If you’re not creating it to push propaganda I’d be willing to donate to a project like that.
Comment on Friendica's marketing is terrible.
SorteKanin@feddit.dk 4 days ago
Don’t want to shout too much about this yet as it’s still super early but I am actually working on a new fediverse app that I plan should be covering the same sort of use cases as Lemmy, Mastodon and Friendica, all in one application. With a big focus on user friendliness, easy onboarding and such.
It’s still super early but drop me a private message if you’re interested in helping or just hearing more.
Pilferjinx@lemmy.world 4 days ago
SaneMartigan@aussie.zone 4 days ago
Where do you place “be kind to each other” on the propaganda scale?
SorteKanin@feddit.dk 4 days ago
Propaganda is definitely not on the list of planned features, haha :)
Appreciate the sentiment, I hope it will one day be worthy of donations :)
informapirata@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Hi, I’d be interested in learning more about your project to create a new Fediverse software.
I want to be honest: I don’t have much faith in the success of your project and I’ll explain why.
- very successful projects like Mastodon show great difficulty in improving, because they were born to be too simple, set up to do minimal microblogging, and then grew together with their user base;
- very long-lived projects like Friendica, have had even more difficulty in improving because they were born to be very complex,
- projects that have had a great marketing push like Pixelfed, continue to be (in my opinion) very modest;
- forumverse (or threadverse) projects like Lemmy have received the main damage precisely from the incompatibility wanted by Mastodon against them;
- new very interesting projects like Bonfire (the only software together with Friendica and Hubzilla to manage the “circles”) are being developed with difficulty and are made up of many modules and above all do not have a decent app.
- a brilliant developer like the one who created Kbin has created a wonderful software, but due to the enormous success it had all the Kbin instances went haywire, he was unable to keep up with the support requests and disappeared forever from circulation after a month of burnout
- even the best software in the Fediverse is useless if there is no smartphone app and not all the software in the Fediverse can be managed with an app
Finally, the impression I had is that even among the most famous developers of the Fediverse there is a bit of ignorance about Activitypub, about other platforms and about how other developers have solved the same problems; also it seems that the “Masters of the Fediverse” are always in a bad mood and have less and less desire to learn new things (a praiseworthy exception is Matthias Pfefferle).
Creating a federated software is therefore not a very simple thing neither technically nor psychologically, but if you feel capable of doing it, perhaps it could be advisable to test yourself a bit:
- developing some web utilities, some plugins or less ambitious projects
- actively contributing to other existing projects (Friendica? Bonfire?)
- getting familiar with both the Mastodon API (which is an industry standard) and with the development and definition of APIs in general: when someone wants to write an app for your software, they will look at your code and in two minutes they will decide if it is worth doing!
Of course I didn’t tell you these things to depress you, but only to point out some things that are often not foreseen: in reality I hope that your idea can become a fantastic project!
Good luck!
SorteKanin@feddit.dk 2 days ago
Hi, thanks a lot for your detailed message!
I totally understand the lack of faith - I mean I’ve shown nothing to earn any faith so that’s completely fair. I also share your frustration with existing apps that have shown to not improve or be good enough. That’s part of the reason why I wanted to try my hand at it myself. I feel that the status quo is not good enough and I believe in the mantra that “if someone else is doing something that you think you can do better, you should do it”.
forumverse (or threadverse) projects like Lemmy have received the main damage precisely from the incompatibility wanted by Mastodon against them;
Not sure what you mean with “damage” here, but my plan is to support all kinds of ActivityPub content, both the microblog stuff that Mastodon is known for, the forum stuff that Lemmy does and anything else from other apps. I don’t want my app to feel limited like Mastodon or Lemmy. Mastodon is very microblog-focused, Lemmy is very forum-focused. I want something that can do both and more. In some ways, this makes it harder, in other ways it makes it simpler. For instance, Lemmy makes a difference between “posts” and “comments”; they are not the same thing in the database. But in my app, comments are just another post, much like how posts work in Mastodon.
new very interesting projects like Bonfire (the only software together with Friendica and Hubzilla to manage the “circles”) are being developed with difficulty and are made up of many modules and above all do not have a decent app.
I’ve heard of these projects, but haven’t studied them in detail. I find bonfire especially confusing. I can’t seem to grok what it is - is it a server, or a framework for a server, or an app? For instance there’s this app but the code link goes nowhere. There’s also this repo with commits that look super weird. Honestly just confused about it. Anyway.
I agree that having good mobile support (including an app with great UX) is super important.
Finally, the impression I had is that even among the most famous developers of the Fediverse there is a bit of ignorance about Activitypub, about other platforms and about how other developers have solved the same problems; also it seems that the “Masters of the Fediverse” are always in a bad mood and have less and less desire to learn new things (a praiseworthy exception is Matthias Pfefferle).
I’ve tried to learn a lot about ActivityPub and I understand it fairly well at this point I would say. I’ve participated a bit at socialhub.activitypub.rocks where ActivityPub is discussed at length. I’m not sure what “Masters of the Fediverse” refers to but I definitely am a curious soul and I think continuous learning is super important :)
Creating a federated software is therefore not a very simple thing neither technically nor psychologically, but if you feel capable of doing it, perhaps it could be advisable to test yourself a bit:
- developing some web utilities, some plugins or less ambitious projects
- actively contributing to other existing projects (Friendica? Bonfire?)
- getting familiar with both the Mastodon API (which is an industry standard) and with the development and definition of APIs in general: when someone wants to write an app for your software, they will look at your code and in two minutes they will decide if it is worth doing!
