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Re: [Social-discuss] "GNU social" sucks.


From: Bob Jonkman
Subject: Re: [Social-discuss] "GNU social" sucks.
Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2015 15:31:53 -0500
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Adam Moore wrote:

> But, I do think it's important that some kind of consensus is
> arrived at for the name of the network, and that the verbiage on
> GNU social sites be changed to reflect the relationship between GNU
> social and the network which it facilitates.

I think that consensus has already occurred, and the resulting name of
the network is the Fediverse.

Any usage I've seen of "Fediverse" has been inclusive of all the other
software that intercommunicates: Diaspora, Friendica; even Twitter has
been included as a single instance courtesy of the Twitterbridge.

And it doesn't matter that a name is chosen by a committee or
developers or standards body.  The people using the network will call
it what they will.

- --Bob.


On 18/01/15 02:24 PM, Adam Moore wrote:
> On 2015-01-11 03:59, Mikael Nordfeldth wrote:
> 
>> Honestly, I doubt developers hesitate to patch things because of
>>  the project's name. I agree end users might care what their 
>> service is called. But then again, we have _many_ users who
>> don't use "GNU social" but use "Quitter" instead (still fully 
>> interoperable).
> 
> Oh, I'm sure you're right; developers probably couldn't care less 
> what the software was named.  It could just as well be named 
> Cthulu's Third Nipple, or Tantric Rectifier, or whatever.  But
> where users and the media (you can never forget the media) are
> concerned, naming is important.
> 
> Right now, the gnu.io website greets visitors with the following 
> message:
> 
> "GNU social is the largest decentralized social network on the
> web."
> 
> ...Is it?
> 
> My understanding is that GNU social is a piece of software which 
> implements the OStatus protocol stack, and it is inter-operable
> with any other software which also implements OStatus, such as
> rstat.us, which is not built atop the StatusNet codebase. If "GNU
> social" is "the largest decentralized social network on the web",
> and rstat.us can participate in that network, then is rstat.us part
> of GNU social? I mean, we know this is a source of confusion for
> new users; if you watched the public timeline on quitter.se after
> they had that huge influx of disgruntled Twitter users a couple of
> months ago, you saw a lot of notices/conversations from people who
> didn't know what the difference between Quitter, GNU social,
> StatusNet, &c., was.
> 
> "Herds" might not float your boat, but there *is* a 
> branding/terminology problem. GNU social is certainly the 
> predominant OStatus implementation right now, but we don't call
> the World Wide Web "Apache" simply because it's the predominant
> HTTP server, do we? The World Wide Web is the name of the HTTP
> network, USENET is the name of the NNTP network, email
> (delightfully generic) is the name of the SMTP network, and so-on.
> Is GNU social the name of the OStatus network?
> 
> "Fediverse" is what people on the network tend to call, it,
> although I think that name sucks, too.  How, exactly, are GNU
> social/OStatus instances any more "federated" than any other
> network of servers which use the same protocols?  Is there a
> charter that I forgot to sign when I started running my home
> instance?  Is there some legislative assembly that I've been absent
> from?
> 
> So, I'm going to retract my original proposal that GNU social
> should change its name.  You're right: devs don't care what the
> software's called, and users are going to be using instances that
> are not necessarily branded as GNU social servers.  But, I do think
> it's important that some kind of consensus is arrived at for the
> name of the network, and that the verbiage on GNU social sites be
> changed to reflect the relationship between GNU social and the
> network which it facilitates.
> 
> "GNU social is a HORD server; the HORD is the largest decentralized
>  social media network on the web."
> 
> Or something like that.  I just made-up HORD.  (H)ordes of
> (O)Status (R)elay (D)aemons.  There's my suggestion for the network
> name.  I know, I know -- y'all are thinking, "man, how does he come
> up with all of these amazing ideas?".  I eat a lot of vegetables.
> That must be it.
> 



Bob Jonkman <address@hidden>          Phone: +1-519-669-0388
SOBAC Microcomputer Services             http://sobac.com/sobac/
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