this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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And doing a damn fine job.
The question was if you saw similarity in the pressure to add maintainers to the project with the social engineering that lead to xz getting backdoored.
No, he's not. Kbin was recently down for a week. Then voting and comment counts broke. Before all that I had to get into the habit of reloading the page I was on every time I wanted to vote on something. It's a terrible user experience.
That's not to say I don't like him or he's not a good dev or whatever. Just that people have limits and it sure seems like he's bumping against his.
I think Ernest is doing a fine job. [shrug] Especially when you consider none of us are being charged to be here.
Could we please stop talking about if Ernest is burning out though? That was never the question of this thread.
The question was if the comments reminded you of the social engineering that engendered the xz backdoor.
I didn't say anything about burning out. A job can be too big or difficult for a person without them burning out.
Ultimately, it's just a question of results. If kbin.social is working poorly but other alternatives are doing good, I move on. That works well in the Fediverse especially, as evidenced that I am commenting from fedia.io.
Likewise I also moved on from Kbin. Obviously we have no power over that project, that belongs solely to the person who created it, but we do control our own actions. e.g. I used to sing the praises of the Fediverse and go out of my way to not equate it with Lemmy - always saying like Lemmy/Kbin. Now I still do the former but I actively tell people that Kbin might not be a good match for them. Ernest has kept it as alpha version software - which is fine, there is a need for such things, and it will become great, someday... hopefully. But today is not that day, and that is super good for people to know, e.g. that they don't have to leave the Fediverse entirely to get a more functional experience, just Kbin.social.
fedia.io is running mbin, which is a fork of kbin. It seems to be doing well, so you could switch to Lemmy/mbin if you don't want to include kbin any more but still want to show alternate clients are possible.
Thank you for the suggestion. So far I've just taken to saying "Fediverse", perhaps I'm holding out hope for still more clients in the future:-)? Also it's shorter than Lemmy/Kbin/Mbin:-).
Piefed also looks promising.
That one interoperable with Mastodon like Kbin is?
It appears focused on being compatible with lemmy, but I haven't asked the dev what their plans are for mastodon integration.
They do have an interesting image-viewing mode though, which is pretty cool. :)
Nope, and it doesn't seem to be on the agenda either. Kbin/Mbin is still the only platform(s) to try to bridge the two.
Moreover it seems to have better discoverability than mastodon Mastodon. I can type a word or phrase in the search bar on kbin and find "Mastodon" posts whereas I'm stuck viewing whatever is timeline trending on Mastodon proper unless I follow someone or can figure out whatever hashtag person might have affixed to their post.
Even with kbin being down a good 1/5 of the time it remains the best ActivityPub viewing experience (in my).
Exactly! More and more products can be added - like now we are hearing about Fedi-wikis (from the original Lemmy developer iirc), and ofc there will be Threads (whether we dread it or not!), so the Fediverse (iirc, defined basically as anything that uses the ActivityPub protocol?) is growing up, spurred onwards by the ongoing demise of Reddit even if started long before. :-)
I saw the term "threadiverse" being used to group all Reddit alternatives interoperable with the Fediverse.
Yeah, but Meta's fucked up the application of anything containing "thread".
Fairplay, but that then's two step removed from what this thread is about.
And he's burning out. And more maintainers would be even better.
Yes, it's similar, but every one-man project with real-world use is similar in that regard.
I have seen no evidence of that. Also not the point of this thread.
I’m not going to pick through his last year’s posts and make a diagnosis, but if you’ve seen no evidence of that, I think you’re wilfully ignoring the signs.
Ok, I'll continue "ignoring" evidence you can't even describe ("He talked somewhere about..."), much less cite.
For all we know his frequent absence is down to a great work-life balance on his part.
Irrespective this thread is not about who is or is not burnt out, it's about how posts like your are what enabled the xz backdoor to happen.
I thin you need to chill a bit. Open source has a long illustrious history of people cooperating to build software and submit patches and enhancements which are then scrutinized by project leads. Yes, occasionally bad actors use this model to try and slip through exploits, but you don't throw out one of the strengths of open source because of that. You make sure mechanisms are in palce to allow robust scrutiny.
And no, I'm absolutely not going go through someone's post history and quote bits that show someone is frazzled. I expect you to have enough empathy
I'm not the one calling people willfully ignorant about things a thread isn't even about.
I don't think being a jerk is a strength
I used it as a support to my argument, so, it's relevant. No evidence, you say... I don't want to talk too much about someone's health issue. Just believe what you believe. I don't think you can change your view through online discussion.
What argument? I'm not sure what you position is.
He is doing an excellent job, and I do not mean to denigrate his work when I say the task is beyond any one person, no matter how talented and dedicated. Look at the issues that went on recently while Ernest was indisposed, and we had months of federation issues that led to communities migrating away and Kbin.social getting defederated by other instances.
This project is getting too large for any one person, and it's far too important to have one point of failure. And even someone as great as Ernest needs an understudy.
The existence of one bad actor doesn't make the principle any less true.
Kbin has long since surpassed what Ernest is capable of handling by himself. Either he's going to have to learn to delegate, or it's going to collapse under its own weight.