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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!"
Taking a dump, will read this later.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
What? Does it just slap a CC license on any thing posted on it?
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.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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...
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
That single programmer probably wouldn't have made much of a dent in the situation, but another pissed off programmer took his work, and made it work on his system, twice and got federation to work, then wrote to tell the rest of us about it.
It was only after this that the blogosphere actually has a snowballs chance in hell of adding any value, by making sure that other people know about the efforts of these two programmers (and all of the ones before them).
As he said over at 0xDECAFBAD, '...ideas are fucking worthless', it's actually adding some value to the ideas, no matter how big or small, that get the snowball rolling in the right direction.
I hope this post helps someone else see how open source really works. If not, it's fucking worthless.
--Mike--
I have an section on my website that posts my twitter. In plain text. No fancy background, image-heavy, 'sleek' looking background or whatnot... it's just straight, text that shows my last twitter. It's useful for posting why X thing is broken on my site if I notice a problem from work, or my computer crashes and I want to let people who visit my site know why there's no updates, stuff like that (since I can text a twitter from my cellphone). To keep it from showing the same downtime reason for weeks at a time, I update it every so often with whatever random thought. Once or twice a week tops.
That said, the only reason I use Twitter is because it's the only application I've found that allows me to very easily and quickly post a quick informational update to my website no matter where I am (again, cellphone).
If this open-source option allows that, I'm all for it. Otherwise, I'm not particularly pleased with Twitter as a whole. If anyone knows of any alternatives that allow me to do exactly what I use it for above, let me know... I'll bail Twitter if I can find a better alternative.
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
It's cool to get a good license, no doubt. But the appeal of Twitter to me isn't the software license - it's the service provided. Specifically, it's the timely access they provide to the closed SMS network.
For a while, I was using my wireless phone carrier's email gateway to send my phone text messages generated by server monitoring scripts. When their gateway got clogged and delayed, I discovered that Twitter wasn't. So now my monitors use the Twitter API.
Other than for that, I wouldn't bother with Twitter - and I don't.
So public licensing is nice, but unless they've somehow cracked the gates of the closed SMS network, I don't see much to be excited about.
While it's good that there's new and innovative uses for Open Source, the last thing the world needs is another fucking Twitter.
Twitter is the singular most overhyped (and seemingly overstretched) and in-your-face viral spamming thing since Ron Paul and Facebook. Soooo much sock puppetry.
It's just another dumb passing fad, and if you're not ZOMG 14 you'll probably never use it. Presumably some retard media giant will overpay for it, and then no-one will ever use it again -- just like all the others. The sooner the better please.
The directors of Twitter are just another bunch of jerks who should be first against the wall come the revolution.
Maybe /. should try enforcing a 160 character limit for posts.
Better yet: Enforce such a limit, but only for twitter and his socks ;-)
It's baffling to think this 'micro blogging' nonsense is really coming to the point where there's competition for it. Back in my day folks didn't particularly care if you were vacuuming, or watching a DVD. I guess one of the boons of this web 2.0 is convincing people that other people really really care what they're doing at any given time.
Just for the record, I'm currently sitting at my desk in my underpants drinking whiskey right out of the bottle while openly weeping.
I have nothing compelling to say
Yes, but did it get him any respect?
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
"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.
Read radical news here
What is with the Twitter hate? Seriously, I want to know. I have barely encountered Twitter, and I have certainly not seen any "hype" about it, so maybe I just missed a wave of annoying news articles about it.
The only use of Twitter I have seen is Fred of MegaTokyo's status feed which gives info on how far along Fred is with a comic or why a comic is late. Anyone who is familiar with MegaTokyo is probably familiar with MegaTokyo's common delays, so this info is very useful. The three most recent Twitter statuses appear on the website.
Another poster mentioned that he also has a Twitter feed for website status and has the most recent one appear on the site.
I usually see jokes about constant status updates via Twitter, but, well, no one is forcing you to read them; they are for the people who care about that person's status. Occasionally I am interested in when the next MegaTokyo comic will be posted, so I check his Twitter. I do not see how this is much different from IM status messages: usually if I want to get a vague idea of what my friends are up to, I can check their AIM away messages.
Centralization breaks the internet.
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?
which is totally what she said