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nice comment from Fried blog (by Mark Pesce): "Jesus fscking Christ. What these kids need is a little support, not some idiot tearing them down because they suddenly find themselves in exactly the right place at exactly the right time with exactly the right idea. Jealous much? If you want to see Diaspora* succeed, then you’d better work very, very hard coming up with solutions to every one of the very real problems you just raised. Otherwise, you’re just a hater, and you’re only making the problem worse."

I don't think that the author has ever tried to undermine what diaspora is trying to do in any one word of the short article. What he has tried to tell everyone is what is essentially the best advice those people can ever get. Somebody has to put a reality check on things. I seriously believe that a reality check has to be put on the dream run the diaspora team is getting. Essentially they are getting money just for an idea. And that too, not even a half baked one. I would have been more supportive of them getting around 1700% of there expectations if they had at least a spec out before.

Edit: Changed kids to people as I am younger in intellect and age and it felt silly when I read it again.

The reality check can be taken one day after the finance period is due. It's not a reality check, it's a deliberate attempt to stop the finance momentum. They have basic specs, and it doesn't look like a rocket surgery (as Steve Krug calls it), certainly not for 4 dedicated CS grads working hard.

And although my comments are demoted here, the truth is that distributed "nodes" is a threat to the "central hub" owners, including J Fried, especially when your customers are geeks who can easily install and config the distributed thing. Paradigm shifts can wipe out other companies very quickly, and Fried knows it.

If you are paid $170K for this spec http://joindiaspora.com/project.html then it is easy to be rich. There are far too many better things that people can spend there money on. Cool things, even on kickstarter, are going underfunded. After all they just $10000 dollars, what is the need to give a 1730% funding to something.

1. A common seed stage is 250K-750K and they are currently way below it. Since they are going open source, there is no better way to achieve it.

2. 250K+ for 4 people will give them the opportunity to focus and advance fast without financial side effects.

3. Since when the J. Fried camp is so worried about specs? They want to build a tool to scrape the data, store it local and make it avail. via standard protocol. Nothing to invent, all the tools are in place, but a lot of hard work on the boring integration/config details and testing.

And to the point again: if such thing work I guess it will not be that hard to include a tasks and project management layer that will hurt Basecamp.

1) I am not speaking on the behalf of J. Fried. I don't care who that is.

2) I have said that before and will say it again. Sure seeding is way above that. But those seed money go to startups which make money. The VCs make more money off it. Nobody is getting money from this.

Exactly! We agree here. This is why they succeeded. And this is why the old anti-raising money arguments of J.Fried do not hold. And his "anti-evil" strategy also doesn't work here. So he picks the "no product" PR strategy (again, when Google had a full product, albeit free and competing with Campfire, it was the "evil" PR strategy).

It's a PR to stop a competing trend, a paradigm shift that sooner or later threatens his core business.

His subtext is sorta "listen, don't give them more money because it will spoil them and there will be no product."

I see no other way to start such a project than a few geeks sitting and building it, and nothing will help them more than a few months freedom from financial distractions.

I too am against them getting so much money lionshare. As I said before, cool things can happen with the obscene amount of surplus money they have. They asked for $10,000 and thats what they need nothing more nothing less. If they wanted more, they could have asked for it.

well, they probably played with some draft code, hooking some libraries, and this is why they asked only 10K. as a summer vacation thing. but they are on something important, the idea is right, the timing is right, and technically feasible. These funds and support are not what they expected - but taking financial distractions out of the equation, they have better chances to do it. It's an interesting thing, and the best thing would be to support them or at least wait before calling it curse.

Question is if you and me will install and use these nodes?

The thing about selling the dream is that everybody has a picture in their own minds that makes it exciting. If we were to put actual code to it, it doesn't look like what I had in mind. So, alot of people will then say it's junk.

Now this 37 signal's guy might say hey, the expectations are too high. Yes it is. But like any it is a problem to be solved. Just off the top of my head frequent release of the progress would migitate this risk. Maybe code or Screenshots to manage expectation.

