Hacker News Reader

Comment by mayank | Hacker News Reader

It's great that they're getting so much open-source help, but I'm going to ask the obvious question: if a "complete overhaul" is what's needed, as the author seems to imply, and the FOSS community performs said overhaul, then what of the $250k that was given to the Diaspora guys? Is it still even "Diaspora" anymore, as opposed to a FOSS project?

View on HN

It's an awful lot easier for a bunch of third parties to refactor and fix something that's bad, a piece at a time, than for a bunch of third parties to create something from nothing. Diaspora is a good thing, even if it's bad: the mere fact of its existence and the enthusiasm around making it better gives it a vector of development that a mere idea would never have.

One could argue that it's even easier for a bunch of third parties to improve something less bad like StatusNet, OneSocialWeb, or Appleseed, but apparently Diaspora has sucked all the air out of the room.

Edit: I see jlgbecom already made a similar point below.

And more importantly, if you're going to rewrite, why help Diaspora, and not a more mature option?

What more more mature option were you thinking of?

Here you go! There's not just one, but a whole bunch!

http://gitorious.org/social/pages/ProjectComparison

Because momentum and attention are more important than maturity. The qualities that come from maturity can be built with work; momentum and attention aren't as much of a function of hard work and are far more difficult to capture.

Momentum can die as fast as it builds, while maturity is lasting. All these projects are in active development, and it'll be very difficult for Diaspora to catch up.

And this is what always happen. The choice between security, maturity and dancing bunnies is always skewed in a wrong direction.

agreed. not sure what direction they intend to go in

Reply on news.ycombinator.com