Building on an open standard can be a grind. I'm opening yet another encrypted group proposal, aware of the fact that it will only increase the noise and complexity involved in choosing the correct one. But it's also an attempt to reconcile multiple current drafts to result in a better end result.

Introducing multiple sources of truth by decentralizing the nips repo seems like an awful idea to me. I'm personally keen on the benevolent dictator model, exhausting as it must be for fiatjaf. We need a little dutch boy who can stem the tide of complexity it the protocol itself - and attacks by large entities seeking to capture the protocol.

Allowing anyone to claim to host a canonical NIPs list fractures the protocol and will kill interoperability as everyone will increasingly just do their own thing. In addition, it makes the winner the one with the biggest marketing budget, imagine if Apple announced support for nostr and pointed to their own repo? With a founder in charge we can at least complain, but if we eliminate authority, the whole thing shatters.

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I respectfully disagree.

nostr:npub1jlrs53pkdfjnts29kveljul2sm0actt6n8dxrrzqcersttvcuv3qdjynqn i feel like the majority of arguments i’ve seen coming from you argue for centralization, top down authority, and/or censorship.

why is that?

Because the libertarian worldview is not complete. They get lots of things right (incentives, human action), but authority is part of the way the world works. You can either fill that vacuum with legitimate, well-defined authority, or with illegitimate, ill-defined authority. There is no such thing as no authority.

Compared to a libertarian I'm a rabid statist. Compared to a statist I'm a rabid libertarian. It's a matter of perspective and principles.

Thanks for asking btw, it's an important question.

I finally get it. what it is that i’ve felt around you that unsettles me. you are the kind of man who turns the church into an empire of man rather than the bride of love.

my prayer for you will be, whatever authority comes from God, He will strengthen. And whatever comes from that pride, will be destroyed.

this method has worked for bitcoin for 14 years and im fine with a small list of maintainers, just like bitcoin.

nostr is much simpler than bitcoin.

I’m not sure many of these NIP’s are required, seems like people trying to twist nostr to do many things outside the original scope.

You could declare nostr complete.

The story of the failure of XMPP has taught people nothing. At the end we will get 350 NIPs, 40 xNIPs, Google relay and three incredibly popular, but not compatible with each other clients 😂 One of which will be x.com

Don’t.

I think nostr has two things that set it apart from the rest. First. It's very simple. Literally anyone can write a basic relay and client. Once they've figured out WebSocket. It's a unicorn Apple can't catch. And the second is bitcoiners. It's not easy for companies to force anything on these people.

Looking forward to the new group msg proposal.

I disagree that we need to centralize NIPs. People can do whatever they want in Nostr. NIPs is just our current way to describe what we are doing to one another. If Apple comes in, they will come in with their stuff and there is nothing we can do to stop it.

#Nostr cannot survive something like browser wars over web standards IMO. Having a BDFL is the way to go. I truly belive things like Linux survived and ended up dominating the world only because they had a strong minded and stubborn leaders like Torvalds. If nostr:npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6 wants to and is up for it I’d support that decision 100%.

The biggest problem with the NIPs repo is the 134 open pull requests. Most of these are stale which leaves all those things in limbo, not to mention turns off new contributors. I don't think decentralizing maintenance of the protocol makes sense, it's a bridge too far, but there are many projects who provide a good example of how to maintain protocol documents, BIPs for example.

I actually love the open PRs. I look at them more than the approved NIPs these days.

Open PRs for me are just ideas. Some are good, some are bad, and most of them are just terribly written, especially if the author is not coding them.

Unless somebody codes those ideas, they will never go forward. And that's ok. They can be there waiting for the light of day.

100%

this is a great take

As a maintainer, I regularly review the open PRs looking to close stale ones. But most of them are good ideas that just need a client sponsor or two to go through.

maybe nostr doesn’t need DMs

I like my nostr dms /: even tho they already basically out in the open

" authority " is a crutch, killing the power in the mind of this supposed mythical postion can only empower the individuals to think for themselves and create solutions that they can solve themselves as well. Im all for this!