Appleseed is a lot farther along, and has been releasing steadily this whole summer. It's years ahead of Diaspora, they've been putting out a new release every month, and they already have a bunch of nodes already running their software.
I hope they handle releases better than Appleseed. Sure - technically they might be ahead, but look at the page you linked from the user's perspective. It already exists, there's no buzz about it, you cannot register without an invite (also, there is no "register" link - there's strange "local" and "remote").
So when they "open to public": 1. who's going to notice? 2. with the current user-friendliness, who's going to care?
Appleseed is already open to the public for whoever wants to download the source and install it (it took me about 2 min on a shared host, really easy). You can then disable invites on your node by going into the administrator and setting on "use invites" to "no".
But in any case, they give out invites like water, you just have to email invite@appleseedproject.org. Since that's the beta testing site, they're looking for beta testers, not casual users.
Diaspora does have publicity on it's side, I'll give it that. We'll see how user-friendly it's first release is in September.
I think you lost the typical user at "whoever wants to download the source". Facebook users don't want to do that. They also don't understand "download" or "source" in many cases. They can click the blue icon in the "internet window".
(yeah - I know that's not as true nowadays as it was at the beginning of y2k, but I'm trying to make a point here...)
Sounds like the perfect opportunity to provide a hosted service.
I've always thought the distributed social site concept had room for both those people who want to run things themselves and for service providers. Kind of like wordpress.
My straightforward answer: because a bunch of my Facebook friends seem to be looking forward to moving to Diaspora and I doubt any of them has heard of Appleseed.
It's possible that in a couple of months Diaspora will look a lot less like a Great White Hope. We will see.
Yeah, it's federated server software. It's meant to be run by people who provide a hosted environment for users.
In other words, it's software for anyone who wants to run their own facebook-like site. Except that all the sites running it connect to each other.
Once it's out of beta, most users will just go to a sign up page of any number of nodes out there (I think there's like 50 out there already? I'm not sure)
I will be interested in Appleseed when the protocol is codified - which is not yet, according their documentation.
The real problems with all this stuff is conceptualizing exactly how distributed social networking system should work is actually a really hard problem. I would like to see a description of what the best solution is. That is more important than some set of code that supposedly solves the problem according to someone's concept, which they don't or can't explain.
I mean, for Diaspora or Appleseed or any similar effort to work, they have to have a network effect. And this involves, besides having it work, telling people why they should use it, why they should run servers with it, and why it will work.
A quick glance at Appleseed's SVN repo and I see the code base is PHP, like GNU social. It's maybe not a terrible decision, but it deters me (as a developer who sometimes deals with PHP at my day job) from any interest in looking any closer or wanting to risk installing it on my server.
It pays off to be 'language agnostic', in other words, to realize that programming is more about the programmer than it is about the language.
I've seen BASIC used to power million dollar companies.
To throw out some project simply because it is built in a language you don't like is counter-productive. I know PHP is the language to hate around here but you could do a lot worse in a web environment.
PHP really is the new 'BASIC', it has a very low barrier to get started and that's why plenty of people associate it with crummy code but you don't have to write crummy code in any language.
There is one, it is called http or https. I agree that more direct interfaces would be nice, but there are currently methods of controlling and passing data to a PHP server from any language you can open a port in.
It takes a lot more that just http. I'd need to know the URL schema if you're restful, or the method names if you're SOAPy. Then there's the format of the data (SOAP, JSON, XML ..) and the expected data fields in the data sent and received, etc.
From the source, it looks like they're building abstracted PHP libraries, too. And it's an event/hook architecture, so you can pop this protocol out and put another one in, theoretically.
I don't know if this is a placeholder protocol while they build the software, or if this is what they plan on using and evolving.
If their goal is a distributed social network, then going with PHP makes sense since it's the best for normal people that will want to host the project somewhere.
If you look at the most popular open source server software, a very large proportion of it is written in PHP (popular by install base) with applications such as Wordpress, PHPBB, PHPAds, Drupal, Gallery, Zencart, Joomla, SugarCRM, MediaWiki, PhpNuke, BuddyPresss, Moodle, ezPublish etc. etc.