Look at Obama, tons of expectation or any other popular president, did they deliever as expected? No. I think everybody here knows that the presidents aren't going to deliver as expected. So, it is with these guys. With all the hype, people can figure it out. Hey they might not do as well as expected, but we can atleast try to be apart of history.

hmmm... interesting. But really, to write some client software that stores and provides read/write of the common "social content" (pics, blog posts, writing on the wall etc) in common standard RESTful way is such a far fetched dream? It could be simple as www.mysite.com/diaspora/albums or www.mysite.com/diaspora/wall.

Even Obama can handle it. (Not to mention 4 dedicated CS grads)

So, that is the picture you have in your head? See I would be disappoint with this. My idea of it was you have a node and you add stuff to your profile, then some body copies it, several copies all on different nodes, so at any given time your nodes is always available. And there is some kinda security encrytion for each node. No key = no node.

What I was trying to point out some people are going to be disappointed regardless. All there is to do is manage it.

as long as the protocol is done right, applications are endless. TCP is maybe 30 years old? The copy is an issue - because once it's copied you can not fully control it, similar to Facebook.

Yes, there will be disappointments. But it's not "a curse", a healthy 250K seed-stage worth is not the end of the world, and as someone pointed here: it's an open source seed. It will grow. Fried should not bash them like that, unless he has some special interest - which he does. The Diaspora paradigm threatens his core business and he knows it.

So, now they're not building a Facebook competitor. They're building a protocol which can be used to build any number of Facebook competitors with different features. You are literally making Fried's point for him.

The thing about selling the dream is that everybody has a picture in their own minds that makes it exciting. If we were to put actual code to it, it doesn't look like what I had in mind. So, a lot of people will then say it's junk.

That's really very important. What you just said better describes what is my problem with them getting so much money. Essentially they are selling junk for at least 50% of the backers. The ideas are always different in one way or another than implementation thus people are paying up for something they think is what they want

Jesus fscking Christ. What these kids need is a little support, not some idiot tearing them down because they suddenly find themselves in exactly the right place at exactly the right time with exactly the right idea

Bullshit - what they need is tearing into now (just like this; politely) so they realise that they can't wing it on the good vibe. They gotta produce something good off this money; otherwise it's a potential disaster!

Call it a reality check.

fair, but let them finish the finance properly. This is not a reality check, it a move to stop the finance from a potential competing tool

What potential competing tool? You've been taking a rather ridiculous stance, lionshare. In order for your arguments to hold true, justify the following: a) that Diaspora (an anti-Facebook) is a Basecamp competitor, which implies that b) Facebook is a Basecamp competitor; c) the rise of node systems == the fall of centralized server systems d) that Jason Fried isn't just weighing in as a 3rd-party startup founder.

> PS: not related, but here's a thought: why is it necessary to have a special node system? Won't a super-simple, super-private social network work just as well?

No, it won't. Sure, central hubs can be private and simple, but they can't guarantee that they will stay so. Only distributed system could give you such guarantees.

Perhaps the node thing is a question of economics. Instead of a company forking out millions and millions and needing to generate revenue through ads or subs, distributing the cost (running a node) thinly amongst users might make more sense economically. Not sure how they plan on convincing non-geeks to do this though (google native client perhaps?)

great point

> Jason's third point is, I feel, the strongest. People aren't contributing to Diaspora because of Diaspora, they're contributing as an act against Facebook.

For a hypothetical open project it might be good to distinguish between "contributing" (code/docs/whatever) and "donating" (money).

"It's another to get in front of a movement that's predicated largely on hate"

37 signals, Getting real: "Have an enemy - pick a fight": http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch02_Have_an_Enemy.php

Apparently Mr. Fried just picked them both. To his behalf, he picked the right one. In a way, Basecamp is "Facebook for project management", and Diaspora distributed paradigm can threaten both.