You Should Know @lemmy.world TheBeege @lemmy.world 1y ago

YSK about corporations' strategies to kill open source protocols

ploum.net How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)

How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse) écrit par Ploum, Lionel Dricot, ingénieur, écrivain de science-fiction, développeur de logiciels libres.

Why YSK: If we want to keep the Fediverse in the hands of its users and prevent "enshittification" (search it), it's good to know how corporations kill grassroots projects like this.

I saw this in another thread on /c/Showerthoughts. I think it's important for this to be circulated widely so that the broader Fediverse community is aligned. We don't want admins second-guessing their decisions when users start infighting. We should be united in our thinking and ready to protect our platform.

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Great read!

I remember me using software called trillian that supported logins to all chat networks, so I could use ICQ, Google, MSN and AOL all at the same time
- I also remember when XMPP wa still the cool kid on the block. Gtalk and other chat networks supported it and allowed federation. I tan my own XMPP server and could talk to users on other servers and even networks. But then Google cut the federation and eventually all external access.
  
  It could have been the next email, but big corporations were already in the chat space and they all walked in their user base.
  
  I’m fairly certain that if email (SMTP) hadn’t been the dominant protocol, we would have walled gardens there as well.
  
  the internet without the existance of email as a de-facto proof of identity and account recovery protocol would certainly be interesting.
  
  almost every single site these days requires you to have an email to sign up. it would be interesting to know what system we would have used instead if email wasn't an option.
- Oh man, I remember Trillian, too. That was great. Must have been a nightmare to build, though
  
  It was "just" a bunch of clients in one though, AFAIK it couldn't connect people from different protocols.
  Pidgin still exists; I used it probably 20 years back on Linux.
  
  Ahh, I recall using Pidgin, too. I think i ended up favoring it over Trillian. I already had accounts on all the services, so it worked out. I guess thinking about it, if only basic chat was supported, it may not have been terrible supporting everything
  
  Having never heard of it, I tried Pidgin just now, and it's kinda exactly what I've always wanted. Discord support is really rough, though..
  
  Woo Pidgin still exists? Lovely
  
  Technically! It seems... ill-equipped for the modern world, though.
  
  Hmmm... might have a new open source project to contribute to
- I was using Miranda for the same thing.
- I use to use Pidgin then move to Kopete. It even baffled me at one point how Kopete could connect to Facebook messenger and chat with my friends from Kopete and customize the chat interface to my liking. Good times good times.
  
  The internet truly became a much more closed place :(
- Just found out Matrix can do this, although you need to host your own server. There is also Beeper for a fully-managed product, but you need to wait to get access.
  
  Theres Beeper which I bought like a one year subscription back when it wasn't free and honestly its very useful and nice. I linked Whatsapp, iMessage, Signal, IG and discord and while in some cases it doesn't offer the same features it gets the essentials down and its really nice. Theres also another not open source one called texts.com or sth now which looks enticing but im gonna stay with beeper since I like the matrix protocol

67 comments