• SomethingBlack@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    4 days ago

    Wow, I had no idea about any of this. Thanks for putting in the effort to inform me.

    This is probably a super simple question so sorry on advance, but why is an open source project held hostage like this? If it’s a code issue, can’t it just be forked? If it’s a Lemmy specific issue, why is being federated with .ml more important than the health of the wider verse?

    • cm0002@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      4 days ago

      That’s not actually that simple of a question, so don’t feel bad lol

      It’s not a code issue, but Lemmy is written in Rust and while being a pretty decent language, it is also a bit of a difficult one to master. So there’s just not a whole lot of open source capable Rust devs out there who can take on such a commitment. If Lemmy had been written in any number of popular languages, like JavaScript, C#, Python etc it probably would have been forked awhile ago just because of the .ml issues

      If it’s a Lemmy specific issue, why is being federated with .ml more important than the health of the wider verse?

      There are a few reasons that crop up, 1) .ml still has some very niche comms that haven’t been created elsewhere and heavyish traffic (which I hope to fix with the boycotting) and 2) if an instance “burns the bridge” there’s concern that dessalines would take it personally and be less likely to help an instance admin on technical issues

      Many think that migrating to PieFed long term will be the way forward which is an alternative to Lemmy without any political baggage. That or someone rewrites Lemmy in a more opensource friendly language and then it can be a drop in replacement for instance admins lol

      But yea, there’s concern that this Tankie culture they cultivate as currently preventing wider uptake and damaging the outside rep of the Threadiverse

      • irelephant [he/him]@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        I think that forks for idealogical reasons will always fail, until their political opinions start getting in the way of development, a fork isn’t going to work.
        It’s like the anti-woke forks of things, like redot.

      • SomethingBlack@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        I really appreciate the time you took to write it all out. That does make sense, I definitely oversimplified the issue. Hopefully the tankies don’t ruin this wonderful space for the rest of us