If you care about nostr you shouldn't use Primal. Closed source. No relay selection. Baaad.
No shade, they've done a great job, but it's not open, nor is it decentralized.
Discussion
Not open source doesn’t feel like a dealbreaker to me if they have great UX.
No relay selection is not ideal. I run my own relay to backup my Nostr activity, and I can't connect with primal. There are workarounds, but it's rather not.
I agree its super lame (great client otherwise), however these things will inevitably get made and there will be people who prefer them. But I agree in the early stages at least we should put our energy into software that’s serious about promoting decentralization.
I agree. At this stage we need to focus only on full open source solutions, they are the best "educational marketing" for nostr.
Hey hodlbod, let's take a closer look at how we're doing things at Primal, if you don't mind.
We open sourced our caching service under the MIT license as soon as we thought it was ready. The plan is to do the same thing with our web client when we reach v1.0 in the coming weeks. Relay selection is absolutely a part of the v1.0 release.
Our caching approach is different (no sense in doing the same thing as everyone else!), but it is definitely open: anyone can use it to stand up caching services. This approach could help scale Nostr as well as even boost censorship resistance. I discussed this with nostr:npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6, nostr:npub1l2vyh47mk2p0qlsku7hg0vn29faehy9hy34ygaclpn66ukqp3afqutajft and nostr:npub1az9xj85cmxv8e9j9y80lvqp97crsqdu2fpu3srwthd99qfu9qsgstam8y8 last week on NVK's podcast.
It's okay to disagree about the best way to implement clients, scale Nostr or boost decentralization. However it's probably too early to discard any specific approach.
Sounds good 👍
I actually like the caching approach, at least in theory. Do you have a link so I can take a closer look? I may set it up for use with Coracle.
Once you release the source and add relays I'll take everything back! I think starting closed is a reasonable decision, but IMO the wrong one. It's the same mistake BlueSky is making, and it's basically indistinguishable from an attack on nostr in general.
And in case you hadn't heard it from me through other channels, great work on the client, especially the Explore tab, very original work there.
Sounds like nostr:nprofile1qqsdv8emcke7k3qqaldwv956tstu40ejg663gdsaayuuujs6pknw7jspr3mhxue69uhkummnw3ez6vp39e3x7mr59ehkyum9wfmx2uspr9mhxue69uhhyetvv9uk2u3wve5kzar2v9nzucm0d5q3kamnwvaz7tmwdaehgu339e682mnwv4k8xct5wvhxxmmdqyw8wumn8ghj7mn0wd68yttjv4kxz7fwwak8vuewwdcxzcm9qyw8wumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnzd96xxmmfdejhytnnda3kjctvqyt8wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnwdaehgu3wd9hxvmcpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduq36amnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3dwp6kytnhv4kxcmmjv3jhytnwv46qq4ksye is planning on open sourcing the v1 release of Primal with relay support, which is good news.