Hacker News Reader

Comment by leephillips | Hacker News Reader

"I hope if anyone is getting started here, in bootstrapping an open alternative to Twitter, that they will be compatible with these two pieces of software." He's talking about his software (that nobody uses), and that's the agenda behind the piece. Just in case the "open Twitter" takes off, while he has no intention of working on it, he wants to inject the idea that developers have some kind of moral responsibility to make it compatible with his stuff. Oh, and because he forgot it this time, I'll put this in: he thinks he invented RSS.

View on HN

You have a serious case of "the bitters." :-)

I'd love to see a reference to where I said I think I invented RSS.

I think I've said (and written), a number of times, that things like RSS aren't invented.

“Eventually Tim came around, and gave me credit for making RSS happen. Thanks.” [1]

“a long-standing issue I have with Wikipedia, that I don’t get any mention in articles on [...] RSS [...] people who want to know about blogging or RSS get the idea that other people did the work and took the risks that I did.” [2]

[1] http://scripting.com/2006/12/21.html#aTaleOfCorporateAtrocit...

[2] http://techcrunch.com/2008/03/02/when-will-we-have-our-first...

In any case, isn't StatusNet what he wants? Seems to be working fine as an open, distribute, API-compatible Twitter alternative.

Seems to be along the lines of what Simmons is advocating. May not be the ideal Twitter replacement, as it relies on servers (rather than being decentralized like email) and is written in PHP.

But email does rely on servers; it's just that the servers are distributed. And so are StatusNet ones: I can run my own server and subscribe to some feed on yours and they'll talk directly without relying on any other.

And all the protocols are open: Atom, PubSubHubBub, Salmon, etc.

I defer to you; I just tried to figure out how the system worked by looking at a few websites, and don't really know anything about it. If each user can run his own server then that's more interesting.

Yeah, see http://status.net/wiki/Federation

Reply on news.ycombinator.com