the single worst thing about identi.ca
I've been a passionate and regular user of identi.ca since it launched a year ago.
One of the best things IMHO about identi.ca is the community.
Unsurprisingly, the identi.ca community includes a lot of people who use, develop and evangelise about open source software. Some are advocates, some are confirmed evangelists and a small but committed element are the dreaded, bearded, 'not so secret' freedom police.
The 'not so secret' freedom police stalk the corridors looking for any mention of the following keywords:
- Google - Evil
- Apple/iPhone/ITouch - Evil
- Microsoft - Evil.
- Oracle Corporation (the lovely people who happen to pay my wages) - Evil.
- Any proprietary software service that isn't open and free (FreidnFeed, Facebook, Twtter, Posterous, Tumblr et al) - Evil.
Now that's all fine. I'm all for a little but of evangelism myself and have been guilty in my time of bordering on the 'not so secret' evangelism police for Habari and Disqus. I also love a little bit of playground banter to lighten up the mornings.
With all this evangelism and advocacy, I assumed that most of these people would be active developers on the Laconi.ca code base. Imagine my surprise when I signed up to the Laconi.ca development mailing list and scanned the Laconica source code repository. If you exclude the core team of Evan and the ControlYourself team, you can count the number of active Laconi.ca develoeprs on the fingers of two hands.
Still, you don't have to hack code in order to contribute. I don't although I try to contribute in other ways like logging bugs and spreading the word about identi.ca.
My next surprise came when I noted that a lot of open source advocates (mostly the bearded ones) also make use of the freedom hating Twitter - because 'my community is over there'. So, no problem with hypocrisy - although I no longer use Twitter, I am guilty of it myself.
So, to all the open source, freedom loving, bearded, Stasi, evangelistas, 'not so secret' police out there who immediately pounce whenever I choose to comment or evaluate services like Disqus, Tumblr, FriendFeed and even Google or whenever I dare to mention paying $2.79 for an application for my iTouch or worse, my evil borg employer - don't force me to come looking for your Twitter account because I suspect I could find it within 47 seconds,
Just look inwardly.