I appreciate your concern, but I am a professional software engineer so I’m not so worried about the scale of the project. Rest assured, I have worked on very large projects professionally and built plenty of things in side projects, most of them related to the web. I also administrate Feddit.dk so I have experience with hosting a Lemmy instance and all the complexity that brings.
I particularly enjoy Rust, and I did actually look into contributing to Lemmy (since that uses Rust in the backend) at first before I started my own project. Unfortunately, Lemmy’s code is… not where I would like it to be (both of Lemmy’s main devs learnt Rust while working on Lemmy, and it unfortunately shows in the code quality), and the direction of Lemmy is not the direction I want to take my project, as stated above. I want something more general than a Reddit clone, though it will be inspired by Reddit/Lemmy in some ways (I plan to use up/down votes to sort content, for instance).
I have no interest in contributing to Friendica, as the direction seems bad, as noted in that post where you saw my comment. Besides, it’s PHP and I really don’t want to touch that. Hubzilla is also PHP and seems much to technical for general users, so once again not viable. Bonfire seems to be Elixir which I don’t know either, but again I am super confused about what Bonfire even is. All these reasons and other reasons are why I wanted to do my own project.
I don’t agree with you that the Mastodon API is an “industry standard” - it may be widely used, but Mastodon is continually forcing its own ideas of the Fediverse on the rest of the ecosystem, which I don’t like and is something that is often bemoaned on socialhub.activitypub.rocks. But rest assured that I am very familiar and comfortable with APIs (again, professional software engineer 🙂). I care about documentation a lot and from the start, my prototype backend has exposed its API via an OpenAPI specification so that clients can be easily generated. I’m actually about to use this OpenAPI spec to generate a client myself as I start work on the frontend 🙂.
Again, thanks a lot for your thoughts and attention! If you have any concrete feedback on the UI and/or UX of Lemmy, Mastodon, Friendica or other apps, I’d love to hear it, as I’m starting work on the UI for my own frontend these days. For instance, any favourite UI of a fediverse app, any preferred features or any common mistakes or pitfalls that should be avoided, if you have any thoughts along that direction.
informapirata@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I totally understand the lack of faith
I hope it’s clear that this is a “methodological distrust”, but I’m rooting for you!
I believe in the mantra that “if someone else is doing something that you think you can do better, you should do it”.
Right!
Not sure what you mean with “damage” here
I’m referring to this: github.com/lemmyNet/lemmy/issues/5300
The reason why Mastodon doesn’t show the text of Lemmy’s initial posts is that they don’t want to properly manage the Activitypub message flow. Do they do it out of inexperience? Out of laziness? Or do they do it to penalize Lemmy who (two years ago) was the only software capable of challenging for supremacy in the Fediverse? Friendica’s “Posts with Title” (so-called “Pages”) had the same problem: Friendica developers found an interesting way to solve the problem, namely adding an option to publish the post as a “Page” (Mastodon reads it as a title with a link to the original post) or as a “Note” (Mastodon reads it all). But this is a solution that violates the Activitypub standard and in fact Lemmy developers refused to do it because they are very proud (remember when I told you that software developers in the Fediverse are often in a bad mood? 😜).
but my plan is to support all kinds of ActivityPub content
it’s a complicated goal, but not impossible
I find bonfire especially confusing. I can’t seem to grok what it is - is it a server, or a framework for a server, or an app?
I agree: I’ve often told their developers that they have a serious communication problem! What I don’t like about Bonfire, however, is that it has so far seriously underestimated the importance of Activitypub groups.
I’m not sure what “Masters of the Fediverse” refers to
Gargron, Dansup, Evan Prodromou and longtime Friendica developers Hubzilla and Lemmy :-)
I appreciate your concern, but I am a professional software engineer
Great!
Rest assured, I have worked on very large projects professionally and built plenty of things in side projects
Even more… great! A Fediverse project really needs a team. One-man-show projects are too risky and emotionally draining
I particularly enjoy Rust (…) I am super confused about what Bonfire even is. All these reasons and other reasons are why I wanted to do my own project.
From what you say, it seems like you’ve really nailed the current Fediverse landscape
But rest assured that I am very familiar and comfortable with APIs
Yes, that puts my mind at ease!
I care about documentation
This makes me even more reassured! 🙂
If you have any concrete feedback on the UI and/or UX of Lemmy, Mastodon, Friendica or other apps…
Can I ask you to create a Lemmy community or a Friendica group? It would be nice to discuss in one place
SorteKanin@feddit.dk 2 days ago
I hope it’s clear that this is a “methodological distrust”, but I’m rooting for you!
Honestly not really clear - what do you mean with “methodological distrust”? What method would be trustworthy? :)
A Fediverse project really needs a team. One-man-show projects are too risky and emotionally draining
I agree, bus factor is a problem. But I feel like projects like this are very hard to start without starting as one person. I mean it’s hard to gather people around something without having anything to show at first. I’m hoping to establish something and then attract people who might be interested to contribute.
Can I ask you to create a Lemmy community or a Friendica group? It would be nice to discuss in one place
I feel it’s too early for that (again, don’t want to shout about it yet). But eventually I would definitely like to do that.
damon@lemmy.world 3 days ago
How do we keep track of the project and support it?
SorteKanin@feddit.dk 3 days ago
It’s very early. I have a prototype backend server and I’m currently starting work on the frontend. If you have any inputs on features, UX, UI, or anything else that you maybe are missing from existing fediverse apps, I’d love to hear from you, as some preliminary feedback. But again, it’s early so there is not much to track yet. But thank you for the interest :)
damon@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
How can I contact you?
SorteKanin@feddit.dk 9 hours ago
Private message here on Lemmy or just a comment here is fine :)