[ohboy]

As a business owner who once had their Paypal account frozen (mistakenly, but frozen nonetheless) 10 years ago and now does $10,000+ every month through Paypal I can say they're doing something wrong. Paypal doesn't need to steal money, they make billions a year, they don't need your $45,000.

Something smells rotten and it's Diaspora. $200,000 and over one year later and they have nothing to show for it and they're still begging for money. They promised a finished product for $10,000, they received $200,000 and they're still not done. Why are people still giving them money? If a contractor said $10,000 to replace my roof and I gave him $200,000 and he came back saying he needed more I'd call the police and sue, not give him another $45,000

So what happens when they get another 20k or 60k or 200k and they say "oops that's not enough", everyone gets a refund? Or does Diaspora walk away? Or do they hold another donation round in a year?

Sooo disappointed in Diaspora, so many startups could have been created with $200k but they burned the money and now they're back asking for more, like watching a homeless guy buy alcohol with the 20 you just gave him and he comes back asking for more money.

Zuckerberg was just an average programmer and he made Facebook with almost no funding while attending college, these four get $200,000 and make nothing.

I'd love to know what these donators are thinking, can anyone give me a good reason why it's a good idea to keep giving Diaspora money when they already show no progress from the first $200,000 they were given? If you're a donator how will you feel when they receive another 20 or 200k and Diaspora is still a flop?

[Estragon]

  ...over one year later and they have nothing to show for it
  and they're still begging for money.

I have no dog in this fight, but your comment confuses me, because there seems to be quite a lot going on. If I look at the "contribute" page[1] and the list of sites publically running diaspora at this stage[2], I see a great deal of progress and useful code. Not a finished product yet, by any means, but they definitely have something pretty concrete to show for their efforts so far.

[1] http://diasporafoundation.org/get_involved

[2] https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/wiki/Community-supporte...

[jemka]

I believe his comment was relative and not to be taken literally. Yes, code has been written, but that is hardly a counter argument to the facts presented.

[Estragon]

It appears that not only has code been written, it's been publically deployed and used for social networking. I'd say that's a fair step beyond "nothing to show for it."

[toyg]

I pay you money to perform a service, you take the money then you tell me you won't do that service for 6 months. If it had happened to me, I'd be quite angry. This is what Paypal is doing.

I understand their overall procedure to avoid abuse, absolutely; but Diaspora is a somewhat famous project, an absolutely legit operation. You can say what you want on their deliverables, but it doesn't matter: PayPal got a nice cut out of donations to a public and very well-documented project, then turned around and said they'll keep it all for an extra 6 months.

That's not cool.

[Joeboy]

> can anyone give me a good reason why it's a good idea to keep giving Diaspora money

I haven't, but from what I can see, if you want a distributed Facebook alternative Diaspora is, for all its faults, really the only game in town. In the real, non-HN world it has buzz way beyond Appleseed, Friendika et al. An impressive number of my non-tech friends are excited about Diaspora, and don't have a clue about its competitors.

[tonybaldwin]

Diaspora, which I am using and do like, is definitely not the only game in town for decentralized, federated social networking. Friendika is, in my opinion, more mature and has more features, better federation with other networks, and is also widely used, mostly in Europe and Brazil, but there are also "pods" based in the US and Canada. It's great stuff, and is even federated with Diaspora (the two networks see each other's sites as pods on their own network). Diaspora does seem to have gotten more press. I haven't quite figured that out, but it's likely due to their funding?

[Joeboy]

> Friendika ... is also widely used

That's interesting. Last time I looked I got put off by the confusing pod options but I will try to pay it more attention.

[jamii]

Imagine if all those donations had gone to Appleseed instead. They had a working product before Diaspora even started and they're only asking for $10k to get to version 1.0

[ecspike]

Most of the money went to salaries for themselves and rent. Only about $8-16K (can't remember exact figure) went to infrastructure costs.