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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • baatliwala@lemmy.worldtoFediverse@lemmy.worldWhy is Mastodon struggling to survive?
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    23 days ago

    I have an account that I use to read, but I’ve never posted on Mastodon. Decided to tweet after seeing this post and I see a privacy option called “Quiet Public - Fewer Algorithmic Fanfares”.

    Seriously, wtf is this? What does that even mean? If techie people like me can’t figure out Mastodon then you can’t expect the general public to do that. I’m not blaming this feature in particular, but Mastodon is quirky in all the wrong ways.




  • Honestly at this point there’s a fairly large number of instances so yours would need a selling point to even begin. And that’s before taking things like owner behaviour and strictness into consideration because the instance theme and tools will always be the first impression.

    “Generic catch all instances” are common. You can only build up a user base if existing people are willing to ditch their own. What are yours doing that the current ones do not?

    • Do you have a focus on a particular topic? I would consider posting a beautiful photo that I took on an instance dedicated to photography rather than the catch all one.
    • Is your UI unique/pretty? Which leads me to the next point…
    • Do you offer certain tools available/unique to your instance? 1) If yes, why can’t they be integrated with base lemmy? It’s open source after all. 2) If no for whatever reason (Lemmy devs slow to respond, low on their priority, will not accept, I don’t agree with their behaviour etc) is there a reason it cannot be included on other existing instances? Why is it exclusive to yours?

    And then I would start looking at the details like what would uptime be, how much are you yourself making an effort to contribute and expand, etc







  • From what I’ve understood SSPL is a ridiculously ambiguous license, it’s extreme copyleft. It’s not just “open source the tooling you use to host the software”, it can also be interpreted to mean “open source all the hardware and firmware you use to host the software”. No one wants to risk going to court for that so corporate wants to use SSPL licensed software.

    AGPL is the best license you can go for IMO.





  • In very basic terms - GPL means that any modifications you make to a code base and distribute to public, you need to keep the license as GPL and open source all your modifications.

    Once cloud started becoming a thing, the cloud vendors went “Well ackchyually🤓, the code changes we’re making are hosted on OUR server so we’re not technically distributing them to the public. So fuck you we have no obligation to make them open source”.

    Which is why AGPL exists so even server side code needs to be public. Since the application in question here is a backend service, it’ll always be used server side and so any forks need to be open source.




  • Normally a breaking change means after you apply the change it’s not easy/straightforward to rollback to the older version if you want to do that for whatever reason.

    For example, a new version is released and underlying database table or structure changes. You upgrade properly, and find the new version has some bugs (or you simply don’t like it). If you want to use the older version again until the newer one is fixed it’s not a matter of simply point to old version.

    As the database structure has fundamentally changed underneath in the new version, when you put back the old version it simply doesn’t understand the new structure and might stop working. You need ways to be able to make the DB structure compatible with the older application.

    If the application is stable the devs might provide ways to do this. But since this is an alpha… You’re on your own.

    TL;DR it means the older and newer version of the application aren’t strictly compatible with each other



  • Don’t kid yourselves, regardless of all your ideals open source only works because it’s free from a monetary perspective.

    Companies work on patches to Linux or other software because it primarily benefits themselves, and they only use Linux because it’s free. Companies create hardware on Linux because it’s free. They can manufacturer cheap devices and people will buy them because they were low cost primarily because of the use of FOSS software.

    Nearly all of FOSS is funded by corporations whether you like it or not, for the reasons you want to hear or not. The only thing that drives people is money.