

Open Letter to the Diaspora Dudes - TrevorBramble
http://socknet.net/w/Open_Letter_to_the_Diaspora_Dudes

======
axiom
Off topic: if you look at the kickstarter page for Diaspora
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-
the-p...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-
personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr)

Notice how for anyone who donates more than $5 they need to send them a CD
with Diaspora on it. $25 gets them a t-shirt etc.

For 6k donors, they're going to spend ~$50-100k of the $200k they raised just
meeting their commitments. Not to mention a huge amount of time dealing with
the logistics.

Edit: Jesus, if you account for the fact that they promised 1 year hosted
service, and 1 year phone support for anyone who donated more than $350, these
guys are already underwater.

~~~
synnik
IF their product is such that an end user needs hosted service and phone
support in the first place, they are worse than underwater.

~~~
ElbertF
This is why WordPress will never take off.

~~~
robgough
Why the downvotes? Do we not care for sarcasm on HN?

I think it's a appropriate response too. Wordpress does both hosted and open
source, and by all accounts they're doing OK.

------
SkyMarshal
He's got a branding problem as well. 'Socknet'? And foolishmortal.net looks
like pre-beta HN.

Geeks sometimes don't seem to understand the power and value of word choice,
or design. Smart word choice and updated design is not sufficient, but in a
Web 2.0+ world, it's necessary.

~~~
alttab
These were the 2 things I noticed when reading it.

------
jacquesm
> I looked over the web and I found the same thing that I'm sure you found:
> several projects without much steam behind them.

Maybe they found socknet too ?

That wiki was filled on may the 19th, well after the diaspora stuff hit the
media, or it hasn't been updated in ages before then.

[http://socknet.net/wiki/index.php?title=Special:RecentChange...](http://socknet.net/wiki/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&limit=500)

That money the diaspora guys raised has one definitely negative side effect,
there will be quite a few people that may try to get a share of the cake.

~~~
TrevorBramble
[http://socknet.net/wiki/index.php?title=Special:RecentChange...](http://socknet.net/wiki/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&days=30&limit=500)

There's the same page with the limit changed from the default of 7 days (May
19) to 30 (April 26).

And of course Google's been caching stuff there for awhile:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=site:socknet.net>

I know the Socknet guy via some trusted former coworkers and I've watched this
project for a year or two. He's earnest and hasn't looked for any attention.

I posted his open letter here because I think he deserves some attention for
his hard work, whereas the Diaspora team made a cheeky video and deserve to
have their goals questioned (do they really intend to do something progressive
or is this about personal reward?)

edit: grammar

~~~
jacquesm
Two years ? That's precisely what I was getting at.

He's _definitely_ looking for attention here, otherwise why post an open
letter ?

If he wasn't looking for attention he could have easily mailed the diaspora
people, by making this an open letter he is trying to get a slice of the media
attention.

Nothing wrong with that, but I wouldn't interpret it in any other way, even if
he's serious.

To me he's not just serious, but also very slow.

The sourceforge project was registered on the 15th of may, this is not a
project that has been in mainstream development for two years. It may have
been in development for two years but not with the kind of push behind it that
you need for a successful launch of a web application.

It looks like someone's pet project that did not gain much traction that
they're trying to breathe new life in.

~~~
mindcrime
> The sourceforge project was registered on the 15th of may, this is not a
> project that has been in

> mainstream development for two years. It may have been in development for
> two years but not with the

> kind of push behind it that you need for a successful launch of a web
> application.

Not sure what it matters how long it's been in development. If he's worked X
years and gotten N amount of work done, he's still N amount of work ahead of
where he'd be if he just started today, or the same day as the Diaspora guys.
If that work amounts to anything, it could be a considerable advantage, if he
does get some attention and gets some other people onboard. If not, he's still
no worse off than if he hadn't done anything and decided to launch a new
decentralized social network project today.

> It looks like someone's pet project that did not gain much traction that
> they're trying to breathe

> new life in.

Yeah, I know the feeling. I started a project with similar goals a while back
( <https://openqabal.dev.java.net> ) but got distracted and didn't get very
far with it. Now I've changed the focus of my project to something different
and am restarting development, but it's kinda moved away from the Diaspora /
decentralized social network thing.

That said, I do think that everybody working on a decentralized social network
(or any social network, really) should get together (virtually anyway) and
collaborate on the underlying protocols and techniques for federation. No
reason one shouldn't be able to run a Diaspora server and exchange data with a
site running a $WHATEVER server (allowing for privacy restrictions, etc.,
which kinda kick-started this whole discussion).

~~~
jacquesm
Fully agreed, no need in duplicating the effort. But an open letter is a
pretty bad way to go about that, it screams 'you can't ignore me, I'm
addressing you' because you are afraid that you will not be answered.

Open letters are good for joe public to reach the town mayor or Ty Coon when
all other avenues of trying to reach them have been exhausted.

They're not exactly the best avenue to contact the people that run a competing
open source project about a possible collaboration.

