Diaspora to hit beta sometime within next 30 days.

[MasterNetra]

Hey all, I'm currently a diaspora user, and giving ya a heads up that according Yosem Diaspora is going to beta within the next 30 days.

In one of his recent posts:



Hi all,

I've been seeing a lot of chatter about an impending D* beta release for this Sunday.

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but Sunday will only be preparation maintenance for the beta, rather than the beta itself.

But fear not, the beta is coming, and soon. It will happen sometime in the next 30 days... ;)

Best,

Yosem

[Lucradia]

Most of my content isn't CC-able. Sadly.

[johnnybgoode83]

How long has it been alpha?

[MasterNetra]

How long has it been alpha?

Over a year but dunno how long exactly.

[johnnybgoode83]

Over a year but dunno how long exactly.

Wow, talk about slow development

[MasterNetra]

Wow, talk about slow development

Its to my understanding that there are few programmers on it, I guess, developing a social media not exactly a small undertaking as I understand it.

[Lucradia]

Wow, talk about slow development

Kind of like ReactOS.

[MasterNetra]

Kind of like ReactOS.

Except that ReactOS will probably still be in alpha when diaspora finally transitions into and out of beta.

[JDShu]

The core team while smart, have lacked competence, leading to the security problems last year and the inability to ship quickly. After a year of working on this, I think that they are much more experienced and vastly better than they were before. However, it feels like the community have essentially donated towards funding the education of four people and not much else.

[MasterNetra]

The core team while smart, have lacked competence, leading to the security problems last year and the inability to ship quickly. After a year of working on this, I think that they are much more experienced and vastly better than they were before. However, it feels like the community have essentially donated towards funding the education of four people and not much else.

Consider it a investment if the case. :P But they are working on it, and beta is coming soon so yea.

[Retlol]

If you start a thread about your software going beta, a link and small explanation of what it is is probably a good idea.

[MasterNetra]

If you start a thread about your software going beta, a link and small explanation of what it is is probably a good idea.

A: Its not my software, By in diaspora I mean I am one of the users, not developers.
B: Seriously you have not heard of Diaspora? Its to be a open-source privacy respecting alternative to facebook.

Also to note been reading around I guess it came online Aug of last year. Though its hype started May of last year.

[Docaltmed]

Too little, too late, I'm afraid. G+ already broke the ice and scarfed most of the geeks. Diaspora will only get the hardcore FOSS fans.

Which means, of course, I use it. But nobody else I know IRL does.

[DeadSuperHero]

As a daily user of the main Diaspora pod (joindiaspora.com), I have to say that I'm really excited about the development. The community over there has grown substantially over the past year, and I've made many good friends there. :)


Wow, talk about slow development.
Yeah, maybe. Keep in mind that decentralized, federated social platforms is still a concept loose in interpretation, and they've spent a great deal of time ironing out kinks and rolling out new features.

Aside from libraries to build from, they don't exactly have many implementations to look from as design inspiration. They've built the entire platform from scratch, which is important to keep in mind.

As far as status goes, heck, look at E17 for a working example. They're still in Alpha, I believe, and their software still remains to be pretty darn stable.


The core team while smart, have lacked competence, leading to the security problems last year and the inability to ship quickly.

To be fair, a lot of those complaints about stability and security were related to the Pre-Alpha code drop a year ago. There's a lot that has been done to patch those holes, and the development group of roughly about 100 committers have done much to speed up development of the core platform. There's a lot of really exciting developments in some of the branches coming, such as jabber-powered instant messaging across pods and UX enhancement studies.


However, it feels like the community have essentially donated towards funding the education of four people and not much else.

Perhaps. But this has never necessarily been about funding. Those guys basically have made their development time into a full-time job based on funding. They make enhancements and commits almost every day, and building the community of scale that they have across multiple pods has been no easy task.

The most important thing to take out of the Diaspora project is not just Diaspora as a platform, but the development of a method for communicating across different websites seamlessly is the main focus.

A few months back, Diaspora and the Friendika project began working on federating status updates and pictures across platforms. We can now seamlessly converse with them because of the development efforts for the federated social web from these people, and without Diaspora, I feel that we'd be missing a piece of the puzzle. But the project is constantly looking at ways to make social networking seamless between pods and other platforms, and I can only hope that extending out to supporting other platforms such as CrabGrass, AppleSeed, GNU Social, StatusNet, and others will be part of the larger scope of the project.

It's not about proving the Diaspora is better. It's to show that decentralization can work and remain sustainable. It's about moving out of the data silos and controlling your own data and interactions without a middleman (if you so choose), and I'm really big on that sort of thing.

