(Old) (No longer true) The end of Vichan maintenance. (Vichan has reached END OF LIFE)

[ctrlcctrlv]

Well, I have tried and tried to find a new maintainer.

Unsuccessfully.

@perdedora was the latest. Just poofed as usual, no communication.

@czaks will either return or he won't. I am archiving this repository. Email copypaste@kittens.ph to discuss this matter.

[ctrlcctrlv]

And, regarding all the DMCA nonsense in that thread, you all are making assumptions. I do not care that Kolyma, which was so under my radar I hadn't noticed it, is technically breaking the terms of the license. Imagine me trying to pull into Moscow with a DMCA and go testify to Putin's judges, are you folks dense?

No, that will not happen. I view it more as a reflection on the bad faith of Kolyma that they eliminated the required footer, which was a policy instituted not by me, but by @savetheinternet which @czaks followed out of legal obligation as STI was quite demanding at that time and making legal threats. If Kolyma wants to show good faith they can restore it. But even if they do not, should @basedgentoo disappear again, that won't factor into my decision-making process.

All the best.

[Jvrtychud]

Seems reasonable You can email kuz at admin@jakparty.soy BTW

[KUZLOVER1237]

And, regarding all the DMCA nonsense in that thread, you all are making assumptions. I do not care that Kolyma, which was so under my radar I hadn't noticed it, is technically breaking the terms of the license. Imagine me trying to pull into Moscow with a DMCA and go testify to Putin's judges, are you folks dense?

No, that will not happen. I view it more as a reflection on the bad faith of Kolyma that they eliminated the required footer, which was a policy instituted not by me, but by @savetheinternet which @czaks followed out of legal obligation as STI was quite demanding at that time and making legal threats. If Kolyma wants to show good faith they can restore it. But even if they do not, should @basedgentoo disappear again, that won't factor into my decision-making process.

All the best.

[RealAngeleno]

Kuz's actual email is kuz@kolyma.net and can be found at https://temucin.ru

[gemeraldenjoyer]

>github soyduel

truly a new era

[ctrlcctrlv]

Thanks @RealAngeleno . I believe your word as a committer so saved that one to my address book. This issue is resolved to my satisfaction.

[basedgentoo]

Community support server is now linked in the README btw.

KolymaNET does own more than one website. He's lying about that. But if he steps up as maintainer and actually keeps the source open and doesn't hinder it's development, I don't care who gets it. I just want the software to be maintained. Kuz does have the resources to do it, but so did Jim with 8chan. I just don't want to see the same thing happen here.

Much the same way Jim rushed in to save 8chan, Kuz could be rushing in to save vichan just to ruin it. If you look into him, you'll see that he does indeed own more than one website.

[ctrlcctrlv]

Right, I wouldn't just mark him owner and remove myself until a long time of demonstrated maintenance. Same thing I always do. The goal is always to find someone to be the sole owner along with @czaks, just trying to keep my promise to him. :-)

[45ytjfgdu745754745745]

I am supportive of the new maintainer of Vichan, I hope that it can succeed with new owner, and prosper with better fixes. I will set aside resources from development team to maintain Vichan, as I have maintained hundreds of other PHP projects, if the current maintainer ever wishes to begin such a thing.

I, not a developer, did remove the footer, but I did not know it was not positively supported, so I will put it back.

KolymaNET does own more than one website. He's lying about that. But if he steps up as maintainer and actually keeps the source open and doesn't hinder it's development, I don't care who gets it. I just want the software to be maintained. Kuz does have the resources to do it, but so did Jim with 8chan. I just don't want to see the same thing happen here.

Hm. you didnt listen. I only own soyjak.party - I speak for myself, kolymanet may own some sites, but I only own 1. There is no good in rushing the software, vichan just needs to be recieving good updates from time to time, if you provide that, It is good, so many people will be able to use vichan. But, you do not have a history at all, so there is alot of mistrust about. In any case, its hard to verify in this enviroment. So I wish you alot of luck!

[ctrlcctrlv]

@kuz-sysadmin Hello. The footer thing is a bit of vichan lore, users are probably just using it to troll. It goes all the way back to 2010, lol.

[gemeraldenjoyer]

KUZZY KUZ we love you 💖💖

[Syerek]

Kolyma does own more than one website, you are correct. Yet the conversation was discussing Kuz, who only owns soyjak.party. All the other sites Kolyma provides service for are owned by other admins and customers of the network. To make it clear, the only site the owner of KolmyaNET owns is soyjak.party.

[basedgentoo]

I am supportive of the new maintainer of Vichan, I hope that it can succeed with new owner, and prosper with better fixes. I will set aside resources from development team to maintain Vichan, as I have maintained hundreds of other PHP projects, if the current maintainer ever wishes to begin such a thing.

Does this mean you want me to act as maintainer while you set resources to keep the development active here in open source code? If that's what you're wanting to do, I'd love to have that. It'd be the best of both worlds: Independent owner, not affiliated with any particular site, along with the backing necessary to keep the project alive and working.

