If they go close source, other people will take the last version of the code and build on it
this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
22 points (84.4% liked)
Lemmy
12544 readers
63 users here now
Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.
For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to [email protected].
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
Did anyone do that with reddit? It used to be open source too.
I know of https://github.com/CrystalVulpine/saidit. Unfortunately the site (saidit.net) is full of right-wing/conspiracy bullshit, at least last I checked.
Oh that reminds me, Voat happened. It wasn't a code fork but a clone, and it was also filled with right-wing garbage.
Tildes is still around too, but I think it's got even less traction than lemmy.
I assumed thats what old.reddit was. But idk
Old reddit was just the old UI. IMO, old UI was way better than new UI.
The reddit open source stuff was only a portion of the website and algorithm. I believe Voat and a few others might have glanced at that code. Last I looked it was still up on GitHub. https://github.com/reddit
I'm assumimg the same didn't happen with reddit bc it was not federated. That right?
Was Reddit ever open source?
Yup. Not a lot of people remember this but it also used to be written in LISP.
I'm pretty sure it was for a few years. Stopped in 2008 as far as i know
They can't, at least not while complying with Lemmy's AGPL license.
The original creators can sure try, but since Lemmy is ACTUALLY open source, the community can just fork the source, call it "the-good-lemmy" or whatever, and devote our time & resources to it instead of using the bullshit version
No. The API debacle was fundamentally about money, after all. In the very unlikely event someone does something similarly one-sided and stupid with a fediverse offering, people will simply fork it or move to different ActivityPub compliant software. Neither is possible on Reddit, a proprietary, for-profit website.
Actually... Reddit was open source until 2017.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit
But the rest of your comment still stands.
I stand (partly) corrected, then. Apparently not all of it was (and it stopped being so long before it would've been relevant), but still, didn't even know that.
Our values are completely different from big tech. We would never do this.
As other people mentioned, it'd be impossible even if we wanted to, because people would likely fork the code.
decentralisation
It's not truly decentralized, it's federated. So if lemmy devs change things, each instance can choose whether to pull those in or continue with its current version, potentially defederating as necessary.
wdym it's not decentralised? do you mean the development is centralised?
I mean instances are not decentralized, they are federated. When I say "decentralized," I mean how BitTorrent is decentralized, as in there's no central server where everything happens. Lemmy is federated, which means there are multiple centralized instances that communicate with each other.
yeah I guess.
I guess I don't see what the incentive would be for this, or even what it realistically means in this case.
Do you mean like relicensing the backend and frontend with a closed source license? I don't see what the incentive would be for that unless they wanted lemmyml to be the only instance in existence (which runs counter to it's raison d'etre) and to make secret/proprietary/commercial extensions to it that are difficult to develop in the open.
Or I guess unless they wanted to start charging instance admins for the honor and pleasure of running their software, which at least right now would be the quickest way to ensure nobody runs their software.
I was just wondering about the possibility
It's always possible, but it would make no sense for it to do so. Lemmy runs entirely off donations, and it's a free and open source product first (looking at how the code is being written, how the organization is structured, and the fact that the open source community is building it as opposed to employees at a company etc.).
With Lemmy, there are many different groups (and individuals) running their own instances. Lemmy is the program that is running on the server, and when there's an update with new features, everyone downloads the new version. If Lemmy were to go closed source, I'm sure that the open source community would just make a fork and continue working there, and most (if not all) of those instances would just download that version instead.
Thats cool. Thanks for that info
This was asked before, but it is under the AGPL (which means that if you modify the code you must make the modifications public), to make it a closed source project you would have to get the agreement of every contributor or rewrite it's code which is very hard to do (and i don't think i ever heard something like this happened). The federated aspect is another line of defense.
Didn't know bout needing everyone's permission