi.ca. The Diaspora* network was basically joindiaspora.com for a long time (until, hey... they closed registrations there).
Not true. After a rough upgrade to Identi.ca, there were dozens of people who started self-hosting. Others were not on Identi.ca, but were still on one of the 100s of hosted SN instances like 280.status.net or other instances hosted on something called "the StatusNet Cloud".
Having been an active user of the 280 and 300 instances, I can confirm that there were lots of active instances. However, most Identi.ca users seemed entirely unaware of off-site users, so most instances' userbases gradually withered away, except as havens for spammers. 420.status.net, for example, was spam central.
I've often suspected that much of the unreliability of Evan's hosted Pumps (and related services) is actually caused by hosting on D.O. I've seen things of my own that crashed repeatedly there, but were trouble-free elsewhere. I don't think excessive downtime is inherent in the Pump.IO software. I suspect that as new admins take over instances, many will move to different hosting and need little more than that to become more reliable.
Not true. After a rough upgrade to Identi.ca, there were dozens of people who started self-hosting. Others were not on Identi.ca, but were still on one of the 100s of hosted SN instances like 280.status.net or other instances hosted on something called "the StatusNet Cloud".
Having been an active user of the 280 and 300 instances, I can confirm that there were lots of active instances. However, most Identi.ca users seemed entirely unaware of off-site users, so most instances' userbases gradually withered away, except as havens for spammers. 420.status.net, for example, was spam central.
I've often suspected that much of the unreliability of Evan's hosted Pumps (and related services) is actually caused by hosting on D.O. I've seen things of my own that crashed repeatedly there, but were trouble-free elsewhere. I don't think excessive downtime is inherent in the Pump.IO software. I suspect that as new admins take over instances, many will move to different hosting and need little more than that to become more reliable.
On the other hand, by sheer number of accounts, Identi.ca was likely well over 99% of the network, much more of a central hub than joindiaspora was.