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

[Adam Moore]

On 2015-01-18 12:31, Bob Jonkman wrote:
> 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.

And if that's the way it stays, then that's fine by me.

I brought the whole issue up, not just because I have some kind of 
personal grudge against the name GNU social -- I mean, I do have a 
personal grudge against the name, but if that's all it was, I wouldn't 
have bothered the mailing list with it.  The problem is: I was working 
on a GNU social tutorial for users of the instance we have running on 
sdf.org, and I've been wanting to do a comic-style introduction/advocacy 
poster to try and attract some new users outside from outside the free 
software community (I'd love to at least rope-in some of my followers on 
Tumblr and deviantART), but I immediately run into the issue of 
confused/confusing terminology. Do I invite people to come join us on 
GNU social?  Or do I invite them to join us in the Fediverse?  Do I 
recommend that they find a GNU social server specifically, or do I say, 
hey, there are a lot of different services you can use to link-up with 
people using OStatus-friendly services?  To what extent do I have to 
describe OStatus, the Fediverse, GNU social, and how they relate?  And 
so-on.

Committees and standards bodies are a pain in the neck, sure, but having 
some kind of semi-formal recommendation coming from some kind of 
semi-organized body saying "we would like the network to be called X, 
and we would like this activity to be referred to as Y, and this 
activity as Z" is extremely useful for people who want to write 
documentation, for journalists who want to report on it, and for 
advocates who simply want to bring their friends and associates 
on-board.

People on the network might be calling it the Fediverse, but no one else 
is.  If I send a message to my friends and say, hey, things are better 
in the Fediverse, they're going to look on Wikipedia and find nothing 
because there's no Fediverse article. If you Google "fediverse" and 
start looking through the results, you'll see that the blogosphere is 
already starting to conflate "Fediverse" with "GNU social". And if the 
website of the predominant Fediverse server is going to start referring 
to the network as GNU social, then usage of the term Fediverse is only 
going to erode more and more.

It's still a network of thousands, not millions, of users, and nothing 
is set in stone right now.  I think if you/I/everyone-else wants the 
network to be called this or that, it's time to start saying so.  I like 
HORD.  Lots of people like Fediverse or The Federation.  The people who 
are writing the copy on gnu.io seem to like GNU social.  You're right: 
people using the network will call it what they will -- but they're 
going to be steered by what they read and hear elsewhere.

--
Adam Moore/LÆMEUR (@SDF) <address@hidden>
WWW: http://laemeur.sdf.org
OStatus: https://wm.sdf.org/gs/laemeur