On GitLab growing an OStatus extension

Po 02 května 2016

Finally, this issue ticket gave me the opportunity to write what I think about OStatus. So, I did.

  1. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architecture-astronauts-scare-you/ -- I am sorry, if you like OStatus, but it is the most insane open source example of this disease. After the astro design, we have no working and stable platform for the thing.

There was old identi.ca, which was scrapped (I know more polite term is "moved to GNU/Social", yeah … how many users of this social software there is? And yes, I know, the protocol is named differently, but it is just another version of the same thing from my point of view), and pump.io, which is … I have just upgraded my instance to see whether I can write honestly that it is a well working proprietary (meaning, used by one implementation by the author of the protocol only) distributed network, and no, it is broken.

And even if the damned thing worked, it would not offer me the functionality I really want: which is to connect with my real friends, who are all on Twitter, Facebook, or even some on G+. Heck, pump.io would be useless even these friends were on Diaspora (no, they are not, nobody is there). So, yes, if you want something which is useless, go and write OStatus component.

  1. I don't know what happens when we want to share issues, etc. I don't know and I don't care (for example, it seems to me that issues are something which is a way more linked to one particular project). And yes, I am the reporter of https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=719725 (and author of the message “Dreaming about cooperation with upstream” on fedora-devel list (message ID s2fab5xhl3.ln2@ppp1053.in.ipex.cz), and I think that it is impossible to do it. At least, nobody have managed to do it and it was not for the lack of trying. How is that OpenID or other federated identity doing?

    Besides, Do The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work because You Aren’t Gonna Need It . I vote for git request-pull(1) parser. And, no, not just sending an URL in HTTP GET, I would like to see that button (when the comment is recognized as being parseable) next to the comment with the plain text output of git request-pull.

  2. Actually, git request-pull(1) parser not only follows YAGNI, but it also in a loving way steps around the biggest problem of all federated solution: broken or missing federated identity.

Category: computer Tagged: blogComment OStatus ourcloud gitlab reinvent