306
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
306 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
37809 readers
202 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
yeah... pragmatism beats purity every time: they're doing some great work, but to do that great work they have to fund it somehow... i think that open sourcing all of the functional components (the bridges) and keeping the shiny UI closed is a pretty good way of doing that!
i guess i get not wanting to used closed source clients too, but it's shades of grey: people shouldn't hate on them for keeping 1 part closed source!
Only problem is, the average user gets hooked to the shiny UI, not to the invisible backend.
When Microsoft bought Skype, they switched from a secure P2P network to a server-centered network easy to mitm... and the majority of users said nothing. Later on, they switched a few UI elements, and suddenly there was a user uproar.
If Beeper gains any traction, a shiny privative UI is their out to monetize/enshittify the service.
sure, but an open source UI isn’t going to change that… they’d just close the source!
sure you can fork it, but you can also just copy the UI to an open source clone
imagine if twitter were activitypub: kinda like having an OSS backend with a proprietary front end… i’d bet the move to mastodon would be far quicker… network effects keep people on twitter… same here with OSS backend: we can reimplement the UI and people will have the same experience
Based on the history of how Google Chat used XMPP to federate and basically siphon users into its closed UI, then defederate... I no longer trust anyone with a closed UI that's planning to offer "extra value" to its users.
If someone closed their open UI, you can always fork the last open version, which at least gives you an even start.
If ~~Twitter~~ 𝕏 were to switch to ActivityPub... I'd actually worry about people flocking back to 𝕏, back to their old networks and recommendation algorithms. Guess it's no longer possible, since 𝕏 pretty much destroyed the old Twitter environment, but I'd still worry... and with Elon wanting to make 𝕏 a "social network for everything", that sounds dangerously close to ActivityPub.
you’re missing the fact that google chat and XMPP is a totally different situation… they used an open protocol; they didn’t open their backend