@bobjonkman how can @LaurelRusswurm not tell the freedom-loving, DRM-hating !fediverse about her upcoming book The Girl In the Blue Flame Cafe and all the other ongoing writing?
@jim @mcscx hierarchical view of threads (old school) encouraged those long conversations. Now it is difficult to make sense when you look at a conversation that goes 15-20 posts :-(
@spaceman 2) I heard about free software through the local free software community. I got to know some of them online and they helped me getting started. At that point I was not fully aware of the significance of software freedom. I was primarily concerned about getting a secure and virus-free system. So I could stop worrying too much about losing my work, reinstalling the system, formatting and going through the same #Windows nightmares again and again. Around 2006 I accidentally deleted my Windows partition when installing GNU/Linux (Fedora 6 I think). I decided not to install Windows again because by that time I knew I could manage all of my work with free software.
@spaceman 1) I am not a programmer. When Laconica was launched I was already a free software user. I heard about Laconica during those epic Twitter downtimes in 2008. Lot of people were looking for alternatives. If I remember correctly, Laconica was first mentioned on Linux Outlaws podcast. They discussed the importance of having distributed and federated social network; and about avoiding single points of failures. Soon I became one of the early users of #Laconica ( #identica ) Laconica was later renamed as StatusNet. It then became GNUSocial as a result of the merging of StatusNet and Free Social projects.
I have no idea about the background of this post. But sincerely I hope everything will resolve in a constructive manner. Sad to see someone leaving the !fediverse this way. So I hope you will be back when all is solved. Take care.
//if the server disappears, you lose your account.//
next-gen social networks should be easy to self host. If the server disappears, it is your own server and keeping backups is your responsibility, so the account can be restored fast in your new server. Sadly, most of the alternative (possibly next-generation) social networks are still extremely difficult to self host. A vast majority of people still depend on servers they have no control whatsoever....
I was blocked by a couple of Twitter users, and one user made her account private, thanks to usename collision. I thought it was useful to push all the notices to Twitter but it didn't convince any user to join the fediverse. Instead, my Twitter stream became a pain to follow and keep track of (if I looked at it from a regular Twitter user's view point.) So I decided not to push notices from here to there.
@tuttle me too. I heavily depend on it. Can't imagine switching and getting used to something completely different. If things go wrong I hope they'll fork it!
!ownCloud WTH does this mean????? : "If ownCloud, Inc. or ownCloud GmbH, or any successor thereof have not released a version of the ownCloud Software under an Open Source license for more then 12 months, the Board will initiate the rights of the ownCloud Foundation under the ownCloud licensing agreement and decide with a three quarters majority vote whether the Open Source license of the ownCloud software shall be changed." The ownCloud Foundation - https://foundation.owncloud.org/