Back

@⁂ Elena Rossini ⁂ I can agree with all three points.

The first one is particularly important when using my preferred Fediverse software, Hubzilla and (streams), as well as Friendica. Unlike Mastodon, all three aren't monoliths; they're rather modular with lots of add-ons that are delivered with the server installation, but that can be activated or deactivated by the admin. Not all instances have all features activated.

So if you don't have a feature at hand that someone promised you to have in Friendica/Hubzilla/(streams) in general, it wasn't necessarily a lie or lack of knowledge on that someone's side. It may rather be a case of the admin having deactivated that feature or not activated it in the first place.

The third point applies to (streams), too. Those of us who really know it saw it as the future of the Fediverse, at least ideally. But on August 31st, Mike Macgirvin threw in the towel and largely retired from Fediverse development altogether, leaving the streams repository to the community and unclear what'd happen to his few-weeks-old fork Forte.

It wasn't the first time that Mike has handed something over to the community. He did that with Friendica in 2012 when he concentrated on Red and the Zot protocol. He did it with Hubzilla in 2018 when he concentrated on Osada, Zap and Zot6. He did it again with Osada and Zap in 2020 when he concentrated on three new forks and the further advancement of Zot.

However, only Friendica and Hubzilla had big enough communities to really take over. Zap never really took off because it had no apparent advantages over Hubzilla in practice. Osada was soon discontinued because it was basically Zap with a different branding and different default settings. But at least Zap had someone to take care of it. And besides, on New Year's Eve of 2022, everything between Hubzilla and the streams repository was discontinued anyway because it was superseded by (streams) itself.

With (streams), it's different again. The existence of (streams) is fairly well-known on Hubzilla, except maybe among people who have only just joined Hubzilla. But hardly anyone knows what (streams) really is like, and that's only those who use it.

None of them has ever written and published a "test drive" that'd compare (streams) with Hubzilla. I've always wanted to, but I don't know if it makes sense anymore. It might even be counter-productive because it might lure people into (streams) at a point at which it's very buggy.

But as next to nobody on Hubzilla knows what advantages (streams) may have that might outweigh the cutting of lots of features, and as lots of features were cut on the way from Hubzilla to (streams) in the first place, there's zero incentive for Hubzilla users to try (streams).

And so there are only a few dozen (streams) users at best. There have never been more than seven public, open-registration instances, and they're dwindling now that nobody knows what'll become of the streams repository.

Worse yet, it looks like none of these few dozen users has both a) the time and b) the skills to pick up where Mike left. Several bugs are being hunted down, but it is unclear if anyone will fix them.

Fortunately, Mike has not entirely retired. Every few days or so, he is caught contributing to either the streams repository or Forte. But it looks like ironing out the bugs relies on community contributions.

Unfortunately, once-stable (streams) was left not only as a fairly unstable construction site, but it never reached the point that it was planned to reach: Fediverse-wide nomadic identity using ActivityPub. (streams) is nomadic, so it's possible to survive the shutdown of an instance if you've cloned your channel. But with there being fewer and fewer public instances, it becomes increasingly harder to find places where to clone your channel unless you set up your own instance.

Thanks to nomadic identity, it's possible to export the entirety of your channel into one or several JSON files. But these JSON files are so (streams)-specific that even the attempt at uploading them to a Hubzilla channel might destroy the whole hub. So nomadic identity couldn't save your channel if the last public (streams) instance vanished.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams)