Re: [Social-discuss] What should GNU social be?

[Melvin Carvalho]

On 4. März 2010 23:10, Simon Fondire-Teitler <address@hidden> wrote:

On Thu, 4 Mar 2010 13:38:31 -0600, Ryan Prior <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hey Matt,
>
> I agree with you totally on your second point, but I think that we do
> need to create a straight-up replacement for existing social networks.
>
> The #1 thing that I want to bring out of GNU Social is a response to
> the question "What else should I use?". If I see somebody frustrated
> with Facebook and have a conversation about how it's harmful to trust
> all your social data to a closed network, that conversation can only
> go so far: whereas I can suggest to a disgruntled Windows or Mac user
> that GNU offers a great alternative, I have no such offering for the
> unhappy Facebook/Twitter/Myspace/LinkedIn user.
>

[...]

>
> We can take the same tack with GNU Social: first we create a
> first-rate social networking site (called daisycha.in, for example),
> then help others to build their own. Because creation of a "protocol
> for decentralized, encrypted communication between social networks" is
> still a core goal, the new extensions will cooperate along with
> daisycha.in and the value of the whole network will grow.
>

You might want to take a look at http://crabgrass.riseup.net/ . It is up
and running at https://we.riseup.net/ . It is an AGPL social networking
created primarily for activists. While this might not be quite what you
had in mind, I believe it is worth taking a look.

Looks pretty cool.  I think it's also worth looking at http://elgg.org/ which is getting quite mature has qutie a bit of functionality, the RESTful API makes it extensible, and they have plugins for things like realtime chat, but I'm not sure you want to be locked in to their paradigm ( I think dasiycha.in should embrace a Web Scale Architecture compatible with Linked Datafrom the start ), it's certainly a project worth learning from and perhaps it would be advantageous to set up a liaison to crabgrass and elgg.  Other PHP codebase worth looking at is http://noserub.com/ and http://smob.me/
 

(Full disclosure: I am doing an internship at riseup.net, the creators.)

--simonft