Diaspora to hit beta sometime within next 30 days.

[Retlol]

If you start a thread about your software going beta, a link and small explanation of what it is is probably a good idea.

[MasterNetra]

If you start a thread about your software going beta, a link and small explanation of what it is is probably a good idea.

A: Its not my software, By in diaspora I mean I am one of the users, not developers.
B: Seriously you have not heard of Diaspora? Its to be a open-source privacy respecting alternative to facebook.

Also to note been reading around I guess it came online Aug of last year. Though its hype started May of last year.

[Docaltmed]

Too little, too late, I'm afraid. G+ already broke the ice and scarfed most of the geeks. Diaspora will only get the hardcore FOSS fans.

Which means, of course, I use it. But nobody else I know IRL does.

[DeadSuperHero]

As a daily user of the main Diaspora pod (joindiaspora.com), I have to say that I'm really excited about the development. The community over there has grown substantially over the past year, and I've made many good friends there.

Wow, talk about slow development.

Yeah, maybe. Keep in mind that decentralized, federated social platforms is still a concept loose in interpretation, and they've spent a great deal of time ironing out kinks and rolling out new features.

Aside from libraries to build from, they don't exactly have many implementations to look from as design inspiration. They've built the entire platform from scratch, which is important to keep in mind.

As far as status goes, heck, look at E17 for a working example. They're still in Alpha, I believe, and their software still remains to be pretty darn stable.

The core team while smart, have lacked competence, leading to the security problems last year and the inability to ship quickly.

To be fair, a lot of those complaints about stability and security were related to the Pre-Alpha code drop a year ago. There's a lot that has been done to patch those holes, and the development group of roughly about 100 committers have done much to speed up development of the core platform. There's a lot of really exciting developments in some of the branches coming, such as jabber-powered instant messaging across pods and UX enhancement studies.

However, it feels like the community have essentially donated towards funding the education of four people and not much else.

Perhaps. But this has never necessarily been about funding. Those guys basically have made their development time into a full-time job based on funding. They make enhancements and commits almost every day, and building the community of scale that they have across multiple pods has been no easy task.

The most important thing to take out of the Diaspora project is not just Diaspora as a platform, but the development of a method for communicating across different websites seamlessly is the main focus.

A few months back, Diaspora and the Friendika project began working on federating status updates and pictures across platforms. We can now seamlessly converse with them because of the development efforts for the federated social web from these people, and without Diaspora, I feel that we'd be missing a piece of the puzzle. But the project is constantly looking at ways to make social networking seamless between pods and other platforms, and I can only hope that extending out to supporting other platforms such as CrabGrass, AppleSeed, GNU Social, StatusNet, and others will be part of the larger scope of the project.

It's not about proving the Diaspora is better. It's to show that decentralization can work and remain sustainable. It's about moving out of the data silos and controlling your own data and interactions without a middleman (if you so choose), and I'm really big on that sort of thing.

[PirateChef]

Too little, too late, I'm afraid. G+ already broke the ice and scarfed most of the geeks. Diaspora will only get the hardcore FOSS fans.

But G+ is closed-source, and a walled garden, like Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, etc. Diaspora is fundamentally different, because of its decentralized pod model and free/open source software. This means that Diaspora could be around a lot longer than any of these services.

The network currently has about 200,000 users. I doubt that they are all hardcore FOSS fans. But that's still a lot of people.

Which means, of course, I use it. But nobody else I know IRL does.

Which makes it a great place to meet like-minded people!

[PirateChef]

However, it feels like the community have essentially donated towards funding the education of four people and not much else.

I've been donating $3 a month. That's about the price of a cup of coffee. (Well, fancy coffee.)

[clancyhood]

Don't think it's important which networks have whom, nor is there a "too late". Friendster and mySpace didn't see it coming.

I agree that it's not at all fair to knock the developers of something as totally new as this. A year, slow? The drawing board needs wiping many times before the real coding starts.