[PirateChef]

Too little, too late, I'm afraid. G+ already broke the ice and scarfed most of the geeks. Diaspora will only get the hardcore FOSS fans.

But G+ is closed-source, and a walled garden, like Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, etc. Diaspora is fundamentally different, because of its decentralized pod model and free/open source software. This means that Diaspora could be around a lot longer than any of these services.

The network currently has about 200,000 users. I doubt that they are all hardcore FOSS fans. But that's still a lot of people.



Which means, of course, I use it. But nobody else I know IRL does.
Which makes it a great place to meet like-minded people!

[PirateChef]

However, it feels like the community have essentially donated towards funding the education of four people and not much else.

I've been donating $3 a month. That's about the price of a cup of coffee. (Well, fancy coffee.)

[clancyhood]

Don't think it's important which networks have whom, nor is there a "too late". Friendster and mySpace didn't see it coming.

I agree that it's not at all fair to knock the developers of something as totally new as this. A year, slow? The drawing board needs wiping many times before the real coding starts.

It's a natural process that has to happen - and it's happening for the first time right now. Whether it'll take the prize and remain THE federated, decentralised social network, only time will tell. But it's the first one, and it grows massively day by day.

Once registrations become more open, then we'll see if it captures the imagination of the wider public. I really hope it does. Also, the general consensus as to what being a Facebook/Google member means may change with popular discourse. I like cartoon this very much: http://www.ethannonsequitur.com/facebook-you-customer-product-pigs.html

Clancy (Diaspora: https://hello.mj13.info/u/clancy)

[DeadSuperHero]

As I've said before, the best way to really understand the project is to dive in yourself and find out about it.

I have an unlimited number of invites to the main Diaspora pod, joindiaspora.com, so if you want to be over there, you're more than welcome to PM me for an invite, and I'll introduce you to some of my friends over there. :)

As an aside, you can also sign up for an account over at Diasp.org or many other (http://podupti.me/) fine pods (http://www.findapod.com/) and get connecting with the community! We can all pretty much see each other and connect on pods that are maintained enough for the sake of compatibility.

[JDShu]

To be fair, a lot of those complaints about stability and security were related to the Pre-Alpha code drop a year ago. There's a lot that has been done to patch those holes, and the development group of roughly about 100 committers have done much to speed up development of the core platform. There's a lot of really exciting developments in some of the branches coming, such as jabber-powered instant messaging across pods and UX enhancement studies.


From what I understand about the security issues was that the ones that were found were security 101 problems. The issue is that when the core developers can't even ship code that doesn't have simple security problems (eg. SQL Injections) then there is no reason to have faith in their ability to architect a system that takes more complicated security issues into account. I am a huge FOSS software buff, but I've come to realize that you really need a competent core team for an open source project to be successful. Somebody has to be able to make a good decision about whether to merge branches and apply patches. Also, contributors are great, but they probably can't do anything about the underlying architecture.



Perhaps. But this has never necessarily been about funding. Those guys basically have made their development time into a full-time job based on funding. They make enhancements and commits almost every day, and building the community of scale that they have across multiple pods has been no easy task.
Of course it isn't an easy task. I think these kids went at this too early. I understand that they are living off a ramen salary, but what we have seen is four people burn through 200k after a year and are now asking for more money. At the pace they are going, they are going to need another 100k to survive until the next year, and there still won't be any guarantee that they'll have a release. Relying on the goodwill of donors is not a sustainable model, and frankly, a bit insulting when plenty of people are also wearing themselves out raising venture capital for their own dreams.

In fact, part of me wants to go a step folder and say that perhaps the original developers have outlived their usefulness towards Diaspora in terms of being full time devs. While they know their own code best, perhaps it would be in the best interests of everybody involved for them to go get jobs and work on Diaspora in their spare time. If they could be hired by a company to work on Diaspora full time, then even better.



A few months back, Diaspora and the Friendika project began working on federating status updates and pictures across platforms. We can now seamlessly converse with them because of the development efforts for the federated social web from these people, and without Diaspora, I feel that we'd be missing a piece of the puzzle. But the project is constantly looking at ways to make social networking seamless between pods and other platforms, and I can only hope that extending out to supporting other platforms such as CrabGrass, AppleSeed, GNU Social, StatusNet, and others will be part of the larger scope of the project.
Maybe you can explain this to me, but isn't integrating with other projects as simple as providing a public API? My other issue with this is that Diaspora might benefit better from a more UNIX philosophy. That is to do one thing and one thing well. Instead of getting distracted by lots of side projects and "cool things" that can be added. This would then help them follow the open source philosophy of releasing early, and releasing often. Given the stigma involved with Alphas and Betas, it is more in their interests to have a final release now and let people try Diaspora *now* (or preferably half a year ago) and so drum up interest and allow better processing of bugs.

