fiatjaf's avatar
fiatjaf _@fiatjaf.com 4 months ago
I agree and I think this is a move that improves, if only slightly, the issues you mention. Except I don't agree there is anything that is fully ownerless like Nostr and is larger but still manages to get "official standards" done or follow some "governance" rules. These things only work when someone controls the project. The control often takes the form of control over the canonical software implementation that 99% of people use. That cannot happen on Nostr. Talking often helps, but is far from a panacea. In any case, my hope is that in the new proposed mechanism more talk and more publishing of guides will be encouraged, such that the need for reverse-engineering will be minimized.
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Anthony Accioly's avatar
Anthony Accioly anthony@accioly.social 4 months ago
It is, for sure. I can’t force myself to send a PR detailing my “cool, PGP-inspired local ownertrust + TOFU WoT model” just to have it ignored in the official NIPs repo. But I might consider sending a patch that links to my own repo’s documentation/whitepaper and proof of concept. Nostr is a fun and very unique experiment, and I think folks have built something special. But… governance is still there. It can be implicit and chaotic, but ultimately someone (or some group) will always have to decide if a patch gets merged. And in the absence of a more formal process, things tend to work through informal networks of trust and mutual interest. This isn’t wrong by any means, and it works especially well in the exploration phase. But it has limitations when moving into the expansion and extraction phases: https://medium.com/@kentbeck_7670/fast-slow-in-3x-explore-expand-extract-6d4c94a7539 I’m highlighting communication because, in my opinion, Nostr is struggling a bit with switching gears. It’s still early, and exploration is fun. Personally, I’d like it to stay this way for a while. But we’ve missed a few opportunities where Nostr could have really taken off if the right people and resources had been directed to the right things. For example, about a year ago, when a huge wave of people joined after X screwed up. I don’t know when or if we’ll see the next big influx of users, but I hope we do, and that Nostr is a bit more mature by then, so we can actually work on retaining those users instead of telling them to touch grass like we did back then 🤣. (To be fair, the caveat is that I sorta agree with you, even the most wrll structured, truly open project can’t steer the ship as fast as a startup like Bluesky. Plus, I think Nostriches have ethical priorities that trump growth. Still, we could try to be a bit more organised, responsive, and user focused if another big wave ever hits Nostr shores)
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