

By Surrendering, Diaspora Might Still Beat Facebook - eavc

So far as I can gather, the egregious security errors present at initial release point to a team that is less capable at the craft of coding than we might have initially hoped.<p>That's no indictment of anything other than their experience level, but it's a reality nonetheless.<p>Here is my suggestion for how they can still hit a home run.<p>Step 1: Identify the best existing team or project other than Diaspora that is working on solving the same problem.<p>Step 2: Approach the team with a proposal.<p>Step 3: Transfer the balance of the $200k along with the diaspora* name and brand.<p>Step 4: Public relations. "In summary, this is the best way for us to honor your donation--to take our initiative and our vision along with your support, interest, and donations and marry those to something with technical maturity, sophistication, and experience.<p>"That's why diaspora* and (insert other project) are now one.<p>"For us, nothing has changed in the initial vision apart from our awareness of our limitations. The goals are the same, the enthusiasm is the same, and now, the chances of success are far better than they were when we began.<p>More to come soon."<p>As I see it, Diaspora has media attention, community attention, idealogical support from many savvy people, and a substantial pile of cash. In my opinion, they've also got someone on their team with a really good mind for branding and PR.<p>They are lacking experience, technical skill, and a solid existing project.<p>Other teams have the opposite problems, I imagine. If there's a quality candidate in the bunch of competitors, $200,000 and the momentum around the Diaspora name might be enough to catalyze a critical level of adoption.<p>A merging seems like it might be a winning idea, but it would depend on the Diaspora guys being willing to be incredibly self-effacing and impressively true to the idealogical principles that they set out with.
======
jacquesm
What did you expect? A picture-perfect first release? Of course there are bugs
and of course there are problems.

The bigger questions are not security issues but more along the lines of the
grand architectural plan of Diaspora, and I have yet to see a thorough review
of that.

------
aeden
Who would you suggest they merge with?

~~~
eavc
I wouldn't. I have seen it said a hundred times that there are competitors. I
lack the insight into the relevant technical issues to evaluate them even if I
wanted to try.

I'd like to hear someone else's answer to that question, though.

~~~
aeden
OneSocialWeb would seem to be the next most significant project. IMO, they
have a leg up since they started with XMPP and have released code as well. I
see junk in the code as well (like catching and swallowing exceptions) but
then what code doesn't have junk in it.

~~~
eschnou
Thanks for the mention. As for the swallowing of exceptions, feel free to
comment the code on Github. Usually, I do that when I have already checked
before for the condition that would raise the exception and dealt with it.
Happy to discuss, always great to exchange ideas and improve coding skills.