[JDShu]

I've been donating $3 a month. That's about the price of a cup of coffee. (Well, fancy coffee.)

I you enjoy donating money to a project that you think will succeed over a nice cup of coffee then good for you :)

I would rather have the cup of coffee ;)

[DeadSuperHero]

Maybe you can explain this to me, but isn't integrating with other projects as simple as providing a public API?

It's not as simple as all that, unfortunately. While a public API is great, it's more useful for things such as web applications and applications that leverage the web. This in turn requires the use of API keys and constant authorization between applications and server hosts, which becomes a convoluted mess of sorts.

Decentralization (in the Diaspora sense) builds upon technologies such as salmon-slap, pubsubhubub, oauth, and quite a few other libraries, as I understand it. The thing is, the platform allows for anyone to set up a pod (server) and seamlessly share posts, pictures, comments, and private messages across servers (and soon, platforms, as private messaging support is coming in an upcoming Friendika release).

Getting everything to show up and function seamlessly "as advertised" takes a good amount of work. Diaspora doesn't have a public API yet (it's coming in a few weeks, presumably with the Beta status), but the documentation is available to allow for seamless decentralization for any project.


My other issue with this is that Diaspora might benefit better from a more UNIX philosophy. That is to do one thing and one thing well.

That one thing would be decentralized status updates and photo sharing, along with their fantastic hashtag implementation. Along with other features such as Aspects, private messaging, and tagging users in posts, this all works pretty well most of the time (keeping in mind that the main server is the bleeding-edge version. Things do break sometimes.)

So, in short, they're doing exactly that. It's not exactly a parade of a lot of features, but rather a small subset of useful features that can be used in many different ways.


In fact, part of me wants to go a step folder and say that perhaps the original developers have outlived their usefulness towards Diaspora in terms of being full time devs.
Kind of a bold, sweeping statement for someone that, to my knowledge, hasn't really kept track of the project as such. These guys make commits every day. Every single day. They're cleaning up bugs, they're constantly optimizing the platform. They're working with UX designers and with the help of the API they're pushing out, they're fostering a developer community alongside the code contributors they already have. They host and maintain a server full of thousands and thousands of active users. They run a foundation website, actively update their blog with development reports, and are pursuing social media coverage of their progress so that no one thinks they've "gone stagnant".

Who are you to say that they've "outlived" their usefulness as full-time devs? The same straw-man argument could be thrown at any development team or community that likes to dedicate more time to a respective project. I could say that "Oh, the Ubuntu devs made some fundamental mistakes with Unity, we should fire their graphic designers and UX teams because their full-time dedication shows that we really don't even need them, due to the fact that they make mistakes."


At the pace they are going, they are going to need another 100k to survive until the next year, and there still won't be any guarantee that they'll have a release.

Their latest and greatest contributions are right here (https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora). It's called a git repository. Everything in this branch can be used to set up a functioning server that can mesh with the other pods. So, where's the complaints about making a release, exactly?


Instead of getting distracted by lots of side projects and "cool things" that can be added.

I've been tracking their development pretty much since the Pre-Alpha code drop. They've been doing exactly that. ;) Whenever a new feature is committed to the platform, it usually has gone through several cleanup revisions, and often goes through several re-writes too. The base platform is constantly getting tweaked to allow for these new features through such rewrites. It's useful for scalability and allowing for future development of features for use-cases that haven't been entirely realized yet.


This would then help them follow the open source philosophy of releasing early, and releasing often.

Check their GitHub. Join one of the pods, and tell me what you think. ;)


Given the stigma involved with Alphas and Betas, it is more in their interests to have a final release now and let people try Diaspora *now* (or preferably half a year ago) and so drum up interest and allow better processing of bugs.

Maybe. But their design tends to be more in line with a rolling-release type of deal for now. And what's the rush, really? Why rush something out the door under the pretense of a "Final Release" if it's buggy, unstable, or lacks basic features, when they can take their time to do things the right way?

I mean, think about it. In a little over a year, four main devs and a bunch of contributors built a functioning platform from scratch that actually works, and it's an AGPL v3 project. They've brought a sizable contribution to the FOSS community.