It's a natural process that has to happen - and it's happening for the first time right now. Whether it'll take the prize and remain THE federated, decentralised social network, only time will tell. But it's the first one, and it grows massively day by day.

Once registrations become more open, then we'll see if it captures the imagination of the wider public. I really hope it does. Also, the general consensus as to what being a Facebook/Google member means may change with popular discourse. I like cartoon this very much: http://www.ethannonsequitur.com/face...duct-pigs.html

Clancy (Diaspora: https://hello.mj13.info/u/clancy)

[DeadSuperHero]

As I've said before, the best way to really understand the project is to dive in yourself and find out about it.

I have an unlimited number of invites to the main Diaspora pod, joindiaspora.com, so if you want to be over there, you're more than welcome to PM me for an invite, and I'll introduce you to some of my friends over there.

As an aside, you can also sign up for an account over at Diasp.org or many other fine pods and get connecting with the community! We can all pretty much see each other and connect on pods that are maintained enough for the sake of compatibility.

[JDShu]

To be fair, a lot of those complaints about stability and security were related to the Pre-Alpha code drop a year ago. There's a lot that has been done to patch those holes, and the development group of roughly about 100 committers have done much to speed up development of the core platform. There's a lot of really exciting developments in some of the branches coming, such as jabber-powered instant messaging across pods and UX enhancement studies.

From what I understand about the security issues was that the ones that were found were security 101 problems. The issue is that when the core developers can't even ship code that doesn't have simple security problems (eg. SQL Injections) then there is no reason to have faith in their ability to architect a system that takes more complicated security issues into account. I am a huge FOSS software buff, but I've come to realize that you really need a competent core team for an open source project to be successful. Somebody has to be able to make a good decision about whether to merge branches and apply patches. Also, contributors are great, but they probably can't do anything about the underlying architecture.

Perhaps. But this has never necessarily been about funding. Those guys basically have made their development time into a full-time job based on funding. They make enhancements and commits almost every day, and building the community of scale that they have across multiple pods has been no easy task.

Of course it isn't an easy task. I think these kids went at this too early. I understand that they are living off a ramen salary, but what we have seen is four people burn through 200k after a year and are now asking for more money. At the pace they are going, they are going to need another 100k to survive until the next year, and there still won't be any guarantee that they'll have a release. Relying on the goodwill of donors is not a sustainable model, and frankly, a bit insulting when plenty of people are also wearing themselves out raising venture capital for their own dreams.

In fact, part of me wants to go a step folder and say that perhaps the original developers have outlived their usefulness towards Diaspora in terms of being full time devs. While they know their own code best, perhaps it would be in the best interests of everybody involved for them to go get jobs and work on Diaspora in their spare time. If they could be hired by a company to work on Diaspora full time, then even better.

A few months back, Diaspora and the Friendika project began working on federating status updates and pictures across platforms. We can now seamlessly converse with them because of the development efforts for the federated social web from these people, and without Diaspora, I feel that we'd be missing a piece of the puzzle. But the project is constantly looking at ways to make social networking seamless between pods and other platforms, and I can only hope that extending out to supporting other platforms such as CrabGrass, AppleSeed, GNU Social, StatusNet, and others will be part of the larger scope of the project.

Maybe you can explain this to me, but isn't integrating with other projects as simple as providing a public API? My other issue with this is that Diaspora might benefit better from a more UNIX philosophy. That is to do one thing and one thing well. Instead of getting distracted by lots of side projects and "cool things" that can be added. This would then help them follow the open source philosophy of releasing early, and releasing often. Given the stigma involved with Alphas and Betas, it is more in their interests to have a final release now and let people try Diaspora *now* (or preferably half a year ago) and so drum up interest and allow better processing of bugs.

[JDShu]

I've been donating $3 a month. That's about the price of a cup of coffee. (Well, fancy coffee.)

I you enjoy donating money to a project that you think will succeed over a nice cup of coffee then good for you

I would rather have the cup of coffee