If Facebook Made A Real Facebook Home<http://www.makeuseof.com/tech-fun/if-facebook-made-a-real-facebook-home/>
http://www.makeuseof.com/tech-fun/if-facebook-made-a-real-facebook-home/ On Mon, Apr 1, 2013 at 11:59 PM, Melvin Carvalho <[email protected]>wrote: > > > > On 1 April 2013 18:45, hellekin <[email protected]> wrote: > >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >> Hash: SHA512 >> >> On 04/01/2013 12:02 PM, Geert Lovink wrote: >> > >> >> Erkan Yilmaz: What are the plans of the GNU social team to >> >> continue StatusNet ? >> > >> *** I've been asking the same thing or similar to mattl for a while. >> Since he considers I wanted to takeover the name of this project, he >> ignored me consistently. Last thing he said was that GNU Social is not >> dead and they're going through a procedure to incorporate "two huge >> code donations". Although he never replied, I suspect that one of them >> is the code of StatusNet itself. Gathering copyright ownership on that >> one is titan work. >> >> The copyright issue with StatusNet is that there's no single owner: it >> prevented Evan Prodromou, the man behind StatusNet and Pump.io, from >> being able to propose commercial dual-licensing of the software after >> the fact, as it would require cooperation of all copyright owners. >> It's not a problem with AGPLv3+ itself, the license of StatusNet, but >> of the copyright ownership strategy: the copyright ownership strategy >> of GNU Social is to ask all contributors to waive copyright ownership >> to the FSF, so that the foundation can defend the software in a court >> of law. >> >> When a project has many developers sharing the copyright, vs. a single >> entity, changing the license ranges from very difficult to impossible. >> For example, DokuWiki is released under the GNU General Public License >> version 2 exclusively. At the time of its creation in 2004, it seemed >> like the normal thing to do, as GPLv3 did not exist yet. Over the >> course of 3 years, until the release of GPLv3, the number of >> developers--and copyright owners, had rocketed to more than a hundred >> contributors. Getting them, including the missing ones, to agree on >> adding the little + to GPLv2 in order to authorize the GPLv3, and >> later versions, in addition to the current license, was already a lost >> cause. [0] >> > > Is the code being GPL a show stopper? > > Having looked at the status.net codebase a few times, it's qutie hefty > too, aside from the legal point. > > >> >> However I'm not convinced of the strategic interest of such a move--if >> it's what I suspect. The successor of StatusNet, pump.io, comes with a >> number of advantages--when it's ready: the most important is probably >> the performance gain. Evan commented recently [1] that the cost >> savings of hosting pump.io vs. StatusNet's costs are more than >> ten-fold, which means that pump.io could easily run on a Freedom Box, >> a Raspberry Pi, or the equivalent free hardware (aka 100% OHL [2] >> compliant box) when it's available, for any household to run >> cheaply--server-resource-wise, and be more scalable for smaller >> organizations that want to run their own instances. >> >> Other concerns include the viability of the code base in the future: >> StatusNet is already mature code, and probably hit the wall of >> diminishing returns already, while pump.io is nascent and built on >> NodeJS. NodeJS is a much younger platform than PHP, and benefits from >> faster development cycles, and an innovative community who learned on >> the errors of the past. The current competitive advantages of PHP, its >> pervasiveness among ISPs, and its very large developer base, are going >> to be challenged very soon, as ISPs adopt newer languages such as >> Python/Django, Ruby/Rails, NodeJS, etc. more widely [3]. Note that a >> sound copyright ownership policy on StatusNet might revive the >> innovation of the software, although it will still remain >> (theoretically) slower to develop that NodeJS, Ruby, LISP, etc. >> > > The problem with status net was neither PHP nor performance. It was that > it didnt scale. > > >> >> Now, I hope that the GNU Social team will be more responsive as they >> approach release date. Mattl has been busy with the very successful >> LibreFM, and the daunting secret task of copyright assignments over >> the upcoming secret weapons of GNU Social. >> >> Let's hope for the best. >> >> == >> hk >> >> [0] Dokuwiki's License FAQ does not mention any specific version of >> the GPL, while the repository explicitly mentions GPLv2, and the Ohloh >> entry mistakenly mentions GPLv2+ (edit: corrected) >> https://www.dokuwiki.org/faq:license >> https://github.com/splitbrain/dokuwiki/blob/master/COPYING >> http://www.ohloh.net/p/dokuwiki/licenses >> >> Dokuwiki's wiki contents though, went through a license change 2 years >> ago: >> https://www.dokuwiki.org/licensing_change >> https://www.dokuwiki.org/devel:ideas:relicensing >> >> [1] http://identi.ca/conversation/99265765#notice-100338214 >> >> [2] http://www.ohwr.org/projects/cernohl >> >> [3] http://networkeffectalliance.org >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- >> Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux) >> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ >> >> iQIcBAEBCgAGBQJRWbm7AAoJEDhjYTkcokoTD6UQAIWvG+YFEJMVSBOd8momlmMn >> K+z50oAufOFMonC2rHy4R3Sp1mNj3SMHgRZUFIH2Au/rwXnDAYfWoL3ItoiH5Pk7 >> lnF1OLFcu6eMO+aDD+L0oej7zYzIXXQFNPtLnc1NodTmqYfofSfuy1E1sl4KY8gg >> 3jHYB1AzgG7/TUpqduVu1zmGwnCyVvqIiaVSrk82yOG9ZQVWQkcaFcau7QQNP6v1 >> Ot4016K1vcWTZTxL86oxB9LvZmSyb0YxSt3Mm6QtQ5omdsKMv88ytVqydBjZiK7T >> r/AvWBJSY7sCR6KHqJelr1KUgsWnBGADuvP34ak4P4mAoJhGVNo8TbVTw/eJKk0y >> pmiyBH3H/VbB/80/xuhsA9iBe0PjTYppn7KpgQ+PUyWUd900dg9scMgBRWD1f08b >> tw4iWcxqiIeFlYIAS3vUeRyUlZ3yqv45h9GcvvGBRsGjXijkmIiZPcrUKwOQ4t60 >> cNzVUZrnI2XvXi/VchhZA92mg/+LSx2Tk6OJ8hxbDXZboQtC0dyoweEWcGx9KZT7 >> MX5LUUrOlHhg/LKhAZD8yCwhKcwJr+/ApC5ROeW6NQUQd5xir96Gbv6B418OXKui >> kKDwP/OWfICkPMrWcGUpMGMNkCNvgwf4kMp/HhwQTcztwGxFYJXqnN5rD6ivHo1G >> bglqVgUXY128MtDwph24 >> =jE8m >> -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > unlike-us mailing list > [email protected] > http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/unlike-us_listcultures.org > >
