Sorry if this is off topic, I don't mean to stir a shitstorm. I just seem to hear barbs about Pixelfed developer dansup's online behaviour every now and then, but no one ever comes out and make clear what the trouble is.

I guess it's a legitimate complaint that he holds out on open sourcing projects, and keeps them close to his chest rather than distributing workloads. Given he's currently developing Pixelfed and Loops and a messenger called Sup, I can understand the worry that he'll hit a figurative wall and take all projects down with him...

So I found this open letter just now as I were trying to get to the bottom of it, and I genuinely can't tell if this is what people have been growling about?

The above link is to the "appendix" where the anonymous authors appear to show receipts for the behaviour they flag. In shorter form, from the letter itself:

dansup, the maintainer of Pixelfed, Loops (which NLnet helps fund), and FediDB, among others, is a dangerous force in the fediverse community. With a follower count of over 22 thousand, he has repeatedly shown himself to be hostile to fellow FOSS fediverse developers, have a lack of care for open-sourcing his work, and be in favour of injecting the fediverse with advertisements. He has also proved himself to be prone to conspiratorial thinking, regrettable public statements, and embarrassingly public meltdowns.

Somebody tell me what is going on here?

[edited for typos]

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 hours ago

Dansup absolutely suffers from the instinct of not open sourcing stuff until it's fairly late in the stage of being an MVP, but I think that's largely because he's learning these technologies as he goes and is afraid of criticism on that front. Personally, however, I do not think it is the case that he does not believe in the Open Source project. I also trust him when he says he's working towards a nonprofit to distribute the load. It seems his first steps are to get funding via kickstarter to quit his job, and then I imagine organizing a nonprofit structure is next.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

While we do Drama about [Insert open source developper name here] we have open and closeted nazi owning social media and big software companies. So I think we should better focus on them than on whatever Drama in the FOSS world

[–] [email protected] 16 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Eh, the open source community can worry about the open source community. Those other things don't mean we have to put on horse blinders to others bringing awareness. No need to be dismissive.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

True. But we are not the open source community. And the fediverse is not inherently open source by nature. ActivityPub is designed to be used by anyone.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 hours ago

FOSS is a big part of the fediverse. Doesn't mean everything in fediverse is or has to... BUT it means it is very relevant to discuss.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

Huh?

[–] surewhynotlem 4 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Is this not relevant, since this person is a linchpin in creating federated alternatives to those social media sites? And if he fails he drags them all down.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 15 hours ago

You both have fair points, but I favour taking the broad view rather than hyperfocusing on one single, worst of class supervillain. We can do both.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 17 hours ago

dansup's reply

[–] [email protected] 15 points 15 hours ago

Celebrating finally having more contributors to Pixelfed: https://mastodon.social/@pixelfed/113865305989589430

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 hours ago

Fork or contribute to the projects. Easy.

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] [email protected] 8 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I don't know how big the dependency is and what the internal structures are like. I only remember that 2-3 years ago there was a message from him saying that he had some kind of burn-out and therefore needed a break of several months.

Since I neither use Pixelfed nor am the target group of Loops, I have not looked into the details, but there have already been some discussions and criticism of the ‘strange’ terms of use with regard to Loops, see here: https://bajsicki.com/blog/loops-video-terms/

[–] [email protected] 20 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

He changed Loops TOS recently to match Pixelfed ones and made them much shorter, so it's outdated information already, you can check it here

https://loops.video/legal/terms-of-service

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 hours ago

Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 13 hours ago

I had passed on Loops when it released because of those ToS. Looks much better now, so I might reconsider.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 15 hours ago

Very good news, thank you very much!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Strong Matt Mullenweg energy

[–] [email protected] 5 points 16 hours ago

Yeah, you're not wrong. The difference is, Mullenweg didn't really melt down until his project had made it financially (and was fully open source).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Probably related: https://lemmy.world/post/24487031

[–] [email protected] 7 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

Yeah, that would be the New Year's meltdown referenced, I guess. So is there bottled up crazy behind every deleted toot of his? Should we be apprehensive about using his projects?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago

Should we be apprehensive about using his projects?

I mean, we certainly aren't, as evidenced by the fact that even with the whole power of numbers and community, an alternative hasn't sprung up yet. And that's the thing. Dansup is walking; most of everyone else is talking (shit).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Should we be apprehensive about using his projects?

The majority of [ gestures vaguely ] is created and maintained by individuals with varying levels of crazy. You think the six COBOL developers holding up every bank on the planet are totally sane and hinged?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 hours ago

To be fair I'm sure most COBOL devs are on the verge of dementia.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

If the ads section on the post is true he is a real hypocrite.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 16 hours ago

I don't want to say either way because I'm just observing from the sideline, but I'm trying to find context for what bubbles to the surface.

I don't think anyone can argue that he works harder than most, maybe juggles a few too many projects for one man? Then he goes online and checks his better judgement at the door 🤷