Diaspora Revealed: Sparse, But Clean; Source Code Released
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Appleseed (http://opensource.appleseedproject.org) Elgg (http://elgg.com) OneSocialWeb (http://onesocialweb.org)
I realize everyone's hyped up about Diaspora, but we have a long haul before we have anything usable by the general public, and there are projects that are much farther along that deserve attention.
* Because of Libre.fm, many applications now support configuration of the destination for their listening habits.
* Because of Libre.fm, Last.fm added export functionality, allowing users to programmatically export their data, for portability.
* Because of Libre.fm, new records have been made and a greater understanding of the debate for freely licensed music has progressed a little further.
The next version of Libre.fm will be based on GNU social codebase. GNU social is much better in terms of design and programming than Libre.fm, which has been in a perpetual alpha stage since April 2009.
We don't all profess to be hot-shot developers, we're a bunch of artists, hackers and kids willing to have a go and do something we wanted. All this, on no money, and in the spare time of the individuals involved.
Oh, and some numbers:
* 27319059 listens.
* 4621654 unique tracks.
* 34451 users.
That's not insignificant for a free software project, in my mind.
Why do they deserve attention?
Every article about diaspora I see this being trotted out, a bunch of other projects that are claiming that they somehow deserve attention and probably more than the diaspora guys.
If they want that attention then they should do a better job of marketing themselves! That does not mean using articles about diaspora to claim their share of the eyeballs, but to independently create events and stuff worthy of mentioning in the press.
Most of these projects are old enough that they should be able to stand on their own legs by now instead of trying to piggy back on related PR like this.
Diaspora has a bunch of things going for it, and one of their major assets is that they seem to understand marketing and playing the press and the public much better than their counterparts, no matter how far along. So copy a leaf from that book instead of claiming those projects 'deserve attention'.
So then maybe they should divert some of their attention to getting the word out.
> Other than publicity, what does Diaspora have going for it, and why do they deserve attention just because of their marketing?
A great story, good timing and the ability to engage the community.
> This is open source we're talking about, not startup companies, and open source works best when it's meritocratic.
In an ideal world, yes. But in this one, no, not really. Open source works best when there is momentum behind a project, not because it is 'the best project' or has 'the most qualified people' working on it. See PHP.
> And if we're talking about which open source project to build a startup with, then we're talking about merit, nothing else.
Open source projects have to market themselves just as much as commercial entities do.
We wouldn't be having this conversation if that were not the case.
Open source projects may have to market themselves as well, but that doesn't mean the more savvy amongst us have to get swept up with the crowd.
If I read correctly, they are suggesting that if Diaspora were proprietary, it would have been easier to market. That sounds so impossible that I'm wondering if they really wanted to say that.
I'm also wondering about their second statement : are they saying that open source projects actually "don't work too well in practice", or is this a statement about the general perception of open source projects?