Water flows from the mountains everywhere (near Akureyri/ North Iceland)
(August 2019)
(Foto: © Rüdiger Benninghaus)
#Landschaften, #landscapes, #Berge, #mountains, #Bäche, #streams, #Akureyri, #Island, #Iceland

@David Reason #1: Friendica is more known than Hubzilla. Friendica is somewhat well-known as "the Fediverse's Facebook alternative", regardless of there technically being four from the same original creator (not counting those in-between that were discontinued). Early this year, when Facebook was further enshittified, half the Fediverse was completely crazy about Friendica.

In the meantime, at least three quarters of the Fediverse's user base have never even heard of Hubzilla (there has been a poll, yes). But most Mastodon users only know of one Twitter alternative in the Fediverse as well, namely Mastodon, regardless of even only the uncountable Forkeys.

Reason #2: Hubzilla has the Eiger North Face of learning curves. I'm a Hubzilla veteran. Still, I think that even (streams) is user-friendlier, and (streams) is still harder to get into than Friendica which, in turn, is much harder to get into than Mastodon or some *key, especially when you've got "Twitter on the brain".

Even though I daily-drive Hubzilla, I normally only recommend it to those who really need its extra features. To those who want fail-safe Friendica or Friendica with even better permissions, I'd rather recommend Forte or, if they like the idea of being able to turn ActivityPub of as a last line of defence against the Mastodon HOA, (streams).

I think the new community-written help has yet to be officially adopted by Hubzilla, too. Hubzilla is one of the few Fediverse server applications with a built-in help system, but as of now, that help is not only hard to understand, but also hopelessly outdated, often simply factually wrong and very incomplete.

Reason #3: Friendica's UI has actually evolved over the years. In the meantime, Hubzilla's only official theme hasn't changed much since 2012. The name "Redbasic" says it all: It was the basic theme in the early days when Hubzilla was still named Red. And back in the day, Friendica's standard theme which it was derived from wasn't exactly pretty either.

The development of third-party Hubzilla themes hasn't really picked up speed until not even a year ago. I mean, we have some now, but especially the big hubs only offer you Redbasic. (Still I wish (streams) and Forte upgraded Redbasic to version 2.2 and maybe also Bootstrap icons.)

Speaking of third-party themes: BookFace. A theme to make Facebook refugees feel at home. Exclusive to Friendica.

Reason #4: Friendica has at least got native third-party Android apps plus a third-party iOS app in very incomplete development. All that Hubzilla has is Nomad, a glorified specialised Web browser that's about 10% native and 90% Web interface, that's only available on F-Droid and not in the Google Play Store, that has last been maintained in December, 2019, and that can't even be installed on newer devices. (Fun fact: Nomad has also become the name of Hubzilla's underlying protocol in the meantime.) Hubzilla's Web UI adapts to small screens gracefully, but people expect and demand a native iOS or Android UI.

Reason #5: Newbies who approached Hubzilla like they had approached Mastodon, who wanted to get going right away with 100% default settings, and who threw in the towel because they couldn't connect to Mastodon accounts. Hubzilla really lacks a big fat honkin' red label that warns you that you first have to "install" the ActivityPub "app" because ActivityPub not only isn't Hubzilla's basic protocol, but it's optional and, on top of even that, off by default for new channels.

Maybe reason #6: GPL fanatics for whom all licenses that aren't any kind of GNU GPL are non-free and must therefore be abolished. Friendica was re-licensed under the AGPLv3 in late 2011 whereas Hubzilla remains under the MIT license.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte

@Week in Fediverse :fediverse_light: Also, the 25.5.14 "15th anniversary" releases of the streams repository and Forte.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Streams #(streams) #Forte #WeekInFediverse

Have you looked at some of the Fediverse platforms?
Hubzilla: https://hubzilla.org/page/info/home
Or Streams: https://codeberg.org/streams/streams#readme
I think they meet your criteria.

#streams #Hubzilla