This has put their iOS app [0] in the top position under free apps, [1] in the USA and UK App Stores. The app is MIT licensed open source.
Others and myself are wondering, is their #1 position in the iOS free app category a first for an open source app? (please note that this is all apps, not just social media)
Bluesky’s app and services is open source. With plenty of people crossing over to it, reason being because it resembles Twitter pre-Musk.
Mastodon is also open source but never held or got even near the #1 top spot ever, and I don’t think it ever will due to the friction of choosing a server.
People nowadays expect familiarity. ‘Don’t make me think’ that is why people aren’t going to Mastodon.
As for Threads, it isn’t open source and are now introducing platform decaying features like ads which will make the platform worse.
So I can say (at least for now) Bluesky is currently the platform of choice right now.
Yes on the Musk factor, it would appear. There have been a bunch Bsky mentions in multiple news sources in the US and UK in the last couple days. That appears to driving account creation.
if you're on bsky give her a follow!
My question is simple and has an objective yes/no answer. Prior to this, has any open source app [0] ever been the #1 app in the US App Store "Top Free Apps" category?
[0] For the sake of this post, let's pretend that an open source app is one where the code is freely available, forkable, and under MIT license.
Sure, it would be better if it was an open source app for an open source protocol, but it is still something.
The app is built using React/React Native as well as a variety of other open source tools. We maintain multiple React Native libraries as well that are open source.
The network is open, and anyone has access to the firehose. Third parties are free to run labelers that integrate with the application as well as build feeds which can be used by yourself or others inside the app. Anyone is free to use the open source SDKs to build their own third-party Bluesky apps or entirely unique applications using atprotocol.
To be frank, "it's just an app that happens to be open source" seems to be a pretty bad faith take on what Bluesky is.
The apps being open source is great of course, but the standards for openness are very high for (something aiming to be) internet-level infrastructure.
A single company having a lot of control would be a bit of a red flag in this context. The rug pull incentives are huge (that said I am a proponent of commercial interests in open ecosystems, provided they don’t get too much control).
You can run most of the Bluesky infrastructure and make it part of Bluesky network https://alice.bsky.sh/post/3laega7icmi2q
> Bluesky is building infrastructure you can fully self-host or mirror. Alice did a great job in this blogpost capturing what is doable now, and how to do it.
> This network should live long past Bluesky PBC. Let's work together to make this network more resilient!
But I fell like the really hard part is yet to come, and being open might make that part harder.
All online communities go through the same phases (or die along the way).
In the beginning it's populated by enthusiasts, tech adopters, people with good intentions. The problems are mostly technical and infrastructure.
Then it grows rapidly with mostly the same parameters.
Then it gets big enough so the trolls, spammers, bots, misogynist, racists, marketers, advertisers et al arrive. At this point the problems become social - moderation etc.
Failure to manage this stage well leads to, well, Twitter.
And it's by far the hardest part of the whole process. I hope BlueSky get this part right.
Real "open source" would for me even imply that all data is freely accessible but this stops way, way before and should not be called open in almost any sense.
Just a VC PR play.
Real open source is any software with a license that obey the four freedoms..
1 - freedom to view the source 2 - freedom to use 3 - freedom to modify 4 - freedom to distribute your modified version
Bluesky use the MIT license that does comply with the freedoms above, so it is real open source..
Also, it use a open protocol as well.. so nothing is stopping you from deploying your own instance [1] and use their app to connect to it.. then you will have all your data freely accessible as you want..
You may believe that it is not "open/publicly-available enough", and that is a totally fine opinion to have. But if you say "open source" on HN, people will understand something very different.
With all due respect, it sounds like you are not familiar with Bluesky.
As far as I know, the only proprietary code is the single Discover feed, which every user can un-pin from their feeds. My assumption for this being proprietary is so that it cannot be gamed. It could be for a darker reason, I suppose.
However, this is a feed that I use maybe 10% of the time. Aside from the Following feed, I have curated a bunch of my own user lists and 3rd party feeds. I am able to pin these to my feeds list. This is where I spend my time.
Aside from that one significant feed, yet small aspect, literally every other part of Bluesky is open source. This includes client, server, moderation system, and protocol.
As the guy developing said feed, this is indeed the reason. I have a hard enough time as it is with people gaming the specific parameters of the feed, having it fully open would be a huge tax on my time.
Most of the components of the feed are trialed in my personal feeds repo here: https://github.com/whyrusleeping/algoz
You could take the code from there and get to a workable "Discover" feed relatively quickly if you wanted to. Also several of the feeds I have in that repo are among the most popular feeds in the network, especially Quiet Posters (infrequent.go).
I believe in a world in which people can choose and tune their algorithms, a diversity here should make them harder to game, as well as a highly-weighted „not interested“ button.
It’s surely not the plan to keep this proprietary forever, right?
At first I didn't want to try Bluesky (because of some of the founders, I suppose? I don't know, Mastodon seemed more organic), but I eventually did. And I actually like their system of "custom" algos. I have a few very interesting feeds now (international news, national news, ...).
So yeah, positively surprised by Bluesky.
It's way more important than just a social app. Happy to join and support it.
Love that its OSS and so easy to build locally.