this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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The legacy of Apollo lives on through Lemmy app imitations. Good for him to move on to something different.
Agreed. I’m amazed by the number of developers and apps - it’s incredible! If things had been quieter, I could’ve seen Christian being more tempted to try recreating the magic here.
In a way I feel bad, I wonder if he feels people have ripped off his hard work? There are direct clones of his app.
On the other hand, I guess it prompts exploring something entirely new, which is (selfishly) an exciting prospect for me and hopefully ends up being more rewarding for him.
Having said that, when Tapbots waded into Mastadon with Ivory, it was so much better than everything else (as a fan of Tweetbot), so could see something similar here. There’s clearly a reason for these developers to have found success in the first place!
In the software world this is to be expected once one puts out something that has any significant reach. "Copycatting" is aplenty, either for malicious reasons or merely as a tribute. Getting hung up on it is a great way to barrel down a endless pit of whack-a-mole. It's ok to express a bit of disdain for it in some regards, but at the end of the day trying to intervene aggressively only leads to more pain and grief IMO.
A lot of people are taking what was learned in putting together Apollo's UI/UX and adjusting them into new tools and applications for a new environment. It's part and parcel of software in general. In the next few years we might look back and wonder why we even considered an Apollo for Lemmy to begin with given the trajectory of current development. And there is much to be said about continued longevity given the preference for open source paradigms of currently popular Lemmy apps.
Time will tell, I think, even if many of us around here are all eager to put Lemmy and this entire ecosystem into a time dilation bubble so multiple years of development can happen in a single day.
My perception was that he set Apollo free for this purpose. He could have easily adapted it for Lemmy but decided to move on to other things…I feel like apps copying or basing themselves on Apollo is what he planned for. I feel like it’s probably bittersweet for him and for us. Maybe I’m wrong.
Have you listened to the snipped? He specifically said that it would’ve been a ton of work and he’s not sure if it would’ve been worth it since it’s not clear if Lemmy is going anywhere
Yep I was a little surprised that he has so much skepticism about the growth of the feddiverse. I mean, tapbots has certainly bought in with their mastodon app…
I’m sure it’s all been emotionally exhausting as well so maybe he wants to do something completely different like a game or calculator…or woodworking
Technically Lemmy and Mastodon might be related, but they’re not the same. Mastodon has already been maturing for a while and tweetbot had already been ported for app.net, so I’m sure they had it much easier this time around. Also tweetbot was basically their only source of income and then entire communities started moving over.
Apollo isn’t the only income source for Christian and at least in his eyes Lemmy isn’t yet at a place where it’s certain it will take off.