this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2024
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what happened to kbin? (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
21 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

youre not wrong, they spent a lot of time refactoring things, and still are.

that said, the list of changes in the last several versions is very long, and the code base is no longer trivially similar. looking through the waiting prs, there are a lot of interesting bits like extending microblog AP connectivity (tag handling).

the mbin guys have been pumping out releases steadily since the fork, including implementing managed documentation and version numbering. it has well exceeded kbin at this stage.

theyre prepping for a 1.7 release soon. when was the last kbin update? to me, theres only one stale project here.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

So it basically failed the bus factor

Hopefully mbin becomes more resilient, or if Lemmy just gets some nice rewrites.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

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??

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That was the message that was pushed out when @[email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

I think most of the kbin instances switched to mbin

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

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)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

True that, I just took a look at the FAQ and it still references kbin.

Question, how do we donate to this project?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

We do not have a "project fund" or something like that. Some of us have donation sites to keep the servers running:

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

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

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