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1. Embed this notice
   Kit Rhett Aultman (roadriverrail@signs.codes)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 02:30:58 JST Kit Rhett Aultman

   So, I want to address something said by someone who, rather than engage seriously with the question of community software, decided to block me. This will be a thread, and it's in reference to this:
   https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/114078085237148384

   This person, in a separate subthread (https://social.growyourown.services/@3dcandy@mastodon.social/114077614238817654) basically responded to a post about the #Owncast iOS and Roku apps with what could charitably be called "Wot No Android?!"

   So, having done FOSS development for 25+ years now, I'd like to say some stuff. 1/?

   • Embed this notice
     Kit Rhett Aultman (roadriverrail@signs.codes)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 02:34:48 JST Kit Rhett Aultman

     in reply to

     First off, the overwhelming majority of FOSS is done individuals or small groups *for their personal happiness*. It often starts as a solo project, just a little itch to scratch, and at the end it looks interesting or useful, so the source is shared in the hopes it benefits others. Usually developers 2-10 stumble on the project in its infancy and it helps them with a related personal project so they add on some stuff and stick around.
     2/?

   • Embed this notice
     Kit Rhett Aultman (roadriverrail@signs.codes)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 02:37:46 JST Kit Rhett Aultman

     in reply to

     • Gabe Kangas

     The beating heart of a FOSS project is thus typically a small number of user-contributors who "fall into" maintainer status and continue to do so because, well...someone's gotta do it. These people chart a future that's relevant to their needs, but the door is usually open for other people with other needs to make things happen. The source is open, after all.

     For example, I cared about #Owncast on #Roku, which wasn't a priority for @gabek . I persisted anyway, and he was happy to let me. 3/?

   • Embed this notice
     Kit Rhett Aultman (roadriverrail@signs.codes)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 02:39:50 JST Kit Rhett Aultman

     in reply to

     • Gabe Kangas
     • 1hitsong

     @gabek I'm blessed that @tgpo is now along for the ride; his rewrite has us in a place where I might deliver features more than once a year! Yes, once a year! FOSS contributors may not even consider the project their primary hobby, let alone be a career. Almost all of my FOSS contributions over the last few years came while I was on vacation! Imagine that...I took a vacation to work on a personal project and ended up shelving it to contribute to a different project along the way. 4/?

   • Embed this notice
     Kit Rhett Aultman (roadriverrail@signs.codes)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 02:42:43 JST Kit Rhett Aultman

     in reply to

     • Gabe Kangas
     • 1hitsong

     @gabek @tgpo Consequently, unless a project has matured to the point that it's securing funding to actually hire people for features (and that will likely be below market wage rates), it is, and will remain primarily a shared act of joy for those who contribute and power-use. Tech support is usually a shared effort among them, a result of users asking questions in chat or on mailing lists. The sincere hope of a healthy project is that users become contributors themselves in some way. 5/?

   • Embed this notice
     Kit Rhett Aultman (roadriverrail@signs.codes)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 02:45:11 JST Kit Rhett Aultman

     in reply to

     • Gabe Kangas
     • 1hitsong

     @gabek @tgpo That contribution could be blogging, community newsletters, hype, or staying around to help answer newer users' questions. In fact, any user-facing FOSS project desperately needs those people because, as user bases scale, so does the amount of community support and engagement, and if it falls on too few heads, the project suffers. Indeed, if the core of the project loses the joy of working on the project, they burn out and the project either grows obsolete or becomes abandoned.6/?

   • Embed this notice
     Kit Rhett Aultman (roadriverrail@signs.codes)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 02:48:05 JST Kit Rhett Aultman

     in reply to

     • Gabe Kangas
     • 1hitsong

     @gabek @tgpo This is also to say that virtually no FOSS project, except those commissioned and funded from the start, set out to dominate, to capture millions of users, or to "win" against a commercial adversary. It's absurd to think that anyone honestly set their sights on "winning" over Alphabet, X, or Meta. Linus Torvalds didn't want to "beat" Microsoft; he wanted to play with Minix on his x86 machine. Linux, according to the original usenet posts, was never supposed to be a big deal. 7/?

   • Embed this notice
     Kit Rhett Aultman (roadriverrail@signs.codes)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 02:53:22 JST Kit Rhett Aultman

     in reply to

     • Gabe Kangas
     • 1hitsong

     @gabek @tgpo FOSS projects "win" by existing and being meaningful to the people they help and enable. If they become a credible threat to, or a useful tool for, a capital-driven machine that can and will destroy anything it cares to, that is actually quite beside the point. We call those things the "success stories" because they're what people see. But any FOSS project that gives some people what they want and thrives at least for a while, was a "success." 8/?

