Suqashing Facebook (WAS: Conducting GNHLUG business on Facebook (was Stop! Unix Time))

[VirginSnow at vfemail.net]

> Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 21:46:31 -0500
> From: Arc Riley <arcriley at gmail.com>

> I'm tired of hearing people in the free software community whine about
> Facebook.  There are a lot of programmers on this list.  If you feel
> passionately enough about this to complain then let's build an alternative.

I haven't been whining about Facebook (admittedly, it's VERY
tempting), but I've recently been thinking about this problem, in a
somewhat broader sense.

The whole facebook/meetup/myspace/<fill in your junk aggregator here>
mess seems to be the product of a number of factors:

  (1) People want web presence with prefabricated features like
      calendaring, blogging, guestbooks, voting, and messaging.

  (2) People want to network their content with other
      people/sites/pages.

  (3) Most people lack the technical knowledge/skills/resources to do
      these things on their own.

It's probably fair to say that most of the folks on this list either
know, or could easily figure out, how to build and host their own web
site.  Indeed, objectives (1) and (2) can and have been achieved this
way for many years.  Building sites with one's desired features and
linking them to/from other sites IS exactly what the WWW is all about.

The average Joe, however, isn't a member of his local LUG. :) Most
folks don't know how to, or don't care to, build their own Web site.
This has caused people to flock to prefab pseudo-site services like
Myspace, Facebook, etc.

This mass migration to McWebsites completely disregards one of the
fundamental features of the Web: the heterogeneous, distributed nature
of the WWW.  This, personally, has me quite concerned.  Instead of
hosting a Web site in order to host a Web site, people are putting
"pages" on third-party services like Facebook.  [Enter Mr.
Homogeneity stage left.]  Of course, there's also the standard set of
security and reliability arguments for and against remote hosting of
live data.

In addition, most of these "services" are mutually incompatible.  For
example, Myspace and Meetup can't talk to each other.  Add to that the
possibiliy that your hosting service might "lock down" access (whether
that means "logging in" to access a Facebook page or paying a
recurring fee to host a Meetup group), and the online community has
both serious practical and philosophical problems.

(Thank you, Arc, for the gripeortunity...)

Now, here's the FOSS solution I was thinking about!

Objectives (1) and (2) can both be achieved using existing FOSS.  This
problem's Achilles' heel is (3).

If there was some kind of ready-made, drop-in, easy-to-use FOSS
replacement for these services that could be plopped on any old
hosting service, then the problem posed by (3) could be solved.
People would be able to host their OWN sites, and wouldn't be forced
to use mutually incompatible pseudo-hosting solutions like Facebook.

Technically, this could be done a number of ways.  Off the top of my
head...

  (1) With a suite of PHP scripts that could be installed on any
      hosting service that supports PHP (not hard to find).

  (2) By installing a special package on a Linksys router.

  (3) Developing an embedded Linux Internet appliance to host from a
      user's home/office connection.  (What, my ToS say "no servers"?)

Any other ideas?  Does anyone know of projects (current or planned) to
fill this niche?

> Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 22:34:21 -0500
> From: Peter Dobratz <peter at dobratz.us>

> I learned that I missed out on the 10-year high school reunion.  I
> had updated my contact info on the official alumni site, but I
> hadn't joined Facebook, so they couldn't find me.

That's just the problem.  Facebook is a poor substitute for the real
world.  If I were trying to find my classmates, my alumni association
would be the FIRST place I'd look.

> Of our graduating class of 270, 124 are members of Facebook.

"If an item doesn't appear in our records, it does not exist!"
  -- Jedi Archives librarian to Obi-Wan Kenobi