Notices by Mayel - ghost account (mayel@social.coop), page 75

I mean, GitHub sucks in other ways too. "We're the heart of the FOSS world! Oh no thx we won't give back our code btw"

The GitHub thing also isn't very surprising to those of us have been around in this space for a while. People used to tell me they hosted their stuff at Sourceforge and Google Code because they were sure those companies could handle things better than they could. I get that then and even now with GitHub, but I've seen enough to be skeptical.

The Gitorious apocalypse is also evidence that a non-federated but FOSS git solution isn't really trustable either.

On mastodon, as in meat space, I see people frustrated by being in a position where they seem dis-empowered, and I think: "we need to get organized".

Imagine if mastodon users belonging to marginalized communities started organizing on Loomio. Everyone discusses concerns and teams of tech writers convey those in issues. Then, teams of programmers write pull requests to address them. Those with monetary means support the effort as are able.

Don't worry. any fork would still federate. The lead dev has said he'd welcome it.

So all those who would like a different project structure have to do is the actual work.

Kudos to them if they do.

My advice: don't hold your breath...

We have a long-standing cycle: lead dev (Eugen) works himself into a stress noodle, then lets out his frustration publicly, which tends to be at people requesting features w/o coding and submitting as patch.

After years of the community trying to find ways to mediate and moderate the tensions, a movement is building to fork mastodon so Eugen can have his authorial Mastodon and everyone else can try all this stuff he doesn't feel fits his vision.

Can anyone explain #forkoff / #forkofftogether to me? I've looked through the hashtags but all I see is discourse, no context.

At this point my understanding is that some folks are unhappy with Gargron as a Benevolent Dictator For Life and want a community-managed fork. Is that about right?

@neil the point is strategies that show decentralizing architecture is better for users, rather than relying on users' ideology.

@gc @deejoe It is worrying. Because it's a slippery slope where Google will start adding gmail only 'email' features (like that self-destructing email thing.)

We need counteranti-disintermediation. I guess there's various routes? education (make people aware of the perils of one company running everything); politics (legislation against monopoly of core services); tech (favour p2p rather than server-based?); direct action (don't know how you would do that against google.)

Big job though.

@deejoe @neil this is what I'm most worried about for the fediverse. federation is useless if it's a federated oligopoly. and when I point this out to people, the usual (but extremely frustrating) response is 'well just don't let it get that centralized then, man.'

while I agree, how does anyone actually plan on doing that? cause we're up against the two most powerful centralizing structural forces in human history - the accumulation of capital, and the network effect.

I feel like the majority of people care that much about decentralization. But I also think they don't care that much about centralization.

Often whatever comes first and works is what gets ingrained.

Contrast: if some big corp came along and tried to centralize email, people would (hopefully?) tell them to eff off. But, trying to decentralize microblogging is a big effort because Twitter was there first.

Let's get there first with things then, I guess.

@Matt_Noyes @ntnsndr @mattcropp my main concern is that certain things only make sense to be done by one person in social.coop, and as of rn, most people in the organization have no idea who does those things, and we have no way to bestow them with that power or take that power away, regardless of whether they abuse their position or just aren't very good at it.

for example: who approves membership applications to social.coop? how did we decide this? what happens if they start accepting nazis?

@mattcropp @Matt_Noyes @ntnsndr @gc adding to this - as the SC community is a unique blend of collective and cooperative with a strong decentralized vein there has been some pushback to anything resembling centralized power like a “board”.

The Ops Team approach will hopefully add some structure to the key processes while allowing for the amazing experiment in large scale democratic governed volunteer run platform to continue to grow.

REQUIRED READING:

the tyranny of structurelessness,
by jo freeman

https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

It's breath-taking to see what some people can do with their feet when you know that your body is a technology you learn to use.

Your eyes, your feet, your fingers… Everything :) (I mean, look at babies. They're amazed by what their body can do. Like persons who discover what's the snow for the first time).

Re #Microsoft eating #GitHub -

one more alternative: #git-ssb
For "using git collaboratively without a central, closed-source point of origin"

https://github.com/noffle/git-ssb-intro
https://git.scuttlebot.io/

Word of caution: git-ssb works very differently from github/gitlab et al.
Would take some getting used to.

I'm asking for tips in SSB and will pass on anything that seems useful, if anybody wants.