Zach "earboxer" DeCook @zachdecook@librem.one

Today is a bad day

"When I picture it in my head I think of the early web as more of a library. Over time it has transitioned into a shopping mall." - chris_f (via HN)

Here's how it works on sourcehut:

You pay us the subscription fee of your choice and you get access to our services. We spend it on maintaining and upgrading the hardware, and paying for staff to handle development, operations, support, and on-call.

Because we don't take money from investors, we're only accountable to users, and if we aren't working in your interests, we lose our revenue. We are incentivized to work for you, not to generate a return.

Because we're running 100% free software, we're held accountable because anyone can take our shit and run it on their own servers, or even bootstrap a competing company using our own software. We've made it easy to run out out of business if we lose your trust.

*Federation* is the true value behind ActivityPub, and you can get that without it

https://drewdevault.com/editing

Help wanted

If you do any sort of programming and haven't already watched Jonathan Blow's wonderful talk, watch it now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-SOdj4Kkk

The PeerTube content bootstrap fund:

https://sourcehut.org/blog/2020-05-15-peertube-bootstrap-fund/

Please boost!

https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/reform

@sir

> Beware the Keybase formula:
1. Integrates with an existing, open ecosystem
2. May have open-source clients, but server is closed source and does not federate
3. Pretty UI and good marketing
4. VC funded

Agreed. And I'd pay *particular* attention to #4.

With a normal company, you have to ask "can the current business model make money?" If not, it will change.

With a VC-backed company, you have to ask "can the current business model make 10× returns?" If not, it will change.

@sir
"We need to rewrite everything with the benefit of hindsight."
-You, probably

@zachdecook not just with hindsight but with discipline

Announcing the SourceHut project hub 🎉

https://sourcehut.org/blog/2020-04-30-the-sourcehut-hub-is-live/

I don't usually explicitly ask for shares, but this is a big deal for SourceHut - the project hub solves one of our major goals for the alpha. Please help spread the word ❤️

@sir No, it's a good language because it slows people down, which means it causes them to write less bad software than they otherwise would have been able to.