I come home to find my feeds/streams flooded with vitriolic politicial drivel emanating from a group to which I belong that states emphatically that it doesn't tolerate off-topic traffic.
The stated purpose of this Fediverse group on my home Friendica server is stated as follows:
This is a Friendica group dedicated to #Fediverse news. What are the advantages of a group over a hashtag?Groups can do things that hashtags can't. For example, groups:
are moderated
can re-share content
can speak as a group
Joining and contributing to a Friendica group is easy. To share your posts to @Fediverse News, follow these steps:
The @Fediverse News group will then re-share your post
This is an actively moderated group. Be sure to stay on topic, or your posts will be removed.
As per the instructions for this Friendica / Fediverse group, I'm notifying the moderation team by CC'ing the following address with this complaint and request to remove the vicious hate that's been spewing into the group here all day long while I've been away working:
People who sign up for a Fediverse News site should not be subjected to hatred being fomented, propagated, and bantered about with respect to unrelated matters, such as (abominable) off-topic, political vitriol.
) Posting announcements concerning the onboarding and subesquent federating nature of a public figure's account on threads.net is a relevant matter to the Fediverse, Fediverse Technology, and Fediverse News.
) acerbic comentary, name calling, ad hominem, and libel, as has consumed the group today, is not - those posts are a cause of severe harm and should most certainly, IMO be removed as per the terms/rules quoted above.
) The level of cacophony and pejorative hate speech permitted to continue throughout the day today is shameful. This is not the place to engage or encourage such juvenile behavior, let alone permit it to foment and spread across the Fediverse as it has today!
Moderation Team: Thank you, in advance, for taking your time to address and resolve this matter, returning this group to the decorum it usually enjoys with people conversing and observing the principles of civil discourse.
Let's pretend we're proponents of free and open source software, enlist an army of week intentioned FOSS developers to contribute to our project, and once successfully deployed in many enterprises across the industry...
Pull the rug out and convert it into a proprietary product with a bunch of undisclosed, hidden code that we won't ever show you - Muahahaha...
Yeah. I see this happening right now in several prominent and celebrated open source projects that you're probably completely oblivious to those sinister objectives.
This is why the most ubiquitous desktop operating system in the world is Minix.
What's that you say?
Yup, Minix. But that's no secret, the cat was out of the bag on that one a few years back (after being secretly so for many years).
Before you contribute any more code, translations, or documentation to a software project, consider this:
Now, there's another point to be made here, without specifically naming any projects currently abusing user contributions. Let's call this hypothetical project "hammer&anvil", itself a fork of a popular software project - but claims it's all about being free and transparent, wanting to distinguish itself from the project it's forked from by adopting GPL3 instead of a permissive license.
Sure, the project's BDFL (let's call her "Strawberry Daiquiri"), says one day, "were forming a fork of project X because they've formed a company and I'm afraid what they are going to do with X because it's under a permissive license. This girl will be brutally transparent and completely run by the community under the philosophy of anarchy, but we're going to call it a sociocracy so you don't know that it's really just me making a proprietary product for my own ambitions".
Well, Miss Daquiri decides to capture by capitalizing upon the sentiment that folks have for Copyleft - it's supposed to protect free software, right?
Well, this fork (hammer& anvil) is a hosted solution - meaning SaaS, meaning, it runs elsewhere (other than in your computer) in the cloud as a publicly accessible service. Hmmmm.
That means that the most appropriate Copyleft license is likely the AGPL, and not the GPL as one would expect fur a desktop or other local program that you actually download and install in your laptop or server.
The GPL requires that when you distribute (give away or sell) your program, either by letting someone download or handing it to them on a USB stick, Etc., You must also make available ALL of the source code, including any changes you've made to the program.
But if you run a modified GPL program as a service in the cloud you don't have to provide ANY off the changes you've made to the code.
Hmmm.
With AGPL you do have to supply your users with ANY code modifications you've made to the running service to which they have accounts...
So let's just say that you fork Mastodon, and call it Glitch-Soc, modify it, and run it in the cloud for people to create accounts on and use (for free or for monthly subscription fees - it doesn't matter). ANY and ALL changes to the code base that you make MUST be made available anytime a user asks for the source code, because it's an #AGPL licensed product.
And in reality, such is actually the case with this exceedingly popular and capable #fork. It's a fine product in it's own right.
But had you changed the license to all contributions moving forward to #GPL, you wouldn't have to provide any modifications you made (unless you give or sell the software product itself on say, a USB stick or via download).
Why? Because you're just allowing them to access and use your service, your not actually giving them the program to use for themselves elsewhere - so any modifications you made since forking under a different license (GPL instead of AGPL) isn't something you have to show them.
