In recent weeks, people unhappy with Mastodon project talked about forking the project in a different direction. It's harder than it looks.

A lot of people have talked about the possibility of forking Mastodon to get the many improvements their communities need. Making such an effort successful is another discussion entirely.

  • Sean TilleyOPMEnglish
    23·
    7 months ago

    This is a situation that I think will get better in time. There’s some really promising efforts involving Fediverse Enhancement Proposals, where multiple projects collaborate on shared ways of doing things. Some of these behaviors are getting studied and standardized by the larger SocialCG entity, as well.

    There’s also a lot of promising development behind a Fediverse Testing Suite. If we can develop a platform-agnostic testing system for people to build against, it will potentially become the new development standard, rather than optimizing for Mastodon and nothing else.

    • maegul (he/they)English
      4·
      7 months ago

      If we can develop a platform-agnostic testing system for people to build against, it will potentially become the new development standard, rather than optimizing for Mastodon and nothing else

      Well, unless interoperating exclusively/mostly with mastodon is still substantially incentivised because of its size. Hopefully mastodon comply with the testing suite’s standard, but I can see that being a slow process, and I can also see grey areas persisting.

    • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
      2·
      7 months ago

      Yeah agreed. In particular I really like that feditest exists even if I haven’t done anything to check it out / learn about it for myself yet.