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blasma.html
author Franklin Schmidt <fschmidt@gmail.com>
date Sun, 28 Jun 2020 13:13:19 -0600
parents d3e61cd2aca0
children 2052c8a548dd
files website/src/blasma.html website/src/index.html website/src/why.html
diffstat 3 files changed, 54 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-) [+]
line wrap: on
line diff
--- /dev/null	Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
+++ b/website/src/blasma.html	Sun Jun 28 13:13:19 2020 -0600
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+<!doctype html>
+<html>
+	<head>
+		<title>Blasma</title>
+		<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
+		<style>
+			@import "site.css";
+		</style>
+	</head>
+	<body>
+		<div small>
+			<a href=".">Luan</a>
+		</div>
+
+		<h1>Blasma</h1>
+
+		<p>This is my idea for a distributed configurable open-source social forum.  I am writing this because I am looking for someone to work on this.  I would help but I wouldn't do most of the work.  This is because I already have programming that I do for money and I have <a href=".">Luan</a> as my open source project that I work on when I have free time.</p>
+
+		<p>I believe that this project may appeal to two types of people.  It may appeal to someone on the Right because this project would strongly promote free speech.  And it may appeal to a Nabble user looking for a replacement for Nabble.  I will address each of these.</p>
+
+		<h2>For the Right</h2>
+
+		<p>The problem facing the Right is that the Left controls all major social media which they use to destroy free speech.  Of course anyone can set up a website and say whatever they want, but no one will find this content.  If effect, one is free to speak but one is banned from all media where one may be heard.</p>
+
+		<p>The Right has tried to address this by creating its own social media sites to compete with the Left.  This has several problem.  First is the incredibly poor quality of these sites.  I don't know how to explain this, but most of these sites are so bad that they are unusable.  The least bad of these sites is <a href="https://slug.com/">Slug.com</a> which is barely usable.  I wrote <a href="https://slug.com/group/ramzpaul/post/105476/slug-com-review-after-using-slug-com-for-about-a-week-i-will-now-review-it-slug-com-is-like">a review</a> of it and since then have found numerous other problems including that <a href="https://slug.com/group/ramzpaul/post/105791/slug-com-is-using-godaddy-as-their-registrar-are-they-stupid-or-what-godaddy-hates-free-speech-a">they use GoDaddy</a> as their DNS registrar.  In spite of all these problems, I use Slug.com and I would recommend it to others since there is no better alternative.</p>
+
+		<p>A second problem is that new social media sites are small and are likely to remain small.  This is because social media is a natural monopoly.  In each social niche, users will generally want to post where they can reach the biggest audience.  This is why there is naturally one monopoly site for each niche, and it is very hard for new sites to compete in that niche.  In the forum niche, the monopoly is Reddit.</p>
+
+		<p>A third problem is that the Left will try to destroy any truly free speech website.  They will try to get your DNS registrar to remove you.  They will try to get your hosting service to reject you.  If you collect money, they will try to get your payment processor to reject you.  And they may even try to get the government to ban you.</p>
+
+		<p>Now I will address all of these issues in reverse order, starting with the third issue.  The solution to the third problem is to make the platform decentralized.  Consider the design of the internet itself.  The internet began as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET">Arpanet</a> which was a military project to design a network that could survive a nuclear attack.  So it was designed to be fully distributed so that the network didn't depend on any single point.  This is why the internet is so robust and cannot be controlled by any government.  A good social platform should be designed in the same way.  The code should be open source so that anyone can install it anywhere.  Servers should communicate using an open protocol.  With this distributed design, there is no single domain name, no single hosting service, and no single legal entity.  So there is no single point of failure that can be used to destroy the service, making it as robust as the internet itself.</p>
+
+		<p>The second issue is the natural monopoly of social media.  The same kind of situation existed for internet content before the Web.  In those days CompuServe and AOL were the dominant internet services.  And they were proprietary natural monopolies just like today's social media companies.  But the Web destroyed them.  The Web did this by providing the free and open protocols of HTTP and HTML.  This allowed the aggregate content of many small websites to grow larger than the existing monopolies, and so the Web became dominant.  In the same way, an open social protocol could allow different social websites built with different software to all be part of the same social network.  In this way, the aggregate social content of many small social sites could grow larger than the current monopolies and could put them out of business.  This would destroy Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, and all the rest of these evil companies.</p>
+
+		<p>The first issue is the issue of quality.  Existing sites use proprietary software and largely ignore the needs of users.  Existing social sites are not configurable.  Compare them to older forum and blog software which are reasonably configurable.  The solution to this issue is modular open source software.  Such software would be naturally configurable.  And this fits with the general view of the Right that people should have control over their property.  If you have a forum or blog, then you should have full control over how it works.  But at the same time you should have access to the social data from other forums and blogs and whatever so that your users benefit from this social network.  So for example, if a user on your forum clicks on some username, they should see the content of that other user from across the internet, but they should see it presented in whatever manner your forum is configured to present it.  And if the user clicks on some of that content, he should be taken to the website where that content was generated.  This is how one can combine customized sites into one big social network.</p>
+
+		<p>Blasma is an ambitious project, but I don't think it is bigger than <a href=".">Luan</a> which is my project.  If someone steps up to do this, then I would be very much involved at the beginning and then eventually let the other person fully take over.  If no one steps up, then I won't do anything.  I am not immortal, so I can't do everything by myself.</p>
+
+		<h2>For Nabble Users</h2>
+
+		<p><a href="https://www.nabble.com/">Nabble</a> is a forum platform that I developed long ago.  Blasma would have many advantages over Nabble.  The Blasma code would be much simpler which means that many could customize it.  It would be much easier to install on your own server.  But even if hosted, each forum would run its own code, so you could control when updates happen.  The Blasma scripting language would be <a href="/why.html#nabble">Luan</a> which is much simpler than NAML.  Unlike Nabble, Blasma would be social so users could find your forum much more easily.  And finally, I have no plans to do more development on Nabble, so if you want a forum with a future, that would be Blasma.</p>
+
+	</body>
+</html>
--- a/website/src/index.html	Thu Jun 25 23:17:14 2020 -0600
+++ b/website/src/index.html	Sun Jun 28 13:13:19 2020 -0600
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@
 		<div link><a href="docs.html">Documentation</a></div>
 		<div link><a href="download/">Download</a></div>
 		<div link><a href="https://hg.luan.ws/luan">Source</a></div>
-		<div link><a href="http://forum.luan.ws/">Forum</a></div>
+		<div link><a href="http://forum.luan.ws/">Support Forum</a></div>
+		<div link><a href="blasma.html">Blasma - proposed social forum</a></div>
 	</body>
 </html>
--- a/website/src/why.html	Thu Jun 25 23:17:14 2020 -0600
+++ b/website/src/why.html	Sun Jun 28 13:13:19 2020 -0600
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 <!doctype html>
 <html>
 	<head>
-		<title>Luan Documentation</title>
+		<title>Why Luan?</title>
 		<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
 		<style>
 			@import "site.css";
@@ -22,19 +22,17 @@
 