Either way, I'm glad that the software is getting some attention and might see some activity again. Even if it isn't me as the maintainer.

[ctrlcctrlv]

@kuz-sysadmin

If you want information on the footer, I'll write my recollection.

So, the original Tinyboard, by a man we only knew as "Michael Save", who was claimed to have been "doxed" as Michael Horowitz (but I think this is an antisemitic meme and not a real dox), was written by @savetheinternet.

It's my understanding that all that's binding on us is Michael's license because vichan forked from Michael's code.

His license was:

https://github.com/savetheinternet/Tinyboard/blob/7a68fc952548d3f275518f675888143d93e9148a/LICENSE.md

License

Copyright (c) 2010-2013 Tinyboard Development Group (tinyboard.org)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

All copyright notices and permission notices (including this file) shall be included and remain unedited in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. This explicitly includes but is not limited to the Tinyboard copyright notices found in the footers of some template files.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

I am not a lawyer but I read this as binding. @czaks updated it to say that vichan's notices are also mandatory for repetition on sites running vichan, but @czaks would not have done so had Michael not made the first move.

And I've made no moves at all at any time regarding this issue and don't plan to. I just view it as a sign of good faith/bad faith and nothing else.

[pepeenjoyer]

I'm the dev for frenschan. I'd prefer a maintainer unaffiliated with a particular imageboard. I'll try to publish my changes soon. It would be good to have all the various imageboards merge their important changes back to this repo.

[basedgentoo]

So yes, @kuz-sysadmin , I would be happy to work with you to help keep vichan functional and I greatly appreciate any resources you'll contribute to the project.

[45ytjfgdu745754745745]

Does this mean you want me to act as maintainer while you set resources to keep the development active here in open source code? If that's what you're wanting to do, I'd love to have that. It'd be the best of both worlds: Independent owner, not affiliated with any particular site, along with the backing necessary to keep the project alive and working.

If you are a PHP developer, I would not be opposed to providing you resources to work on Vichan, definitely so, but if that were the case, I think a small commission of maintainers, not just 1 should be made, to make it fair for the people who give resources to it. Perhaps a kolyma developer and another third party, such as angeleno, if he is interested in that, or other people who are less affiliated. By resources, I am not sure what I can give you, but I as a provider of infrastructure could give a virtual server for testing the software for you, and of course instruct kolyma developers to aid in the process. But otherwise, I dont know. What resources do you have in mind?

[ctrlcctrlv]

This was the state of play as known to me in 2/2021:

[basedgentoo]

If you are a PHP developer

I would not call myself a "professional php developer" by any stretch.

And I agree with you in regards to having a commission of maintainers. It should be distributed, so that if one point fails, the project is not abandoned. I kind of want to serve as the anchor of that person who will always be there to assist with issues and pay up when things break to get things fixed if that's what is needed.

Overall I think what we need is kolyma developers to work on the code and make sure everything is in compliance with the latest PHP spec. Keeping up with the PHP spec is the most important thing, because changes break the software. After that, bug fixes and QOL improvements. We should try to get all the old, longstanding bugs fixed. We should also make QOL improvements; both for the user and server resources. The software should scale to a large audience and be able to support a large user base.

In addition, new anti spam features are needed. With AI, botposting is going to become a massive issue. And a good way to filter CSAM and empower moderators to deal with users who are trying to get sites taken down.

Overall, I just want to get this to a point to where it's stable, and is in full compliance with the PHP spec. Then we can worry about new features. In particular, there are a lot of features from NPFchan that we could cherry-pick in, after review to make sure the code is safe, good, and stable.

[ctrlcctrlv]

Fredrick R. Brennan Modular Font Editor K Foundation, Inc. №597D North Raleigh Avenue Atlantic City, New Jersey, 08401-1081 copypaste@kittens.ph

Save yourselves the trouble.

[basedgentoo]

I like how you've been completely rational here and explained everything, along with the fact that you have no malicious intent, yet their intent is still to dox you and try to fuck with you in some way, when all you did is meme on a github repo

lmao

[ctrlcctrlv]

Some folks got trolled and are seething, it's fine, it's happened before and will happen again. I have that effect on people, but this project has a future now where previously it had none, so I succeeded in my objectives.

[45ytjfgdu745754745745]

And I agree with you in regards to having a commission of maintainers. It should be distributed, so that if one point fails, the project is not abandoned. I kind of want to serve as the anchor of that person who will always be there to assist with issues and pay up when things break to get things fixed if that's what is needed.

Overall, it seems then that we are on the same page, and heading in the right direction. I am not opposed to you being an overseer of it, as I do not want ownership or even to project an illusion of ownership of it. Though, I do have concerns about the negative things you wrote earlier. If you were simply misinformed, it would be great for the benefit of us if we work together as a team.