Look at the list of apps that simplescripts supports[1], most of them are PHP (and simplescript in-turn is supported by a lot of hosts).
Look at OpenSourceCRM - most of the applications there are PHP[2]. The most popular open source CRM applications are also written in PHP[3]
PHP makes up a significant portion of self-install web apps because it is so widely supported[4] (LAMP), it easy to setup and a lot of sysadmins and designers understand how the apps work.
I commented when Diaspora was announced that for these reasons, and because of the target market, PHP would have been a better choice. They could have slipstreamed the install on top of the already large install base of these other applications without admins and potential users having to purchase or setup additional servers (ie. if you already have Wordpress installed somewhere, installing a PHP Diaspora would be a cinch. It could even read and setup using WP or other config files).
You may not like PHP (I don't know anybody who likes it from a design perspective), but you would be a fool to ignore it.
Not only is it in a language that many hackers dislike, but it's a supposedly decentralized social app in a centralized (and, in this context, archaic) SVN repo.
I strongly and completely disagree. For a supposed next-generation, distributed open source application, language and version control choices are important. There are arguably valid reasons for using PHP, none of which you provided in either of your comments, but there is no excuse for using SVN. SVN has its place, and that place isn't in a project like this.
I'm completely down with the idea the SVN isn't a great choice, but I don't see what that has to do with the decentralized nature of the app whose source it's hosting. It seems like saying you should use XWindows to develop all network-related software because it uses sockets.
No. If your differentiating feature is a principle, then you can't ignore that principle.
Today, DVCS is essentially the foundation of developer social networks, both formally (github, bitbucket) and informally. How are you going to make a supposedly decentralized open source social network when the foundation isn't decentralized? Mom doesn't care right now whether a social network is decentralized and open source, developers do.
Judging by the amount of open source PHP code out there, some of it powering major websites, I'm not sure at all it's "a language many hackers dislike".
It's pretty universally acknowledged, even among PHP developers, that the language is a mess. There are reasons to use it despite this, but don't try to pretend it's something it isn't.
The same risk as installing any not-well-vetted server software. Except, from experience, I trust PHP code much less. Every PHP code base I have ever seen has been full of vulnerabilities. I don't like reading PHP code, so I don't feel like looking over it myself.
PHP had some poor defaults early on, but that was fixed long ago. Any decent PHP framework deals with SQL injection or XSS in the same way decent Ruby/Python/etc framework does. Judging from the fact they already released code and have experienced devs, I'd tend to trust Appleseed's PHP more than Diaspora Ruby. (Personally I prefer working in Ruby)
At the end of the day, the hip new app with the latest fashionable framework might still send your plaintext password over HTTP.
Does it implement Ostatus? Is it compatible with more than just other appleseed? Diaspora will be compatible with any app that implements Ostatus such as status.net and google buzz.
So, took some UI classes, ate some bagels, gave some talks, met some interesting people, off to Burning Man. All wonderful things but none of them actually say or show much about what they have got implemented and working.
Except they don't really have it working. http://pivotallabs.com/talks/107-diaspora (the first 30 min is stories about how they met and what they did in school, you can skip that)
That was posted 8 days ago; I don't know how far away they had it from working but a lot can happen in that timeframe if you have people working like it's a startup.
I think this is a kind of mythical man-month moment.
Some things can be put together with enough all nighters.
But my hunch is a working distributed social networking system isn't one of them. And the reason is that, like operating systems, databases or sophisticated languages, you can't iteratively improve a badly designed complex system (and working with similar things, I've tried...).
You especially can't do it at 3:00am.
(And unless you've first debugged your design, the chances are your design is bad. Unlike, operating systems, databases or sophisticated languages, there aren't well known patterns for constructed distributed social networking sites... but the problems involved seem at least as hard)
Exactly. I'm amazed that people think that Diaspora can accomplish in a few months what Elgg, Appleseed, Onesocialweb, etc. etc. have all been working on for YEARS.
