@shapis Almost 20 years ago, I followed Lawrence Lessig’s RSS feed. He made a request for software that could be used to advance slides on a remote computer. I knew AppleScript fairly well and thought, “how hard can that be?”. I wrote a one script that would “listen” for the text “Next Slide” in iChat and then try to advance whatever was open in PowerPoint. I wrote another script with a basic UI so the presenter could easily “type” Next Slide while presenting. It was basic, but it worked. I think I shared the code with an MIT license. Even though the code was free and Dr. Lessig already agreed to meet with a class about IP Law at the university I was working for at the time, he also contributed $50 to my project. He could have just downloaded the scipts and used them without paying anything, but that simple act changed my life. I realized that some people who could afford it would pay for code I even when I was giving away. Most people don’t, but enough do that I’ve been able to continue contributing my code, helping to fix bugs in other people’s code and sponsoring other projects today.
@JollyTreecko@lemmy.dbzer0.com I am reading, up voting and commenting on this thread from https://kbin.melroy.org/m/fediverse@lemmy.world/t/99078/What-are-the-practical-benefits-of-the-fediverse
The way I quickly explain the Fediverse to technical folks is it is like public email with voting and open trigger tracking baked in. ActivityPub is the SMTP of an ecosystem of multiple domains and clients with varying policies and features.
What is happening with Threads is very similar to when AOL started making it easier for the people within their walled garden to interact with the rest of the internet.
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de @Carighan@lemmy.world