So I'm testing #LittleFedi and it does seem really good but this one thing keeps praying on my mind. Why would the group of people that make it want to remain anonymous? Is it because if folk found out and linked them to something that happened in the past which they'd rather avoid? Or am I just over thinking this maybe? I do like it but I love #Snac too and it is my first love. What's everyone else's thoughts on the secrecy behind LittleFedi and it's overall usability over other software out there like Snac, GTS and Mastodon ?
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Thanks for your honest answer Stefano and believe me I'm not bagging them as it seems a great piece of software. It's just the secrecy behind the devs and having no visible git/CVS repo.
@justine The lack of a public Git/CVS repository is their choice, at least for now. They prefer to keep development fairly centralised, partly because there are several branches and some interesting features (!) that aren't ready yet, and they'd rather release them when they're ready.
After all, to me, open source is also about freedom. You don't necessarily have to follow a predefined pattern: announcement, public Git repo, issue tracker, and so on. You're free to manage your project as you see fit.
As I said, I don't agree with every decision, and sometimes I have a hard time convincing them otherwise 😄
But I respect their choices, and I really appreciate their decision to release littleFedi under the MIT license.
And ultimately, littleFedi is out there. Anyone can take the source code, fork it, and continue development in a more "traditional" way if they prefer. That's part of the freedom too. 😄
That said: snac is great - and, unless you badly need something that littleFedi has and snac hasn't, there's no need to migrate from snac to littleFedi.
And if you need the blog...you don't need littleFedi, too, there's BSSG 😉
@stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe @justine@snac.smithies.me.uk Is there a timeline when the repository will be visible? It's just it would make things easier to track and report issues. Also, I would be interested in contributing. At the moment I'm reluctant to make any changes because they would have to be reapplied with every new release.
@chrism @justine not at the moment. The devs decided (reluctantly) to release the code, but want to keep the development process centralised, at least for now.
I know, reporting issues can be a pain - but I can assure you it's better than collecting them, forwarding to the devs, keeping track of them, etc 😃
@stefano@bsd.cafe @chrism@social.nfbsd.dev @justine@snac.smithies.me.uk
I'm pretty naive and tend to trust people until I have reason not do. It might be an unusual development setup but given the quality of what it has produced thus far, I'm happy. Very happy.
There's always risk if you go looking for it. My main concern is probably that @stefano@bsd.cafe appears to be a single point of failure and a potential bottleneck in this setup and let's not forget he has a day job too. However, the project was released just a fortnight ago and already a V2 release is imminent.
Also, the project could be forked if it ever stalled or Stefano walked away to open a pizza restaurant.
As for contributing, while it's not ideal, the source is available so theoretically one could submit a patch to Stefano and let the devs have the headache of merging into the development branch.
There was also risk on my previous hosted Mastodon instance. The admins may have got bored or the costs of hosting may have proved prohibitive, meaning the instance closed down (it's happened many times). I've been bitten before, that's one reason I got GoToSocial and Snac running yesterday. Firstly, to check the interoperability with LittleFedi and secondly as a lifeboat, just in case.
@justine There are various reasons. I agree with some of them, but not with others. On the other hand, many projects have developers who are known only by their nicknames, so they're effectively anonymous anyway.
And yes, at the heart of it are some bad experiences (from a few years ago) that led them to take a step back from putting themselves out there on social media.
Or maybe they're still around, and we just don't know it? 😉