Hello from hospitality exchange community devs!

[mariha]

Hi all, I am happy to be joining you!

I am a software engineer (backend java) and a long distance bike tourer.

I was a contributor to the community built WarmShowers Android app (50+K installs in app store) when the 30 years old organization connecting bicycle touring travelers and those who want to host them, over the period of 5 years slowly changed from fully open and transparent, volunteers built platform and apps to a payed service that locked its own community (160K members) behind paywall.

We published a message from the developers: https://WarmShowers.bike (where you can also find a short background story) and started to think about building next generation federated platform as a long term remedy for the issues bicycle touring and other hospitality exchange communities faced in recent years (CouchSurfing did similar thing).

I’d like to discuss the idea more and possibly get some help in the direction where to go next.

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Edit: I moved the idea to separate discussion: Hospitality exchange community considers moving to the fediverse ;)

[aschrijver]

What a wonderful stance and ditto initiative you are engaging with @mariha. You are most welcome to SocialHub, we love to have you and your team members in our midst. Reading from your profile on “culture follows structure” I feel it works both ways, and an actual virtuous cycle is created, and after a while the culture become ‘custodian’ of the structure. You see this on the Fediverse too.

[mariha]

@aschrijver

Reading from your profile on “culture follows structure” I feel it works both ways, and an actual virtuous cycle is created, and after a while the culture become ‘custodian’ of the structure.

I am sure it does! It’s known as Conway’s low, that structure of a system designed by an organization tends to be isomorphic with that organization structure. It’s a good reading in case you haven’t read it yet: How Do Committees Invent? .

@aschrijver

You see this on the Fediverse too.

Haven’t thought about it before but now as you wrote it I am very much looking forward to it!

[aschrijver]

@mariha

Haven’t thought about it before but know as you wrote it I am very much looking forward to it!

A nice example is #software:pixelfed where lead dev @dansup decided to remove addictive features, based on feedback from other Fedizens. You can read more about this here: https://lemmy.ml/post/59581/comment/47782

[aschrijver]

Oh, I’d like to add your project(s) to the ActivityPub Application Watchlist as soon as they are underway (there’s no need to have any working code, just the intention to build federated apps is enough for inclusion). The watchlist is a staging area for later inclusion in Fediverse Party.

Could you have a look at the list and tell me if and how you want to be listed there?

[naturzukunft]

@mariha

(backend java)

I have to write min. 20 chars, but it doesn’t need them ,-)

[grishka]

@mariha

(backend java)

So that’s one more of us.

(I’m actually initially an Android developer, but Java works for almost everything tbh)

[aschrijver]

Yeah, Java is having a great ecosystem still. I wanted to start federated app dev based on Java too, running on top of Vert.x.

[mariha]

For federated hospex JavaScript seems most natural choice, as most of the existing platforms are built with it, but for the other apps that I had in mind, there is quite some chance that I’d go with jvm and Java/Kotlin, and if so I was thinking about giving a try to Quarkus, which also leverages vert.x. Keep me in the loop if you were doing anything in that area.