 		<h2>For the Right</h2>
 
-		<p>Those on the Right that think their issue is primarily political are basically modern scum, and Luan isn't for them.  But those on the Right that understand that the core issue is cultural and religious should find Luan appealing.  The West first decayed religiously and then decayed culturally.  This decay made the people evil to the point where they are completely incapable of producing anything good.  But this is recent, happening between 2000 and 2010.  America produced great software in the last century, and Luan is designed in this spirit.  Things like Unix, C, and the internet protocols were all designed for simplicity and power.  Luan has the same kind of design.</p>
+		<p>Those on the Right who think their issue is primarily political are basically modern scum, and Luan isn't for them.  But those on the Right that understand that the core issue is cultural and religious should find Luan appealing.  The West first decayed religiously and then decayed culturally.  This decay made the people evil to the point where they are completely incapable of producing anything good.  But this is recent, happening between 2000 and 2010.  America produced great software in the last century, and Luan is designed in this spirit.  Things like Unix, C, and the internet protocols were all designed for simplicity and power.  Luan has the same kind of design.</p>
 
-		<p>How does this matter practically?  The Right is suffering because the Left dominates technology.  And when the Right does try to produce technology, like a number of social media platforms, the results are poor.  I believe that one reason for this is that the Right is using software tools designed by the Left.  These tools are horrible and overcomplicated.  The Silicon Valley types who produce them are not stupid, they are just extremely evil.  So these tools are only really suited for them.  Decent programmers want simple tools that don't force them to struggle to conform to some insane ideology.  So decent programmers should use software produced in the West before it became fully depraved, meaning before 2000 to be safe.  When more recent software is needed, look for software produced outside of western culture.  For example <a href="https://nginx.org/">nginx</a> is okay because it was produced in Russia.</p>
+		<p>How does this matter practically?  The Right is suffering because the Left dominates technology.  And when the Right does try to produce technology, like a number of its social media platforms, the results are poor.  I believe that one reason for this is that the Right is using software tools designed by the Left.  These tools are horrible and overcomplicated.  The Silicon Valley types who produce them are not stupid, they are just extremely evil.  So these tools are only really suited for them.  Decent programmers want simple tools that don't force them to struggle to conform to some insane programming ideology.  So decent programmers should use software produced in the West before it became fully depraved, meaning before 2000 to be safe.  When more recent software is needed, look for software produced outside of western culture.  For example <a href="https://nginx.org/">nginx</a> is okay because it was produced in Russia.</p>
 
 		<p>I designed Luan in reaction to horrible modern software.  I think Luan should appeal to programmers on the Right who share my traditional western values.  And I think Luan would allow these programmers to more efficiently produce websites to compete with the Left.</p>
 
