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

[Ted Smith]

On Thu, 2010-03-04 at 21:07 -0500, Matt Lee wrote:
> On 03/04/2010 08:39 PM, Ted Smith wrote:
> 
> >> We have the most to gain by focusing now on the immediate need for a
> >> Free replacement for Facebook, creating along the way an enthusiastic
> >> developer following that will help bring the full promise of GNU
> >> Social to fruition. To ignore that need, or treat it as second-class
> >> to the need for a framework or protocol for Free social networks, is
> >> to forfeit a lot of potential momentum. 
> > 
> > I absolutely agree.
> 
> The problem with this, is as ever, people are going to constantly ask us
> why we're not just using one of dozen or more other existing free
> software projects.
> 
We have a good answer for that: We want to create a system using PHP for
portability and the AGPL for freedom.

> Creating the protocol, which what Ian and Shaun's time would be much
> better spent working on, means that each of those systems can
> communicate with each other, and we don't need to worry about making one
> really awesome site.
> 
We obviously have to create a protocol, because we want federation. But
I don't think it's a good idea to try to have everything be fully
federated from the ground up. I think it's more important to start
filling the Facebook gap as fast as possible. This will provide
much-needed argument weight for free network service activists.

> Treat this problem like a mail or IM client -- if we can figure out how
> to talk to each other, then we can each worry about all the cool
> features we'd like to see later.
> 
We know what cool features we'd like to see. We don't need to spend lots
of time figuring out how to do this the One True Way, we just need to
get something going. Worse is better.

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