[jacquesm]

Two years ? That's precisely what I was getting at.

He's definitely looking for attention here, otherwise why post an open letter ?

If he wasn't looking for attention he could have easily mailed the diaspora people, by making this an open letter he is trying to get a slice of the media attention.

Nothing wrong with that, but I wouldn't interpret it in any other way, even if he's serious.

To me he's not just serious, but also very slow.

The sourceforge project was registered on the 15th of may, this is not a project that has been in mainstream development for two years. It may have been in development for two years but not with the kind of push behind it that you need for a successful launch of a web application.

It looks like someone's pet project that did not gain much traction that they're trying to breathe new life in.

[mindcrime]

> The sourceforge project was registered on the 15th of may, this is not a project that has been in

> mainstream development for two years. It may have been in development for two years but not with the

> kind of push behind it that you need for a successful launch of a web application.

Not sure what it matters how long it's been in development. If he's worked X years and gotten N amount of work done, he's still N amount of work ahead of where he'd be if he just started today, or the same day as the Diaspora guys. If that work amounts to anything, it could be a considerable advantage, if he does get some attention and gets some other people onboard. If not, he's still no worse off than if he hadn't done anything and decided to launch a new decentralized social network project today.

> It looks like someone's pet project that did not gain much traction that they're trying to breathe

> new life in.

Yeah, I know the feeling. I started a project with similar goals a while back ( https://openqabal.dev.java.net ) but got distracted and didn't get very far with it. Now I've changed the focus of my project to something different and am restarting development, but it's kinda moved away from the Diaspora / decentralized social network thing.

That said, I do think that everybody working on a decentralized social network (or any social network, really) should get together (virtually anyway) and collaborate on the underlying protocols and techniques for federation. No reason one shouldn't be able to run a Diaspora server and exchange data with a site running a $WHATEVER server (allowing for privacy restrictions, etc., which kinda kick-started this whole discussion).

[jacquesm]

Fully agreed, no need in duplicating the effort. But an open letter is a pretty bad way to go about that, it screams 'you can't ignore me, I'm addressing you' because you are afraid that you will not be answered.

Open letters are good for joe public to reach the town mayor or Ty Coon when all other avenues of trying to reach them have been exhausted.

They're not exactly the best avenue to contact the people that run a competing open source project about a possible collaboration.

I think it matters how long they've been at it because that is how they describe other projects, as having 'too little steam' behind them. I can't really tell the difference between those other projects with too little steam behind them and this one.

Also he words it as though the Diaspora guys should get 'behind' his project, whereas the best way to ensure that there would be collaboration would be to leave it up to them to 'get behind' his code or to integrate bits & pieces as they see fit.

All this is completely ignoring the merits of what's been produced, I have no idea how good it is, for all I know it could be stellar.

[mindcrime]

> Open letters are good for joe public to reach the town mayor or Ty Coon when all other avenues of trying to reach them have been exhausted.

> They're not exactly the best avenue to contact the people that run a competing open source project about a possible collaboration.

Agreed.

> I think it matters how long they've been at it because that is how they describe other projects, as having 'too little steam' behind them. I can't really tell the difference between those other projects with too little steam behind them and this one.

Well, "steam" in this regard can - IMO - come and go. You can start a project, do little or nothing to publicize it, tinker on it for a while, drop it, then restart it and you haven't really lost anything... if you step in two years later and start working on the project, committing code, doing releases, and publicizing it, I don't know that anybody will care about the "lost years." Or maybe I'm wrong, who knows?