[quiffledwerg]

This project needs marketing people on the team.

I’m interested in peertube it’s an exciting concept. When I when to that page I expected a simple, clean design inviting me to download it or use it or whatever. Instead there’s a rambling unfocused page without a call to action.

YouTube is the Mike Tyson of video…. you’ve gotta be much better than this to get in the ring with YouTube.

[booteille]

The people behind PeerTube are the non-for-profit Framasoft.

Actually, there is only one developer, not even working full time, on the project, and some lovely contributors.

So Framasoft is actually not playing with same means than big players like YouTube or so. That's why they are not handling the problem the same way.

The goal here is mainly to build a tool for people and small structures. There is no intent to be the new YouTube.

The message is more humble: anyone should be able to host and share at low cost their own videos. That's the issue that PeerTube solves right now.

If you think all of that sounds good, think about donating to Framasoft. They are living mostly from donations and that's what made PeerTube possible.

https://framasoft.org/en/#support

[BjornW]

The url points to a blogpost at Framasoft with information on the release canidate. If you visit the homepage of Peertube (https://joinpeertube.org) you'll likely find the information you are looking for.

[aosaigh]

I think this is a good example of what separates HN users from normal users. The fact that the blog is on a completely different domain and using a different name is confusing. What's more, when you visit the Peertube domain it's not clear what you should do. Do I need to download something? What's an instance? How come the top video on the page brings me to a separate page?

I know these are things that most HN users are happy to dig into and figure out, but currently there's no way Peertube is "an alternative to video platforms" for even saavy web users, let alone regular users. Maybe that's OK though?

[laurentb]

not really, Framasoft is a French company that develops a collection of open source alternatives to popular software.

It's the same as if Microsoft was posting a blog on its own msdn.com domain for something related to visual studio or SharePoint

[igorkraw]

Small correction, it's a non-profit association that can be placed in the same cluster as Mozilla, the EFF, the CCC or the Linux Foundation (i.e., the good guys if you care about FOSS and an open software and internet world)

[dewey]

> It's the same as if Microsoft was posting a blog on its own msdn.com domain for something related to visual studio or SharePoint

Which underlines the point that the parent is making. Normal users are not the ones reading things related to SharePoint. Apple does their announcements on the apple.com domain and not on applnews.com.

> I think this is a good example of what separates HN users from normal users.

[detaro]

Normal users are also not the ones primarily expected to read release notes for release candidates for the Peertube server software. Sharepoint is arguably a good comparison: run by administrators for users - it's just that peertube is more interesting to nerds that are both in one (although I'm sure there's some folks with sharepoint at home...).

[ekianjo]

> Normal users are not the ones reading things related to SharePoint.

Normal users would never ever find this blog post in the first place. You are trying to fix a problem that does not exist.

[dtonon]

The "Read the blog post" link is placed in the first highlighted box of the project's homepage :)

[cameronh90]

> msdn.com

Doesn't exist any more. It's now all under microsoft.com (e.g. devblogs.microsoft.com).

[Zababa]

The way peertube is an alternative to youtube is not by end users understanding what it is, but by technical users hosting themselves the videos. For example, OCaml has a peertube instance to watch OCaml related content: https://watch.ocaml.org/. This is an alternative to watching the content on youtube.

[mshanu]

I think this is the challenge with all decentralised systems, its not as easy as you click some buttons and you get served like in web 2. Hope more focus will come on experience part of this, for such approaches to become popular

[Saint_Genet]

If you go to that site you don't get tons of videos, you get a technical explanation of what it is and a link to a page with 10 channels. Unless you're the kind of person who is on HN, you're just gonna go to youtube instead.

[presentation]

Agree, the way it’s presented will pretty much guarantee nobody but hardcore nerds will ever use it, it’s sad that noble efforts hobble themselves in this way.

I mean isn’t it ironic that PeerTube doesn’t use a PeerTube video to introduce its new features? Guess their team thinks their own product isn’t a good way of consuming interesting information…

[roenxi]

It'd certainly be nice (although an oxymoron) if Framasoft could singlehandedly create a deep decentralised network of video content creators to challenge YouTube. But that isn't really necessary - if all they do is bring down the cost of someone else to compete then that is more than enough to be helpful.

And while I do agree that a savvy marketer would have had a video in the article ... a video is actually a bad medium for communicating a new release. Videos are better for stuff with a bit of visual spectacle.

[loceng]

Does the license allow commercial use without releasing any modifications? Else it doesn't make sense for a potential competitor to provide improvements to create additional competitors for themselves.

[rakoo]

I think you are still under the impression that success is still based on codebase and you just need the perfect source code to build the most successful service. That's wrong. Success is built on relentless labor, continuous marketing and luck. That's why Gitlab can build a successful company while dailymotion can fail to build what is functionally not new.

[loceng]

I think you're lacking enough data points to determine what impression I'm under, making assumptions as to my perspective, where my question is coming from.

There is a competitive advantage to not giving your future competition a heads up by providing them your keys to the foundation of your Kingdom. Sure, they'll copy what you do eventually if what you're doing is working, but why make that easier for them?

If someone is seriously going to take on the current systems and sees value in part or all of PeerTube then it's not a substantial part of the cost, because as you say, it's not the codebase that's important - though it becomes a conversation piece if it means any additions to the codebase reduces an even temporary competitive advantage from potential future competitors.

[M2Ys4U]

PeerTube itself is licenced under the AGPL.

But that wouldn't stop a non-AGPL licenced solution from interoperating as the network is based on an open standard (ActivityPub).

[betwixthewires]

So the site is about a server you can run that will be your very own tube site. Who other than nerds is going to install that? It requires administration, you're going to be very interested in running an instance to the point of commitment before you go there.

[qudat]

Great idea and totally agree. Even someone who has been de-googling for awhile cannot step away from YT and PeerTube just isn't the same thing at all.

[streamofdigits]

consider though that if peertube just emulates the practices of existing players the result will likely be exactly the same

the high thresholds and lack of mainstream polish of most open source projects is a true fact and has to do with the economic / business models (or non-models) so its not an easy challenge to solve

somehow being able to engage creative people to contribute (whether it is UI design, visual art, engaging text etc) will be critical for FOSS to have bigger impact

[agumonkey]

I was tempted to agree but considering they managed to make such a nice and large piece of software without marketing.. I'd keep the marketing low and let the energy flow organically.