Open Source Twitter Competitor Emerges

ruphus13 writes "Twitter has had a lot of public woes with Open Source technologies like Ruby on Rails, and a lot of alternatives have sprung up in the micro-blogging world, but no one has managed to dislodge twitter in its usage or appeal. Now, an Open Source alternative by Identi.ca, backed by project Laconica has emerged. From the article, 'It supports OpenID for logins, is completely free software, and is designed to apply a Creative Commons license to all the traffic that it carries. It's also built to support the OpenMicroBlogging protocol, meaning that (at least in theory) it can attack scalability issues by federating together multiple autonomous servers. The underpinnings of Laconica include PHP, PEAR, and XMPP. You can download a tarball of the source, or check it out directly if you're using Darcs (there's also an unofficial mirror on Google Code, giving you Subversion access for a read-only copy).' The community will still need to work on this, if a true competitor to Twitter is to emerge. It is lacking APIs, and SMS integration. Oh, and millions of users!"

Comments

@slashdot

[BorgCopyeditor]

Taking a dump, will read this later.

The twitter version of your post:

[TubeSteak]

Beautiful, ontopic first post.

Twitter is overhyped, with a very small percentage of the world (mostly in the valley) yelling into an echo chamber, convincing th

Maybe /. should try enforcing a 160 character limit for posts.

It'd certainly take the wind out of rants and loooooong posts.

Great

[Daimanta]

That's all we need. An open source sockpuppet. Since open source software is usually better it will be able to mask as a regular /.er more effectively. Damn you open source and your effectiveness!

Oh wait, the other Twitter...

Re:Great

[Macthorpe]

That Twitter is pretty much open source already...

Anyway, in his defense, he's been pretty good with using only the one account recently - and although I don't agree with anything he says, I'm perfectly alright with him expressing it as long as he's stopped resorting to the shilling that got all his accounts karmabombed.

Yes, that includes all the times I apparently threatened to kill him, which he has apparently diligently recorded. There goes a man with no sarcasm-meter.

Re:what is it?

[BorgCopyeditor]

Yes, but did it get him any respect?

Oh boy, not here too

[unity100]

"OpenMicroBlogging protocol" - we have recently had an article in /. shoving "geomicroblogging" up to us as a new buzzword, had a few laughs about the speed buzzwords are increasing ... made a few jokes myself, but i gotta admit, i would never expect to see a buzzword pushed as a goddamn PROTOCOL. nothing is safe now it seems. next in line will probably be stuff like "UppityGiggidyDataTransfer", "DiddlyDooNeighboring client" and "HeavenlyButtLoadBalancing" - quick !! run while you still have time - so you may keep your sanity.

Re:A limit on sockpuppetry

[dreamchaser]

Complaining is a right covered by the First Amendment.

Complaining about Twitter is a sport.

Re:A limit on sockpuppetry

[dreamchaser]

Twitter actually works for Microsoft. It's reverse psychology; he rants and rants against their evils in such an inane and idiotic manner that it makes people feel sympathy for Redmond.

I'll bet they pay him a good bit for it too.

Re:FUCK VIACOM , FUCK DA JEW

[somersault]

A trolling parody account based on the main flamebate/troll-ish creator of parody accounts? The plot thickens.. are you the open source twitter competitor that TFA is talking about?