Especially when considering that these are being developed by professionals with industry experience, and Diaspora is four college kids.
We all want to hear the story of the intrepid engineers working in their parents garage and changing the world, but let's be realistic here.
What does "working" mean if it doesn't mean working well?
My point earlier was that, as opposed to a fairly linear application like a web app, in something like an operating system or a distributed database, there's much greater gulf between being able to make a demo that looks interesting and getting the system even barely usable.
The problem is interlocked complexity. In a linear app, you can add code to take of cases you didn't think of. In a complex system, such changes can result in creating further bugs.
If Diaspora folks just start adding more code to make their app not crash under demo conditions, it won't solve whatever architecture problems they have. And the point is that this is an design/architecture/protocol problem, a hard one. Perhaps they've solved that problem and are just putting the finishing touches on the resulting code. But a glance at their video does not give me that impression. It's more "uh, we're putting out what we got ... we can keep working..."
It's like P/NP proofs. If you don't start with summary of earlier efforts, saying why your stuff works when the other stuff didn't, it probably means you just haven't grokked just how hard the problem is.
I see where you're coming from, but I think we're talking about 2 different things. The trail of the conversation was this:
sumeetjain quoted: "We have Diaspora working, we like it, and it will be open-sourced on September 15th."
Then "what" said they didn't have it working yet according to a video posted a little while ago.
I said that it might be working now because it's been over a week, assuming they're pulling long hours to make it work.
So, I guess the definition of "working" really depends on what the Diaspora team meant when they said it was working and they liked it (in this context).
Why the condescension? The user's name is clickable and his profile shows he hasn't used the site since March. Instead of being rude, perhaps consider why his experience wasn't sticky.
I really hope their API will come soon; I think the best chance they have of user adoption will be based on the creativity of API developers bridging the gaps between Diaspora and other services. If users can communicate between Diaspora nodes and other social networks, at least on a basic level, they could see enough migration to make their efforts worthwhile.
I too think this will be key. If I can "remote control" Facebook through Diaspora, I will switch in a heartbeat. If I can't experience the same level of interaction as Facebook with the same number of people, I'll still probably switch, but gradually stop using it, I'm sure.
What is the point of that? I'm not into the whole social network thing but isn't the point of Diaspora to be able to control your own "private" information? If you post to Facebook from Diaspora wouldn't you be giving up the only real reason to switch?
I don't see why. While everyone you want to talk to is on Facebook you talk Facebook. When a group of friends you want to privately share with is largely on Diaspora, you use Diaspora. Diaspora's focus on making setting privacy levels unthinkingly sounds like it'd be a real useful thing to have hooked into Facebook [for people who give a shit about privacy, but not enough to fight Facebook settings afresh each post].
If Diaspora fails, it will have less to do with the awesomeness of the project, and more to do with the lack of everyone's friends actually using Diaspora.
I figure it will be a huge hit among geeks like us, but then will fall out of usage due to the lack of updates from people that matter, like friends and family.
I use Facebook for staying in touch with the mostly non-technical people in my life who actually use Facebook, and that's what will end up swaying most users (like myself) back towards Facebook in a relatively short period of time.
Non techie friends and family pay a lot of attention to what techie guy does. I remember using google when everyone else was using yahoo, and soon all my friends and family started to use google over yahoo. In 2006, I switched to mac. Half my non-techie friends and family now have macs. Trends, possibly, but they'll try it if they know you like it and if it is better, they are sold.
In the cases you mentioned, it was easy for the techie guy to recommend Google or Macs to friends or family because they were far better products at the time.
I take recommendations I give to people very seriously, and I simply wouldn't recommend to any non-technical person to move away from Facebook to a platform that has none/few of their friends on it.
They don't seem to get open source. Open source is having code available so people can contribute and review, not simply dumping some files at a specified date.
Sometimes that's true. Sometimes the right approach for a project still just getting off the ground is not letting people in for a while.
