As much as I respect all he's done as a builder, he does have an aggressive "my way or the highway" approach to development.
He went on a big rant against me just for giving polite feedback on OnlyZaps that he didn't like.
I had to point out to him that users testing experimental features and giving feedback is literally what a public beta is for.
Doesn't seem to wanna hear it unless someone is kissing his backside tho.
And every push seems to create another bug so I can understand him being aggressive if he’s fearful of breaking things.
Also, if one doesn’t know how to do something it can also be scary and a lot of people have a hard time keeping their composure when trying to think through things.
From what I remember you suggested to replace secp256k1 keys with ed25519. This isn’t even a serious suggestion and would hard fork nostr.
Yes I am opinionated when it comes to my client. I am allowed to do that, and if you don’t like it you can write your own client that does the “better thing”. That’s the beauty of nostr. No one needs to force anyone else to adopt their “better” idea, it should roughly all work together regardless, unless you break a core thing like signatures.
This is exactly what I'm talking about.
Why are you being so aggressive?
Please point to where I claimed you are "not allowed" to have an opinion?
I'm merely pointing out the futility of having an open beta to gather user feedback when your response to anything you don't agree with is "fuck off and make your own one then."
You're entitled to your view as much as I am mine, but I wouldn't solicit user feedback on experimental new features if all I'm doing is responding with hostility to anyone I disagree with.
I just don’t see being opinionated as aggression, but alrighty ✌️
Another strawman.
You can be opinionated without being aggressive.
You just happen to do both.
You’re the most aggressive person I’ve interacted with on this network.
How so?
I actually agree with many of your suggestions and have complimented the UX and stability of Damus many times.
In fact in the OP that started this very discussion I said I respect you as a developer and all the work you've done on Damus.
Where are you seeing this hostility exactly?
Because I disagree with you sometimes?
It’s a Larry alt angry you didn’t go in on .btc
No I'm referring to my feedback on OnlyZaps where you went on a tirade in response to my politely expressed opinion that the implementation could be improved if you only altered the UX for the user who turned the feature on, not other users, as well as listing other issues like the assumption "no one would see your likes" which is only true if every Nostr client in the world adopted your feature the same way, plus it'd create more noise as people would use replies instead of hitting a like button.
Clearly my views were shared by many as you did eventually relent on this, but even then you did so with sarcastic changelogs.
Wrt Ed25519 it wasn't a feature request but more a general musing. You talked about using Nostr keys to replace PGP. I supported this idea but pointed out the inherent weakness in only being able to use sepc256k.
The addition of more secure (and better performing) ECC curves wouldn't require a fork of anything. Did moving away from RSA fork PGP and SSH?
A NIP could establish support for both curves. Clients can easily add support, there's libraries for Ed25519 in every programming language. New keys could be generated using Ed25519. Existing keys could even use the delegation feature Nostr already has.
I implemented your feedback even though I didn’t agree with it, this makes it “my way or the highway”?
I think you’ve listened to almost everyone and tried to find the best way to implement something if you can. I don’t understand all that’s going on around here but have always felt you’ve had good intentions. Thanks for #[6] and thank you to all the other devs making amazing apps using nostr!
I did say you eventually relented on it, but again I'm simply pointing out that responding to user feedback on a beta with rudeness and hostility kinda defeats the purpose of a public beta.
And let's be real, so many people disliked your implementation that you knew someone would call your bluff and fork your client if you didn't change it, and many of your users would rather use that fork.
I also note you didn't respond to my rather obvious point that adding support for additional elliptic curves doesn't require a hard fork of anything. This isn't a blockchain where changing the cryptography creates a new consensus protocol.
This is a decentralised network built on top of TCP/IP where clients can add support for additional curves while providing backwards compatibility - exactly as TLS, SSH, and PGP have already done many times.
That's why my SSH and PGP keys use Ed25519 without requiring a fork.
I think it’s fair to give JB a lot of credit for his efforts and listening to feedback. Be mindful it’s all experimentation, and sometimes burning bridges is the only way to encourage change.. some people still use fax machines… why..
I think of a lot of Nostr devs may be a little raw in their responses because things are moving fast, dev time limited, and in reality, we’re slowly working towards a burnt-out like state. I’d try not to take it personally.. it’s a side effect of a new crazy little chaotic thing called Nostr.
That's how I view it as well. We're seeing all this stuff built in real time and devs of different clients have their own visions of how Nostr should work.
Since it's all decentralised, the market will ultimately decide what gets implemented as a standard across all clients and what ends up a failed experiment.
It's part of being early and it's exciting to be part of it.
I also respect that the devs are probably burnt out. They probably also see their creations as their babies, they form emotional attachment to what they've made, which is only natural.
But I don't think that justifies taking it out on the users, especially ones who are happy to beta test and provide feedback.
nostr:npub1gcxzte5zlkncx26j68ez60fzkvtkm9e0vrwdcvsjakxf9mu9qewqlfnj5z dev of Amethyst for example works hard and I'm sure gets burnt out too, plus his experimental features have also generated a lot of controversy, but I have never seen him behave aggressively towards his users.
I've given him feedback on how I think he could better approach implementations of features and never received an angry or aggressive response or been told "go make your client then."
It's not that I take any of this personally, but if you care for Nostr as we all do, we aren't going to help mass adoption if a dev of a major client is aggressive and hostile towards anyone who doesn't like 100% of his ideas.