[JDShu]

It's not as simple as all that, unfortunately. While a public API is great, it's more useful for things such as web applications and applications that leverage the web. This in turn requires the use of API keys and constant authorization between applications and server hosts, which becomes a convoluted mess of sorts.

Decentralization (in the Diaspora sense) builds upon technologies such as salmon-slap, pubsubhubub, oauth, and quite a few other libraries, as I understand it. The thing is, the platform allows for anyone to set up a pod (server) and seamlessly share posts, pictures, comments, and private messages across servers (and soon, platforms, as private messaging support is coming in an upcoming Friendika release).

Getting everything to show up and function seamlessly "as advertised" takes a good amount of work. Diaspora doesn't have a public API yet (it's coming in a few weeks, presumably with the Beta status), but the documentation is available to allow for seamless decentralization for any project.


I'm sure it's not easy due to the decentralized nature. But I guess what I meant by "simple" is that they should be able to provide a public API that other projects should be able to just use, as opposed requiring to take precious time figuring out ways to integrate with them.



That one thing would be decentralized status updates and photo sharing, along with their fantastic hashtag implementation. Along with other features such as Aspects, private messaging, and tagging users in posts, this all works pretty well most of the time (keeping in mind that the main server is the bleeding-edge version. Things do break sometimes.)

So, in short, they're doing exactly that. It's not exactly a parade of a lot of features, but rather a small subset of useful features that can be used in many different ways.
I would argue that all they needed to do was to make a decentralized status updates platform and released that as 1.0, and then worked on a good plugin architecture that could be used for the other things you mentioned. What I wanted to stress is that they really needed to focus on releasing version 1 of their software if they wanted to avoid looking like they're not achieving anything. Git commits and blog posts may show activity, but it doesn't show progress. The community at large has no idea what's going on, or what Diaspora is supposed to be.



Kind of a bold, sweeping statement for someone that, to my knowledge, hasn't really kept track of the project as such. These guys make commits every day. Every single day. They're cleaning up bugs, they're constantly optimizing the platform. They're working with UX designers and with the help of the API they're pushing out, they're fostering a developer community alongside the code contributors they already have. They host and maintain a server full of thousands and thousands of active users. They run a foundation website, actively update their blog with development reports, and are pursuing social media coverage of their progress so that no one thinks they've "gone stagnant".

Who are you to say that they've "outlived" their usefulness as full-time devs? The same straw-man argument could be thrown at any development team or community that likes to dedicate more time to a respective project. I could say that "Oh, the Ubuntu devs made some fundamental mistakes with Unity, we should fire their graphic designers and UX teams because their full-time dedication shows that we really don't even need them, due to the fact that they make mistakes."
The difference between them and the Ubuntu devs, is that Canonical (well, Mark Shuttleworth) is paying them, not the donors who expect a viable alternative to Facebook. I don't think (most) donors know exactly what they're getting with Diaspora, and I don't think they are going to keep seeing continued support. What they may have successfully done is create a vibrant community, that could probably operate without them. And really, I have to say, their blog posts (http://blog.diasporafoundation.org/2011/10/19/how-diaspora-found-its-tiger-stripe-in-the-midst-of-a-paypal-fiasco.html) have been pathetic (http://blog.diasporafoundation.org/2011/10/12/we-love-you.html) lately.



Their latest and greatest contributions are right here (https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora). It's called a git repository. Everything in this branch can be used to set up a functioning server that can mesh with the other pods. So, where's the complaints about making a release, exactly?
A git snapshot is not a release. Sure this is partly about publicity, but Diaspora looks absolutely terrible to the wider tech community. This is not good. Regular people are not willing to try something labelled bleeding edge and that leads to less bugs reported. More importantly, it remains fact that they've been in Alpha for around a year. In the tech business today, you really should be launching in half that time.



I've been tracking their development pretty much since the Pre-Alpha code drop. They've been doing exactly that. ;) Whenever a new feature is committed to the platform, it usually has gone through several cleanup revisions, and often goes through several re-writes too. The base platform is constantly getting tweaked to allow for these new features through such rewrites. It's useful for scalability and allowing for future development of features for use-cases that haven't been entirely realized yet.


Maybe. But their design tends to be more in line with a rolling-release type of deal for now. And what's the rush, really? Why rush something out the door under the pretense of a "Final Release" if it's buggy, unstable, or lacks basic features, when they can take their time to do things the right way?

I mean, think about it. In a little over a year, four main devs and a bunch of contributors built a functioning platform from scratch that actually works, and it's an AGPL v3 project. They've brought a sizable contribution to the FOSS community.As before, I think ideally they should have tried less features in the first place and release something stable and secure that does less. The could then have built on the stable core, while regular security-practice-ignorant users could use what they had without too much worry.