   • Embed this notice
     Kit Rhett Aultman (roadriverrail@signs.codes)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 02:57:07 JST Kit Rhett Aultman

     in reply to

     • Gabe Kangas
     • 1hitsong

     @gabek @tgpo So, please don't think you're helping if you come around telling a FOSS community they ought to plan around the needs of a user base you've imagined and can't even prove exists. If you need, say, a Kodi client for your favorite streaming service, write it. Or pay a grant to someone for it; it's probably not much. Maybe find 9 other people who want it and split that cost 10 ways. Whatever it is, be the change you want, because you're the new energy. 9/?

   • Embed this notice
     Kit Rhett Aultman (roadriverrail@signs.codes)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 02:59:46 JST Kit Rhett Aultman

     in reply to

     • Gabe Kangas
     • 1hitsong

     @gabek @tgpo And certainly don't think that scolding people with absolute user-base sizes will do it. As a Mastodon admin, I know that every new user costs me money. Where's the money to "beat Instagram/X/whatev" supposed to come from? Should we all plow our paychecks into it and impoverish our families? And why, so we can, vaguely, "win"?

     Should us #Owncast devs handle 100x increase in user support so we can "win"? Where's that labor going to come from? 10/?

   • Embed this notice
     Kit Rhett Aultman (roadriverrail@signs.codes)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 03:07:20 JST Kit Rhett Aultman

     in reply to

     • Andrew (Television Executive)
     • Gabe Kangas
     • 1hitsong

     @gabek @tgpo Meanwhile, thanks to #Owncast, I have a thriving side career as a DJ. Thanks to #Peertube, @ajroach42 has developed a cable TV channel. Countless people have enjoyed their audiences on Owncast, and we've had some really lovely, wonderful times, and we're super happy to have others bring in their new energy, their new ideas, their successes, their joys, and their struggles. We know we can't "win" against the behemoths...who can often freely use our own work against us! 10/?

   • Embed this notice
     Kit Rhett Aultman (roadriverrail@signs.codes)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 03:13:00 JST Kit Rhett Aultman

     in reply to

     • Andrew (Television Executive)
     • Gabe Kangas
     • 1hitsong

     @gabek @tgpo @ajroach42 We're just here and happy to try and make something for ourselves and our friends. It might become another Linux success case; it probably won't, but we're learning and making ourselves happy along the way. Don't lecture us about how to "win" in your eyes. Work towards your vision or don't, but your standards of success aren't owed to you. Be a FOSS person and make your own dream a reality, build community, and see where the journey takes you. 11/11

   • Embed this notice
     1hitsong (tgpo@social.linux.pizza)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 04:13:13 JST 1hitsong

     in reply to

     @roadriverrail I don't speak for the rest of the Jellyfin team, but for me personally, I find the idea that we are in competition with other media servers or streaming services awkward/funny at a surface level and disingenuous/manipulative at a deeper level.

     I do not work on Jellyfin because I want to "beat" Netflix. I do not work on Jellyfin because I want to "beat" Plex.

     Those are nonsense.

     I work on Jellyfin because I use it. I want it to be the best it can be. I also want it to do things it doesn't currently do.

     I work on it because I find it fun.

     And that's it. The day I stop having fun is the day I quit working on it.

     I could not care any less about anyone's perceived competitors, user count goals, revenue goals, etc. Those are nothing but manipulation tools people use try to leverage FOSS programmers into working on what they want them to work on.

     Kit Rhett Aultman repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Kit Rhett Aultman (roadriverrail@signs.codes)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 04:31:51 JST Kit Rhett Aultman

     in reply to

     • 1hitsong

     @tgpo Granted, now that I know about Jellyfin, I'm kinda looking side-eye at my Nas and its Plex installation...

   • Embed this notice
     1hitsong (tgpo@social.linux.pizza)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 04:37:01 JST 1hitsong

     in reply to

     @roadriverrail 😆

     I can point you to a wonderful Jellyfin Roku client 🤘

     https://github.com/1hitsong/viv/

   • Embed this notice
     Mr. Funk E. Dude (mrfunkedude@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 07:37:36 JST Mr. Funk E. Dude

     in reply to

     • Andrew (Television Executive)
     • Gabe Kangas
     • 1hitsong

     @roadriverrail @gabek @tgpo @ajroach42

     Great thread. 100% agree.

     PeerTube literally said themselves that they do not think of themselves as competition for YouTube. "Alternative" does not always equate "in competition with". Some people just don't understand that.

   • Embed this notice
     sudo beep (xurizaemon@toot.cafe)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 07:37:45 JST sudo beep

     in reply to

     • 1hitsong

     @tgpo @roadriverrail thanks both of you! We are so grateful for Jellyfin.

     Defining success by market share is to mistake capitalist KPIs for community indicators.