I think it matters how long they've been at it because that is how they
describe other projects, as having 'too little steam' behind them. I can't
really tell the difference between those other projects with too little steam
behind them and this one.

Also he words it as though the Diaspora guys should get 'behind' his project,
whereas the best way to ensure that there would be collaboration would be to
leave it up to them to 'get behind' his code or to integrate bits & pieces as
they see fit.

All this is completely ignoring the merits of what's been produced, I have no
idea how good it is, for all I know it could be stellar.

~~~
mindcrime
> Open letters are good for joe public to reach the town mayor or Ty Coon when
> all other avenues of trying to reach them have been exhausted.

> They're not exactly the best avenue to contact the people that run a
> competing open source project about a possible collaboration.

Agreed.

> I think it matters how long they've been at it because that is how they
> describe other projects, as having 'too little steam' behind them. I can't
> really tell the difference between those other projects with too little
> steam behind them and this one.

Well, "steam" in this regard can - IMO - come and go. You can start a project,
do little or nothing to publicize it, tinker on it for a while, drop it, then
restart it and you haven't really _lost_ anything... if you step in two years
later and start working on the project, committing code, doing releases, and
publicizing it, I don't know that anybody will care about the "lost years." Or
maybe I'm wrong, who knows?

------
rsobers
Is there a rule that says that if you're going to work on a distributed social
network you have to be bad at naming things? socknet, really?

Also, do we really need a solution that is distributed or would a dropdown box
on Facebook that says "Visible to:" and lets you select a group (e.g.,
Friends, Family, Everyone) do?

~~~
thasmin
A dropdown box on Facebook would do, but nobody can put it there so some
people decided to go with Plan B.

~~~
ErrantX
_but nobody can put it there_

Except for Facebook. And, err, they did - quite a while ago :)

~~~
gbhn
I don't remember the source, but "it's easy to take a reservation, the hard
part is filling it." Meaning, of course, that Facebook privacy has
continuously eroded, so some (myself included) have no faith that such a
dropdown has any persistent effect consistent with what might be inferred by
what is written on it.

~~~
defen
Seinfeld

------
kwamenum86
Why did this need to be an open letter?

~~~
roc
Same reason he wrote it in the first place: he's drafting off a trending topic
to gain exposure and hopefully new developers.

Write one letter to the Diaspora team and, at best, they consider it. Put the
letter out there (under the guise of being related to Diaspora to gain extra
attention) and maybe a dozen teams consider it.

------
chrischen2
I think all this decentralized social networking is unnecessary. All we really
need is an easy way to switch social networks. Something like a list of UUIDs
as your friends list which can be imported into your social network of choice,
and exported when you want to leave.

Even email is centralized.

The only problem would be getting the current industry leader, facebook, to
willing adopt such a thing. They probably won't so this would be more of a
consideration for the next generation of social networks.

~~~
drobilla
"Even email is centralized"?

I can start my own email server (or use one of millions of others) and
send/receive to/from users on any other server... clearly decentralized (where
is the center?)

~~~
chrischen2
I meant in practice. You could, but do you? Does anyone? What happens when
your computer shuts down for the night?

Email is centralized in that individuals usually register with a provider,
rather than use their own machines. I think social networking can adopt a
similar model so all we really need is an easy way to pick up our social data
and go to a new provider. I mean who I consider to be my friends is my data,
so why not have a systematic definition of it that can be carried with me to
every site, instead of recreating those connections using whatever interface
is on each of the social sites I use.

~~~
ElbertF
It's still decentralized. Not one company has access to all e-mail, as with
Facebook.

~~~
chrischen2
Of course it is, I'm not saying you're wrong. Although usually one company has
access to all _your_ email. As far as the user is concerned it's still
centralized. That is, our data is still stored in a centralized place. The
protocols for these open social networks however call for decentralizing all
the way to the user level, and that's not how email is (though it could be).

~~~
brc
I think you've picked a poor analogy with regards to email. It's actually the
perfect analogy for a distributed social network. With email you can host your
own, use your companies, use a free provider (hotmail, gmail, etc) or use your
ISP.

It's not possible for one company/person to get across all your email because
you can have it somewhere else. It's not possible to store Facebook info
outside of facebook.

I imageine a distributed social network being a woven fabric where some people
host their own, some use their companies (think bands using their labels
server), a lot of people use free ad-based services (think hotmail or yahoo
diaspora). However, no one company would ever have all your data, and couldn't
hold it to ransom, assuming some type of export facility is built into the
design. For I can import all my emails into a different server, but I can't
export all my facebook data. Once switching costs are reduced to negligible,
then competition for features, usability and, yes, privacy, wins out. Same way
as plenty of people decamped hotmail and yahoo for a shiny new gmail account
when they had better featurs and an import facility.

~~~
chrischen2
Sorry, what was my analogy? I'm saying distributed social networking should
work like email and you just described it. However what I don't think it
should be is decentrAlizing down to the user level. Another problem with
standardizing the system is that new or special features will not be cross
compatible, however that's another issue for another thread.

