Welp the bomb has been dropped, former #firefish team members basically telling us what we suspected is true firefish is basicly dead, since this is out now i might as well talk about some firefish things even tho i hate this happening i don't feel like i should continue to stay quite on some of the issues, as part of my promise to the firefish devs i've talked to i will not mention some things that i know of but will tell my personal experiences with the project and why i think the project is unlikely to recover.
well lets start of with the apparent issue, firefish is kainoa's project and as such he is fully in charge of the project, the issue is that firefish has been seemingly developed in a way that's basically right out of the Portal Quotes book
> "I'll be honest, we're throwing science at the wall here to see what sticks. No idea what it'll do. Probably nothing"
this Quote perfectly describes what firefish has been doing over the last releases, stuff like rust was added never to be touched again, scylladb was hyped and worked on (apparently because discord uses it?) just to be basically scrapped, and rewrite in bun was planned?
the attitude was basically adding stuff and making changes without fixing the underlying issues, firefish suffers from alot and by alot i mean a fuck ton of technical issues these won't magically be solved by rewriting it, or changing db sure rewrittes and switching to a better db can help (scylladb is not better for a thing like firefish btw) but that's just putting duck tape on the issue, instead a focus should have been to work on the underlying issues fixing whats causing the issues, like the monster db querys not to mention the fact that some things like scylladb were apparently done even tho multiple firefish devs adviced against it (not a firefish dev can't confirm this but ive been told such)
but also as we have seen firefish is extremely dependent on Kainoa being there, without him being there not much can be done on the firefish side of the team which is also very bad a project should not collapse as hard as firefish because the main dev is missing for multiple weeks, thats why in the ideal case u have multiple project leads
but even if kainoa comes back and everything returns to normal for a bit if firefish does not majorly change their attitude towards development and organization the project will just continue to crash straight into a wall
that said don't start harassing any of the firefish devs or even kainoa
firefish is a foss hobby project and projects come and go
as of writing this post both main firefish instances firefish.social and stop.voring.me are still down or up but don't federate and|or otherwise unusable
EDIT: if you are currently running firefish its highly recommended u consider migrating to either Sharkey, Iceshrimp or Catodon, ofc im going to recommend #sharkey but please do your own research
RN: Ugh, I really tried to stay out of #fediverse drama but I guess I have to say a few things. Most of you know me as a #firefish core team member, so I think I owe it to the admins of almost 500 firefish servers out there and to the almost 5000 members of firefish.social.
So, yeah, if you haven't noticed, things aren't looking good for firefish. Its owner, Kainoa, has practically abandoned the project, which had its last stable release out on July. My last message to them was a week ago, and I haven't heard back since. Firefish.social, besides the other severe technical problems it's had due to mismanagement in the last few months, now also has serious federation issues. I hope Kainoa is well irl, but this is irresponsible and unacceptable.
I hear some of you saying "but you're in the core team too, don't try to put the blame elsewhere!". So I have to explain what being a core team member in firefish meant. Kainoa invited me, Namekuji and a few others to be part of the "core team", but kept all decisions and responsibilities. We didn't co-own this. We never shared donations. We were just volunteers, who were honestly trying to make it a great project. This didn't work well due to concentration of power to one person, who didn't keep their promises. I don't mean to be harsh to Kainoa, I mean we knew they were only 19 when they started the project. Still, it's a bummer to anyone who chose to trust and support Firefish. This includes myself.
I don't know if it's early to consider firefish a dead project, but it sure seems like that for a few months now. Maybe it can be resurrected, idk. It's all up to Kainoa.
In the meantime, Namekuji and I are starting #Catodon, which will have some differences with Firefish, and will include many changes I had discussed with Kainoa but were never implemented. If you decide to stick with us, we promise to be serious about this. I strongly believe in the fediverse and its potential, and I want to build a great platform for it. This was my goal when I chose to be involved in Calckey/Firefish. It's still my goal with Catodon, only this time I can stand behind it 100%, as the project will be co-managed by Namekuji and me. If Firefish left you with a bitter aftertaste, we hope we can build a better relationship and prove ourselves worthy of your trust. Catodon will go public in a matter of days, possibly even hours. We'll have more to say about its direction then.
In the meantime, I just wanted to share my apologies for any inconvenience regarding Firefish, as I'm still technically a core team member, whatever that means. But frankly, I tried so hard to make things go differently - but there's only so much you can do when it's someone else's project. I'm really sorry for how things went.
But this is not the end of the fedi journey for me. I'm super excited about the chance to do some things right this time with Catodon. Life goes on, I guess! Hope to see you soon on our #codeberg repo, so we can start a new creative adventure together =)
:catodon: xx
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