As we are Open Source Design, I figured we should at least have some kind of presence on the big open source social networks. Especially since Mastodon is quite active recently and well-designed. Find us at:
It’s mainly to just have an account there, follow open source designers so everyone can find each other easily, and spread the word about Open Source Design stuff.
If someone knows some good tool which handles all three services, let me know. Also if you’d like to have access, like to Twitter.
Would be great to find the mastodon in the footer on the homepage instead of next to twitter.
What exactly is happening at gitlab? Seems like OSD is still heavily hosted by Microsoft Github.
That’s is making it hard really to participate – without an account there.
Currently the content on Mastodon is only mirrored from Twitter via a cross-posting app. We also monitor the @-mentions. So people who look for it will find it, but considering our relatively small amount of volunteers we can’t maintain 2 separate platforms more actively than that.
Right now nothing is at GitLab. The initial idea was simply to mirror the repository in case of outage.
However, for Open Source Diversity we used to use GitLab and GitLab Pages and had plenty of outages and no https until we moved to GitHub.
Lastly we wouldn’t go for hosting our own instance as this is a) too much work for us volunteers and b) too much hassle for people to register at yet another instance.
I hear you. I would be happy if you supported one platform only . The reason I brought this up is that the homepage currently has no link suggesting you can follow on mastodon. I only propose to just add a link there, maybe even over at twitter!
I sympathize with that kind of problems on top of the “actual” stuff that needs to be done. I don’t want to come across like nagging needlessly. I totally see how convenience is really helpful to any cause you try to push forward. Are you sure outages and SSL are still a problem today? We at Snowdrift.org have had good experience so far, we even got support from gitlab to migrate from another instance.
Gitlab certainly isn’t perfect. I wouldn’t consider the choice of hosting to be that relevant, though.
There still are important differences:
Gitlab is free software – Github not.
Github is owned by a tech giant and only available there – Gitlab not.
Gitlab embraces the freedom to spin up an independent instance – Github not.
The extra work that any change in infrastructure creates sucks for sure. Avoiding Microsofts walled garden does not mean we have to self-host, though. I know that Debian and Gnome run their own instances and allow third party projects to some degree, also there are projects like https://codeberg.org/ (running gitea). But even going back to plain gitlab.org would be way better than using proprietary software. So there could be a solution for that.
Creating another account should be the kind of hassle we embrace. Similar to the hassle of having to download and install free software design tools when you already have an Adobe subscription. Also this argument cuts both ways: I don’t have a Github account anymore. There is hassle and moral compromise to consider on this side, too.
. The reason I brought this up is that the homepage currently has no link suggesting you can follow on mastodon. I only propose to just add a link there, maybe even over at twitter!