You've essentially created a #proprietary product (if you're so nefarious as to hide your code changes by butt disclosing them), the only code of which you must supply being that which existed under the AGPL before you forked it.
Both #Copyleft and permissive open source #licenses like #BSD and #MIT can be a good thing, or they can be abused beyond the intentions of the #FOSS inclined project contributors. Just make sure that you understand what can and cannot be changed where your intended purpose for the #distribution and #availability of source code is concerned....
There are BIG differences between the ramifications of each #license and how they can affect transparency and distribution of your free gifts to the world.
In our hypothetical scenario with hammer&anvil, the #BDFL, #Strawberry Daiquiri, has decided that she's going to launch a hosted service, and she's going to include things that you don't see and can't be aware of behind the scenes which, if disclosed, you would have nothing to do with - but you'll never know what kinds of scary things she's done with the product that only resembles the original on the surface, because Miss Daquiri will never have to show you the code she has added behind the scenes.
"Beautiful Victor, Beautiful."
-The Monster, speaking to his creator in the film, 'Frankenstein, The True Story'.
Tapir is coming along nicely, with continued active development and commits in just the past few days.
I never get this right, #SmallWeb, #SmolWeb, or... Let's just say it's one of the latest in single user, exceedingly simple to deploy #Fediverse servers that you can carry around in your bookbag on your laptop, or conveniently on your desktop workstations.
It's written in Deno, so, think Typescript/JavaScript/Node in a safe by default implementation.
I'm personally looking forward to Adam hopefully showcasing his work and just how simple it is to get up and running during the upcoming #ActivityConf expected to occur at the end of October.
He's got great aspirations for it and here's a bit of what the roadmap has at this time:
broad fediverse compatibility
install directly from a URL with one Deno command
run with limited permissions (just --allow-net and a single folder)
sqlite and postgres backends
multiple personas (users) with one login and one home timeline (the main account can leverage OAuth)
personas can have different timeline styles (make it look like Pixelfed)
build your own federated timeline from multiple servers
post scheduling
sophisticated filter rules and a customizable home timeline algorithm
follow RSS feeds, Nitter feeds, maybe Nostr feeds
personal full-text search
a plugin system
Much like what most Fediverse platforms enjoy, like #Friendica, #Mitra, and Takahē, Tapir accounts can be connected to by following, @-mentioning, replying to, and boosting posts or Quote Posting them. There's also a link for feeds.
You too can follow along with the project by following now or asking questions of the developer at @tapir - even in this early stage of development, #Tapir supports most all of the features you've come to take for granted from a solid platform from which to engage in social communications with others in the Fediverse and beyond in much the same way as you already do from your #Pleroma, #Soapbox, and #Calckey accounts - without the hassles or uncertainty of having to depend upon someone else's infrastructure and all the baggage that comes with that.
I'm not aware of a Matrix room or IRC support channel at this moment, but all in good time.
Later I'll do a deeper drill down and publish an article, perhaps even be afforded the opportunity for an interview, and I'll be covering others in depth too, namely, #MicroblogPub and #Bovine - two other very fine and capable SmallWeb, er... SmolWeb, ummm... forget it, single-user Fediverse servers. 🤙
I regularly showcase existing and emerging #DeSoc development in #Fediverse-city:matrix.org and circle back around every so often with updates concerning these free and privacy respecting decentralized technologies, everyone is welcome and the best insight into these software projects trends to emanate from others who offer their input and experiences. Maybe we'll see you there too...
What underlying infra are you looking at building this upon - #Gofed, #Streams, #Bovine?
Perhaps a small, uber portable #POSIX compliant ANSI C single-user system built on top something like #Snacs2?
And what are your possible solutions of mind for those who already self-host their own #Fediverse accounts? Should they have to rent another #VPS or create yet another hostname for additional servers, A RRs, and AAAA RRs, at their homes for each #bot?
I'm not seeing the utility here. Maybe explaining it a bit differently so the net #simplification of doing it that way is clear?
I dunno, it just seems kind of a lot of redundancy in creating all those #storage, #CPU, and #RAM stacks.
All the wonderful #single user Fediverse platforms currently in popular use notwithstanding, it might be more economically viable and #greener to just take a family of five and their three bots and just put them all on the single instance of whatever Fediverse platform on their own Raspberry Pi... maybe?
Interesting idea Gabe, but I'm having trouble seeing how this is simpler or better than the current methods of just self-hosted forks of #Pleroma, #Misskey, and other lightweight platforms that would seem to make it so much easier already 🙂