It's easier to realize a vision when you've already got something concrete to point to. Otherwise you often waste time arguing over what color to paint the shed.
Sometimes there is another team out there that knows a better method to determining what color to paint the shed. As an open source developer, you are more than welcome to disregard feedback regarding your code provided it is publicly available, but when you don't make it available, how can it be called open source?
It can't be. Until they make it available. Hence the verb usage of Open-sourced, an action they intend to do to the project. That is, they intend to change it from closed, and very private, to open.
Why is their logo an asterisk when it seems their whole idea is that they are the social network without a catch? The asterick at the end of their name instantly makes me want to scroll down to read the fine print.
It's sad that they didn't just tack onto an existing project like Pinax and add functionality to it to handle the federated system. There was no need to reinvent the wheel, the existing ones just needed a little truing.
I had a really good look at that and I did not like much what I saw (that was a while ago, but still). Do you have a specific reason for suggesting that over appleseed (mentioned elsewhere in this thread), which I think would be a far better fit?
That, IMO, is one of the best things they could spend the money on. This project is going to suffer from being a technologists dream toy. By bringing in outside help to focus on who the end-user is, they have a hope of overcoming this and making it usable for mortals.
UX should be the first dollars spent on a consumer product, not the last.
I'm actually really happy to hear they did that, even though I can't see any of the results (they're far too secretive about what's going on behind the scenes, besides these blog postings).
It means they have a clear idea of what they can do, and more importantly about what they can't do. So blowing some money on an expert in a field for which they don't have expertise is actually a really good sign.
One might argue that all those other OStatus network are way ahead, but I never read _their_ updates on HN, so Diaspora has at least a lot of buzz around it and thus the potential to get a user base faster than all the others.
Personally, I'd really like to see a way of giving people the ability to share eachothers posts on diaspora (with posters consent of course). Metrics for posts could then be measured and displayed, and a whole new golden age of blogging/microblogging/online-publishing could be born out of this.
Also, there's got to be a better way of connecting people of similar interests via groups than the current model.
Also also, please consider musicians in the melée!!
god speed diaspora. I for one will be joining asap.
I just clearly support you guys. impatient to read your code and share the good parole in my countries (Farnce-Chile-India).. Your tools, partners and tech choices rock !! Ruby, MongoDB; Github, Pivotal. They give a clear view on what you do and how you work. I am also impatient to see what is that wonderful bot and how do you guys will handle propagation of seeds. Let's work !!.
Great to hear that they have a solid team of advisors and that they are putting the user experience first. With open-source I am always a bit concerned that design and experience are secondary. Diaspora has a great story going on right now, I hope the product will continue that with the same spirit and capture people's imaginations.
Sadly I don't think this will take off. So many people rallied over Diaspora calling it the Facebook killer not understanding the true implications. Maybe I am wrong about this but wouldn't the people that want to use this have to download it and host it themselves?
I worry. The whole update reminded me of when I move out of an apartment and think I've got one more load to go at 9pm... Just a few lamps and the vacuum. Three loads and four hours later and I'm still almost done.
Careful youngin, don't equate conformity with professionalism. The text is quite legible and the serif font makes a nice counterpoint to the rest of the page.
It's just not consistent since other parts of the page are in sans serif. I just prefer sans serif, I guess. Serif fonts remind me of cursive. Sans serif fonts seem more objective. For example, when you write "dog" you don't necessarily want the word to look like a dog.
Nearly all available evidence suggests that whether the font has serifs or not makes no difference with respect to readability on the screen.
That you think of sans-serif as more objective is actually quite funny. Newspapers, books and magazines – i.e. pretty much everything we read until a few years ago – used nearly exclusively a serif font for all their body text. Now it’s serif that sticks out.
I totally did not notice it was a serif font, and I didn't turn on Readability, either (which I do for most things, especially if some designer tried to make it look cool)
http://opensource.appleseedproject.org
I think by the time Sep 15th rolls around, Appleseed will be on it's fourth release this summer.