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Comment by tw1010 | Hacker News Reader

I like these guys' perseverance. But part of me can't stop the feeling of sadness that they've spent a better part of a decade working on it, perhaps the best years of their lives. I know perseverance and failure is seen as good things in certain circles, but I don't think I've ever read a biography where the author spent ten years on something that ultimately went nowhere and then went on to do things of enough noteworthiness to merit said biography.

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I spent 8 years working on Appleseed (also a federated social network, 2003 to approx. 2011) and it was worth every minute, even though it never went anywhere. Working on a problem that nobody has been able to solve gives you really good insight into software engineering that you can't get when you're implementing other people's solutions, no matter how complex those solutions are.

Even though I failed, I benefited quite a bit by taking on something so ambitious, and whether Diaspora succeeds or fails, the people working on it will most like be able to say the same.

Hey Michael, good to see you around :)

Oh, hey Matt! Good to see you, too!

> I don't think I've ever read a biography where the author spent ten years on something that ultimately went nowhere and then went on to do things of enough noteworthiness to merit said biography.

Didn't it occur to you that even if diaspora goes nowhere, the work these guys have been doing may be influential or even the foundation for something that will actually go somewhere in the future?

Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in jail before becoming president and father of a nation.

While "only" 4 years, Muhammad Ali sacrificed what would have been the prime of his boxing career as a conscientious objector. He was famous as a great athlete before, but transcended it after.

Alexander Calder was an engineer for about ten years before becoming one of the great artists of the 20th century.

Many other examples.

That you don't hear about the ten years of failure before the success says more about what sells biographies than it says about the founders.

As far as I can tell from the commit log it's a quite different group of people who are maintaining this now as an open source project than the four people who launched it from the Kickstarter 7 years ago.

Yep, we (the community) are now working on it as volunteers. That means no promises and no pressure. If you look at the github contributors graph, you will see that many of us often take a break of a month without contributing and then come back, fresh and more motivated than ever :)

Any way, the goal is not to kill facebook. It is to experiment how a decentralized social network could look like, and provide a solid alternative to those who don't want to see their data analyzed. It's nothing more than that at the moment.

For the first point, our protocol is improving (see https://blog.diasporafoundation.org/43-our-federation-protoc...) and is the only one really production ready imo, and for the second point, the user experience is getting better at each release, with new features.

"Ten Year Overnight Success" is almost a cliche in the music world, and of course most musicians (even very talented ones) never hit it big at all.

so, my life goal should be to spend my time such that you (or anybody else) would be willing to read my biography?

Isaac Newton?

You should read some Newton bios.

Abraham Lincoln, albeit not a scientist.

We have fun. ;)

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