[Thewhistlingwind]

I
I would argue that all they needed to do was to make a decentralized status updates platform and released that as 1.0, and then worked on a good plugin architecture that could be used for the other things you mentioned.


If diaspora fails, that could be a good model for a reattempt.

And I agree, if it is possible to allow others to "Come to you" so to speak, I'd rather take on the engineering challenge than individually integrate with every network out there.

[Paqman]

Too little, too late, I'm afraid. G+ already broke the ice and scarfed most of the geeks. Diaspora will only get the hardcore FOSS fans.

Which means, of course, I use it. But nobody else I know IRL does.

This. Even G+ is struggling to get traction. Like it or not, Facebook is getting bigger and stronger every day, and they seem out to own the whole net. If you have friends who are keen on using an alternative social network like G+ or Disapora, that's great, but the bulk of folks will be on Facebook. So if you want to socialise with them, that's where you have to go.

Diaspora probably could make it if their business plan is targetted very carefully at the people who're going to be their core audience (privacy-minded open source geeks) but I'll eat my hat if they ever get any mindshare beyond that. It'll be interesting to see how they tackle carving out such a niche existence. I'm just worried that their plan is "if you build it, they will come". I think they're going to have to be cleverer than that.

[Merk42]

This. Even G+ is struggling to get traction. Like it or not, Facebook is getting bigger and stronger every day, and they seem out to own the whole net. If you have friends who are keen on using an alternative social network like G+ or Disapora, that's great, but the bulk of folks will be on Facebook. So if you want to socialise with them, that's where you have to go.

Diaspora probably could make it if their business plan is targetted very carefully at the people who're going to be their core audience (privacy-minded open source geeks) but I'll eat my hat if they ever get any mindshare beyond that. It'll be interesting to see how they tackle carving out such a niche existence. I'm just worried that their plan is "if you build it, they will come". I think they're going to have to be cleverer than that.I completely agree! The vast majority of people don't care that it's FOSS, so that's not really a compelling argument. (see also, Windows, Mac OS, Photoshop, etc)

The problem with people switching social networks (as opposed to browsers, or even email) is that everyone else they know has to switch too.

For those that disagree with me and Paqman, don't bring up MySpace -> Facebook. Did MySpace ever reach the "Even my grandmother uses it" status? Were MySpace sharing features and likes, and apps on websites around they are for Facebook?

[PirateChef]

I completely agree! The vast majority of people don't care that it's FOSS, so that's not really a compelling argument. (see also, Windows, Mac OS, Photoshop, etc)

Perhaps not, and I wouldn't try to make that main selling point for those people. However, it can be a good way to broach the topic to people who don't know what FOSS is. Also, some people who don't care about FOSS may care that it's community-driven.

However, for people who do support FOSS, its license is a major selling point. Personally, I've been waiting for this to be developed since the days of Myspace. (My concept would've been more like Hotline, where it's fully P2P, and you have filesharing, too.)



The problem with people switching social networks (as opposed to browsers, or even email) is that everyone else they know has to switch too.

Really. Why?
After all, I don't know any of you good people, yet I signed up, and here I am discussing this with you.
It depends on what you want to do. If you want to meet people, D* is a very good platform to do that. And, of course, the more people join, the more likely it is that "everybody else you know is on there". So, it's the right thing to do.



For those that disagree with me and Paqman, don't bring up MySpace -> Facebook. Did MySpace ever reach the "Even my grandmother uses it" status? Were MySpace sharing features and likes, and apps on websites around they are for Facebook?

Do you really think that Facebook is too big to fail? That it will still be the big kahuna in a year? In two years? In 5 years?
Something will unseat Facebook eventually. The cool kids will move on to the Next Big Thing, and then everyone else will follow them. Whether that's Diaspora, or Google+, or something else, who knows. But Facebook has gotten boring and bloated, and we all know what happens to stuff like that.

Remember, to a lot of people, the fact that their "grandmother uses it" is not a good thing.
As for web integration, I would argue that G+ is way ahead of Facebook in that department, since most people on the web already use their tools (GMail, Google Chat, etc.) But users drive this, not web designers. If adding D* to a site is easy enough, and would help boost sharing, then web designers will add it.

[DangerOnTheRanger]

It'd be cool to have Diaspora out of alpha :)

In case anyone else here has a Diaspora account, feel free to add me:

dangerontheranger@diasp.org