Is the kbin project completely dead?
the repo has nothing going on
the kbin.social website partly loads with error
did it just evaporate? or what?
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Pretty much, as others have explained here. I wanted to add that in addition to its fork Mbin there is also the Sublinks project to make a new implementation of the ActivityPub protocol and thus surf the Fediverse independent of Lemmy. https://sublinks.org/ (link to GitHub there too)
Ernest, the lead dev for Kbin, has had a lot of big events happen in his life recently, so he has a tendency to just kinda disappear for weeks/months at a time while the project gets put on hold. He’ll usually come back, announce new plans for development, maybe push out a few updates, and then inevitably go radio silent again.
I believe he’s got a few people assisting him now, but development has definitely slowed to the point of becoming concerning. I think it might be time for the Mbin team to start getting a little more free with the fork.
So it basically failed the bus factor
Hopefully mbin becomes more resilient, or if Lemmy just gets some nice rewrites.
it might be time for the Mbin team to start getting a little more free with the fork.
the impression i had of mbin was very “anything goes” did that not end up being how things shaped up??
That was the message that was pushed out when @melroy@kbin.melroy.org started the fork, because a lot of people were not particularly fond of the way he did it. We were trash talked a lot in the first months and obviously (and sadly) that kinda stuck on a lot of people.
I did the fork in the best way I could think of. Including a very detailed Collective Code Construction Contract for contributors: https://github.com/MbinOrg/mbin/blob/main/C4.md
I’ll never fully understand why humans are so quick to judge and offer non-constructive criticism on someone else’s creative work. It seems like the least knowledge are most often the loudest in this regard.
Communication is difficult, especially over text, and emotions can get strong as there is a lot of work involved. Software developers are not always the greatest diplomats. Well-intended constructive feedback is often read as criticism, and situations escalate. And for whatever reason people love picking sides.
At least Mbin seems like a healthy project now, and since Kbin.social went down for good it’s hard to argue a fork wasn’t needed. Hopefully Ernest is alive and recovering well - he did us all a huge service by creating Kbin and making it open source.
its a community. anyone can generate a pr, code it up and it gets discussed. so far there has been no crazy drama about what to include or not… no one has proffered any incompatible ideas. its been quite pleasant
its all public though, in the matrix or github channels
I think it might be time for the Mbin team to start getting a little more free with the fork.
eh? what do you mean?
I believe that currently, Mbin isn’t making any drastic changes, and relying mostly on Kbin’s existing code as its base. As far as I’m aware, the Mbin team are mostly just doing maintenance-level development; fixing things as they break and making optimizations, but not so much in the way of developing new features. Mbin is currently just basically a copy of Kbin, without much distinguishing the two.
Since Kbin doesn’t seem to be moving much at all, I think it might be a good idea for Mbin to start flexing their own muscles a bit, and making it into its own separate project. Otherwise, having a copy of a stale project just leaves you with two stale projects.
Mbin isn’t making any drastic changes
UI wise, that one is definitely true
and relying mostly on Kbin’s existing code as its base
This one most certainly not. We actually stopped porting kbin code a few months into the project, because it just was too much work and it was obvious that Ernest didn’t want us to. So everything which changed on mbin in the about 8-10 months since, was purely our own work. Of course the basis will always be kbin, but the form will most likely change
We’ve been keeping the UI mostly as is, because we all like it, however on the backend site of it a lot has changed. The biggest problems kbin had were compatibility wise (federation) and scaling wise. These were the points where we made huge changes. The federation compatibility has improved a lot (yes there is still a lot to do) and scaling/performance has also improved a ton.
The biggest UI changes we made are:
- new filter designs that work for threads as well as microblogs
- a subscription panel
- a usable instance wide modlog
- a cake day display
- and more stuff that I am forgetting at the moment (it’s been a while since I looked at kbin and I am mostly a backend dev)
The backend changes we improved are (imo) more impactful:
- (next release) direct messages are federating
- (next release) pins federate
- deleting users federate
- magazine descriptions are federating correctly
- mods federate
- reports federate
- incoming likes are working
- the “hot” sort actually makes sense with lemmy content because it also looks at upvotes and not just at boosts
- completely redone the hashtag system so it scales at all
- completely redone the background worker system so it scales better (partly next release)
And these are only the changes I could think of in 5 minutes. We likely changed a lot more things, which I just forgot.
https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues/1383#issuecomment-1999046
The guy in charge was having medical and personal issues. And doesn’t seem to have access to everything at the moment. It’s a bummer, and I hope things get better for him, but that’s how projects like this go sometimes.
the original developer mentioned handing off the site/project to other people due to personal issues but that was like a month ago.
this is part of the reason it was forked to mbin. the risk of a project being managed by a single person instead of a community is very real.
it seems dead, but i like to remember there would be no mbin without kbin
True that, I just took a look at the FAQ and it still references kbin.
Question, how do we donate to this project?
depends on what kind of contribution you would like to make. i think they’re mostly looking for development, testing and documentation help.
there are some great links from the main github; https://github.com/MbinOrg/mbin including the matrix channels
We do not have a “project fund” or something like that. Some of us have donation sites to keep the servers running:
- mine: https://liberapay.com/BentiGorlich
- @debounced@kbin.run https://kbin.run/about
- @melroy@kbin.melroy.org https://melroy.org/thanks.html
My opinion: I do not want to get paid to develop mbin. That creates an obligation and turns it into something like a job. I already have a job and intend to keep it, additionally I don’t want to take the fun out of developing mbin. To commit to it full time or apply for grants or anything would currently be a big mistake I think
I do not want to get paid to develop mbin.
In couple of years you will burn out doing this for free. Not getting paid opens up the project for another Jia Tan to come along and smuggle malware.
There was recent talk by Rockstar Programmer Dylan Beattie that highlighted this problem. His website https://freeasinweekend.org/ and YT talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzYqxo13I1U
You don’t need to go 100% job or 100% mbin. You could theoretically go for less hours (like Fridays off) to work on mbin.
Maybe in the future. Currently so few people are using mbin that I doubt it would be any substantial amount. It also creates a lot more work when doing your taxes. So yeah if mbin gets a user base like lemmy currently has this would be another story. But it does not and it does not look like we will be there any time soon
