The beauty of open source software DOES give us the freedom to just fork the software and build the experience that you wish to have. However, that doesn't mean that we need to throw user experience out the window either.
Discussion
Everyone says that clients can be forked, but few people say that you can write your own clients. A client don't have to be Amethyst, a client can be very simple and small. For example, a special Nostr client for valentines! Or fartstr for posting randomly generated fart sounds
Fartstr probably allows Eth tips.
The most important thing is to prepare ourselves now for the fact that we are going to have to live on a planet where there is such a Nostr client.
While that client will exist, and I hope that it does as it will show the openness of the protocol, I don't have to use it or associate with people that do.
Agreed and I am happy that so many Nostr projects are open source. But for most users, myself included, the freedom to do so does not mean we have the ability to do so. I’m technical and can figure out a lot of things, but I can’t code, so I can’t just fork something and add features myself.
I believe most devs care about what their users want and would implement changes, if applicable, if enough users wanted it. We just need to have these discussions. Additionally, we need to incentivize them via bounties for features. They like to eat too. I wish this became more of a standard. If you want something, you create a GitHub issue and offer a bounty for it.
Bounties can work, and it’s great when they do. I’m not sure the best approach when it comes to the topic of poorly implemented algorithmic feeds, such as with Primal. Discoverability of people and content has been one of Primal’s selling points so I can understand what they wouldn’t want to get rid of it. But because it has become a popular client, people are now incentivized to manipulate the algorithm. Other users that take notice and expose it are then deemed the bad guy because “reasons.” But this issue eventually extends beyond just Primal. Damus is adding suggested follows. Plebstr has had suggested follows for some time. Nostur has an “explore” tab. Nostr.band has their trending feeds. The lack of algorithmic manipulation has been a huge positive for users on Nostr, especially those coming from Twitter. I would love to see devs make this a higher priority issue. Clearly algorithmic feeds are going to happen one way or another. It would be incredible to see Nostr devs take a cooperative approach to solving the issues surrounding them. We have absolutely incredible devs working on these apps, and I can only imagine what they could come up with if they did.
Tell apple to bring back zaps, please. 🤣 I am glad Will could "Test Flight" the zaps back into my life.