 		<h2>For Muslims</h2>
 
-		<p>Many Muslims seem to have lost sight of what the Quran teaches.  They focus on specific rituals when in fact the Quran has a broad message.  This broad message is to do good deeds and to generally seek the good and avoid the bad.  The Quran is meant as a general guide for how Muslims should conduct all of their life.  And this includes programming.</p>
+		<p>The Quran has a broad message to seek the good and avoid the bad.  This applies to all things including programming.  I am not Muslim, I follow the Old Testament.  But all scripture inspired by God has a similar message.  Programming is a way of expressing ideas, just like any kind of writing.  And where are ideas best expressed?  In scripture.  I try to use the writing style of the Torah as my guide for how I should program.  Biblical Hebrew is a very simple language, yet the Torah expresses profound ideas in a simple and direct way using this language.  This is exactly what one wants from good programming.  And Luan is designed for this kind of programming.</p>
 
-		<p>I am not Muslim, I follow the Old Testament.  But all scripture has a similar message.  Programming is a way of expressing ideas, just like any kind of writing.  And where are ideas best expressed?  In scripture.  I use the writing style of the Torah as my guide for how I should program.  Biblical Hebrew is a very simple language, yet the Torah expresses profound ideas in a simple and direct way using this language.  This is exactly what one wants from good programming.  And Luan is designed for this kind of programming.</p>
-
-		<p>Look at modern culture, especially the culture of Silicon Valley.  Can any religious person deny that this culture is the product of Satan?  And so their software is inspired by Satan.  Is this the kind of software that a Muslim or any religious person should use?</p>
+		<p>Look at modern western culture, especially the culture of Silicon Valley.  Can any religious person deny that this culture is the product of Satan?  And so their software is inspired by Satan.  Is this the kind of software that a Muslim or any religious person should use?</p>
 
 		<p>As I use the Torah for inspiration, Muslims should use the Quran.  Consider how ideas are expressed in the Quran and try to apply the same style to your programming.  The Silicon Valley obsession with programming ideologies is really nothing more than idolatry.  Don't allow idolatry into your code.  Scripture is full of general wisdom.  I have <a href="http://software.mikraite.org/The-Old-Testament-on-Programming-tp3.html">applied</a> the wisdom of the Old Testament to programming.  Muslims should try to do the same with the Quran.</p>
 
@@ -42,9 +40,9 @@
 
 		<h2>For Japanese</h2>
 
-		<p>Japan is the only remaining culture that I know of that values quality.  The Japanese understand that quality is the result of keeping things clean and simple, and of continuous improvement.  I have applied these things to Luan.  I discussed how Japanese ideas apply to my programming <a href="http://www.mikraite.org/Core-Programming-Principles-tp1237.html">here</a>.  I think you can see all these principles in my code.</p>
+		<p>Japan is the only remaining culture that I know of that values quality.  The Japanese understand that quality is the result of keeping things clean and simple, and of continuous improvement.  I have applied these things to Luan.  I discussed how Japanese ideas apply to my programming <a href="http://www.mikraite.org/Core-Programming-Principles-tp1237.html">here</a>.  I think you can see all of these principles in my code.</p>
 
-		<p>Western software does not follow these idea.  Instead it just continuously gets more complicated and unreliable.  In contrast, Luan has been getting simpler and more reliable over the years as a result of continuous improvement.  You cannot expect to achieve Japanese standards of quality and reliability if you use modern western software.  So use Luan instead.</p>
+		<p>Western software does not follow these ideas.  Instead it just continuously gets more complicated and unreliable.  In contrast, Luan has been getting simpler and more reliable over the years as a result of continuous improvement.  You cannot expect to achieve Japanese standards of quality and reliability if you use modern western software.  So use Luan instead.</p>
 
 		<h2>For Chinese</h2>
 
@@ -58,7 +56,7 @@
 
 		<p>Many Chinese programmers are willing to struggle to make any tool work.  But this is a mistake because most of the work in programming isn't writing the code, it is maintaining the code.  With messy code, the struggle never ends.  But with clean readable code, maintenance is easy.  Luan is designed to be simple and readable, so code written in Luan should be easier to maintain than code written in another language.</p>
 
-		<h2>For Nabble Users</h2>
+		<h2 id=nabble>For Nabble Users</h2>
 
 		<p><a href="https://www.nabble.com/">Nabble</a> is a forum platform that I developed long ago, before I fully understood the importance of simplicity.  Because users wanted to customize their forums, I developed <a href="http://naml.nabble.com/">NAML</a>.  This started out as a simple macro language that looks like HTML.  But as more and more functionality was needed in NAML, it grew into a monster.  Now I hate my own creation.  The lesson I learned is that front end code needs logic, so it should be implemented with a full programming language.  I actually started working on Luan as a replacement for NAML, but Luan was so successful for me that I ended up using it in many projects.  Because Luan was designed for end-users, it is the simplest programming language that I know of.  I hope that a future replacement for Nabble will use Luan for customization.  In that case, customization will be easy and unlimited.</p>