that's the way to go..twitted is an utility and open source Is the way to go to guarantee availability - PF Thaler

registered as well - Naor Mark

ericortega is on there - Eric Ortega from twhirl

It's PHP based, which disappoints me for some reason. But the code looks pretty clean. - Fred Yankowski

I'm there - mwsmedia - Matthew Wayne Selznick from twhirl

Port it to python :) http://laconi.ca/ - Bwana ☠

Open source and Twitter? I think I smell awesome. - Rishabh Mishra (p248)

and i thought that pownce will benefit ...(from twitter whale) - Naor Mark

I hope this works - Alejandro

Time to test another site. - Eric_T

Why built another website? There already is Pownce, Jaiku, and Plurk. - Andrew Bashore from twhirl

How long before @SteveRubel declares FF dead and identi.ca the new google? ;D - Gez

I'm just curious how the distributed part works, how do I connect my install of laconica with yours? So that I can see your feed on the friends timeline of my install. Or is that not how it is supposed to work? - Frans

Does anyone have an answer to Fran's question? - Ontario Emperor from fftogo

This is the spec for OpenMicroBlogging: http://openmicroblogging.org/ I don't think it works like that, Frans. The idea behind it, as far as my understanding goes, is that there's a protocol to allow you to write to identi.ca's data store, and eventually identi.ca will support other microblogging services that use the OMB protocol, but it's not federation. - Mark Trapp

I'm pretty sure everyone's wishing, out of thin air, something that identi.ca is not. All it's really doing is implementing a standard like REST, JSON, or whatever; it's just standardizing the fields so you don't have to guess or rely on a specific API for each microblogging service. I guess you could federate based off of it being interoperable, but it's nowhere near that. For one, identi.ca is the first service that I know of that even implements OMB. - Mark Trapp

fd - Justin Coleman from twhirl

Bwana - You do a good job explaining the potential on your blog. Thanks - Charlie Anzman

Suppose you have an account on server A and you want to follow somebody who created an account on server B. You can subscribe to the remote user, and your server (A) will contact server B to set up a remote sub. After that when the user on server B posts an item, it's also posted back to your server. Sync/decentralization is handled on a user-by-user basis. - Ken Sheppardson

I'm sure Laconica looks very much like Twitter did two years ago when it was just starting out. Simple SQL tables on the back end, basic UI functionality, no API, etc. Twitter's had two years to work on this full time, and they haven't been worried at all about building a distributed network. I'm all for open source, but I'm skeptical. It's not obvious to me that a community-based effort can catch and pass a venture-funded, full-time team with two years of operational experience. - Ken Sheppardson

Ken, you highlight two huge misconceptions of this hype: 1) it's not federated yet. It's not even close to federated. and 2) it's not a community project. To make changes you either a) have to get identi.ca to buy into it and push it to http://identi.ca, or b) fork the project and run your own instance. This isn't the power of the internet working against the machine. This is a locked-in cathedral style development. Only one party has access to the final release (the server on which identi.ca resides) - Mark Trapp

Yay Mark! Yes, yes, yes. While anyone can GET the source code, any major changes have to come from a main hub for separate instances to work together. There's always this misconception of Open Source that it's this completely democratic process and anyone can just do whatever they want. - Cyndy

Exactly, Cyndy! You have a huge problem open sourcing a software-as-a-service, especially one that needs to interact with all other copies of itself: there is no way to run a bazaar style development without compromising the security of the main distribution points. It REQUIRES a single development team controlling the project scope and direction. Maybe the guys that run identi.ca are the next Linus Torvalds or the next rms or esr, but the law of very large numbers suggests they probably aren't. - Mark Trapp

What does that mean for everyone else? The exact same scenario as Twitter. One development team who contributes the vast bulk of the code that makes it into the final release. You're still at the mercy of the design decisions they make, and the preliminary reports about the nature of the code does not bode well. - Mark Trapp

It seems very slow - Greg

I definatly think that Identi.ca is extremely slow in loading - Tyler (Chacha) from twhirl

AKA this is not a big deal :) This is the argument I was trying to make earlier but couldn't. This isn't a revolution, it's just a company using everyone else to try and improve their Twitter clone. - Shawn Farner from twhirl

After the server move (if your DNS has caught up), the speeds have improved. It's day 2. I'm treating it as such. - Bwana ☠

I'm confused. Where in my article or in these comments is anyone calling this the next big thing? Why are there so many quick to shoot it down? Seems like a lot of assumptions are being made. - Bwana ☠

If you want more details of the architecture, join the identica room where this has already been discussed - http://friendfeed.com/e... - Bwana ☠

i'm not a fan of being forced to accept creative commons licensing where my content is concerned. - Brooks Bayne

Mark, I give you a +10. I felt like I was spitting into the wind on this one. - Cyndy

Bwana, I'm quick to shoot it down because a PHP app with a database back-end is going to end up as the same mess as Twitter. Adding the shiny "open source" tag doesn't make it any cooler OR more stable. It just makes Dave Winer happy to jump on the bus. - Cyndy

@wolfsbayne you aren't being forced- you don't _have_ to use the service, CC is part of the feature set of the service- some people prefer freedom of content- and as always you still have the freedom of choice. - Nathan Eckenrode

You're assuming way too much. My article's tone was simply to watch it because it's the first major effort that I know of that's open sourced and is testing the waters of OpenMicroBlogging. The point is not whether it'll fail or not, the point is that is taking a different direction. I stated many times that I don't believe open source or federation will automatically equal success. It's ok to use it and not be gung ho that it's going to kill anything. - Bwana ☠

And yes if Dave Winer is happy, it'll get attention. Whether that's right or wrong is irrelevant to my point. - Bwana ☠

@nathan i think it was implied by my post that i wasn't going to use it because of CC. thanks for telling me i don't have to use it. lol! - Brooks Bayne

I think the "Replies" feature is out now. Time to update your article. :) - Shivanand Velmurugan