A Facebook without walls: Appleseed opens to the public.

[michaelchisari]

Hello, HN!

Appleseed is an open source distributed social networking framework I've been developing for the past few years, and I've been making rapid progress in the past few months.

I'm giving out invites to the test site, and I wanted to personally ask HN users to check out this work in progress and if you could give me feedback or suggestions, that would be fantastic.

Post your email here, or send an email to invite@appleseedproject.org if you don't want it to be public, and I'll send you an invite. Once you sign up, you'll get 5 invites of your own.

Project's Website: http://opensource.appleseedproject.org

Github: http://github.com/appleseedproj/appleseed

Twitter Announcement: http://twitter.com/appleseedproj/status/29017132391

Thanks again for being a great community, and feel free to ask any questions and I'll do my best to respond.

[whimsy]

I'm a little amused that the release of a Diaspora alpha demo rocketed up on HN in a matter of minutes, while Appleseed, which has been cast as one of many superior alternatives to Diaspora, is languishing after nine hours.

[bhoung → whimsy]

The appeal of Diaspora was its story (university students raising money to build a version of facebook which would not raise privacy concerns) not its technical superiority. It also explains the amount of media coverage Diaspora received. Having just watched the social network, I came to the conclusion that the only reason that movie was made was the law suits surrounding the creation of that company. There's no appeal making a movie about two or three guys working harmoniously together to build something useful.

[jamesteow → bhoung]

Even so, my perception of HN was intelligent developers/business owners who care more about the quality of the product than the hype surrounding it.

[michaelchisari → whimsy]

I'm not sure how the HN algorithm works, is it possible to get to the front page at this point? We seem to have shot up 10 points in the past hour or so, but it seems the time for the front page has passed.

[metachris → michaelchisari]

Self posts tend to take a little longer to show up in the "ask" section. They'll stay there a bit longer too I think.

[luu]

Are there plans to allow people to import from gmail and/or facebook? I like the idea but, frankly, I'm way too lazy to invite people I know by actually typing out their email addresses, and there's not much to do when I'm the only person I know on the service.

Is there a bug tracker up? I only looked at the project site for a couple of minutes, but I couldn't find one.

When I click on news I get "The page you requested could not be found". That's followed by a link labeled "Home page" that doesn't go anywhere (it points to http:), and a link labeled "Previous page" that doesn't actually take me to the previous page.

Good luck! I hope this gains some traction.

[michaelchisari → luu]

Are there plans to allow people to import from gmail and/or facebook?

Yes, planned features are on our roadmap, available here:

http://opensource.appleseedproject.org/roadmap/

Is there a bug tracker up?

Yes, it's a lighthouse bug tracker, although emailing feedback@appleseedproject.org also works.

http://appleseedproj.lighthouseapp.com/

When I click on news I get "The page you requested could not be found".

We'll be making some rapid changes to appleseedproject.org in the next few days, so you'll see newsfeeds showing up as the top priority feature.

Good luck! I hope this gains some traction.

Thanks!

[michaelchisari → michaelchisari]

We'll be making some rapid changes to appleseedproject.org in the next few days, so you'll see newsfeeds showing up as the top priority feature.

Newsfeeds are now live on the beta site.

[jdp23]

Thanks for the invite, and good idea reaching out to the community. I'll send email, looking forward to checking it out!

[expnsv_hdphns]

My question: Is the test site served via HTTPS?

[michaelchisari → expnsv_hdphns]

Currently, no, although HTTPS support is being worked on. I'm in the process of moving hosts soon, and will be getting an SSL cert, but for now, be careful surfing on public wifi, of course.

And as with any beta software, this is for testing purposes, not for production use.