The developer was correct when he said that we were planning on developing our own software, but it is possible that if such an arrangement was made that kolyma would be actively involved in Vichan, than it is likely that I would divert the resources to vichan instead. Although, the developers who were excited about making a imageboard in kotlin would be dissapointed to be sent back to PHP... oh well ;_;

[ctrlcctrlv]

There are some ways to migrate from PHP. But I think it should be done peacemeal, if you still want technical advice from me. Previous attempts to start from zero proved too challenging as vichan has way too many features to completely rewrite from zero.

[ctrlcctrlv]

For example, I would try to first replace the index generator with something in another language. Then mod.php. Then post.php. And if development stalls, at least some progress was made, rather than no progress with monolithic approaches.

[basedgentoo]

I have never interacted with your directly, so I apologize if I came off as rude or misinformed. It seems to be that we both want the same thing, and I'd love to work with you to accomplish it. You definitely have the resources to make things happen. I was just concerned because there are some controversies to your site and your network.

From my side, I would love to have you involved in vichan, and I really appreciate you coming here and participating in this discussion. If there's anything I can do to help you, let me know. And again, apologies if I was misinformed.

[ctrlcctrlv]

Oh, sorry. It's D. As in David. Typo. Will edit my post lol.

[basedgentoo]

@kuz-sysadmin Can you confirm your contact e-mail address so we can talk about collaboration? If you know how to use GnuPG I can send you a signed message and we can go from there. If you don't know GnuPG we can find another way to setup off-site communications. I think you run an IRC server I can connect with?

[45ytjfgdu745754745745]

You can connect at irc.kolyma.net +6697. If you dont have a client, you can use chat.kolyma.net. I can respond to email for verification, but irc is best because the devs are there, and you can meet our guys.

[ctrlcctrlv]

Oh, I forgot to mention this, but for posterity while on the call with @basedgentoo I pushed the previous tip to the branch eolann20230324 ("EOL announcement 2023/03/24"). Because today's event is tomorrow's history.

[basedgentoo]

Once I'm in, I will verify my nick here. If you have NickServ I'll also register my nick.

[45ytjfgdu745754745745]

Alright

[ctrlcctrlv]

Sorry I will only connect over Tor but Tor is G-Lined. Please email me a SASL password or I won't be able to connect.

[basedgentoo]

@kuz-sysadmin I'm now registered with NickServ and connected to your network. My nick is basedgentoo.

@ctrlcctrlv if you need a semi-anonymous bouncer you could try irccloud. they don't give out ips.

[ctrlcctrlv]

I'd rather admins demonstrate competence over their ircd's and not just block all Tor users :-)

[pepeenjoyer]

How will future commits be licensed? I'd strongly prefer AGPL3 over a permissive license.

[ctrlcctrlv]

That's not for me to decide anymore and I won't even weigh in on it despite having opinions.

[basedgentoo]

It looks like Kuz and his team will be writing the bulk of the future code. I think they should choose between MIT and AGPL for their commits. Or perhaps a license which requires linking back to soyjak.party like how STI wanted people to link back to his site. Such a license would be included, and it would probably include a footer at every page linking back to soyjak.party. If the software gets better, more people will use it, and sites will upgrade to it. And soyjak.party will get more users as a result of this. I think this is the best winning move for everyone involved.

@kuz-sysadmin Thoughts on this?

[Jvrtychud]

Just make sure he doesn't add datamining or other anti-FOSS coal

[fatchan]

I'll take this opportunity to shill:

If you're looking for a maintained imageboard software, check out jschan -> https://gitgud.io/fatchan/jschan/

Live instances in the wild: https://ptchan.org/ https://zzzchan.xyz/ https://94chan.org/ https://jakparty.soy/ https://trashchan.xyz/index.html

[pepeenjoyer]

It looks like Kuz and his team will be writing the bulk of the future code. I think they should choose between MIT and AGPL for their commits. Or perhaps a license which requires linking back to soyjak.party like how STI wanted people to link back to his site. Such a license would be included, and it would probably include a footer at every page linking back to soyjak.party. If the software gets better, more people will use it, and sites will upgrade to it. And soyjak.party will get more users as a result of this. I think this is the best winning move for everyone involved.

@kuz-sysadmin Thoughts on this?

I think linking back to a site is a dumb idea. I could demand the same for my changes, and so could other altchans. Just a standard AGPL3 license will ensure that all forks must make their changes public and keep drama to a minimum.

[Jvrtychud]

I think linking back to a site is a dumb idea. I could demand the same for my changes, and so could other altchans. Just a standard AGPL3 license will ensure that all forks must make their changes public and keep drama to a minimum.

This so much this

[basedgentoo]

Alright everyone, final update (and it's a very exciting one!) Vichan is being taken on by new maintainers, and that those maintainers are me, Angeleno and Kuz, the owner of soyjak.party/KolymaNET. More details are to follow, but this is the resolution of the issue.

I look forward to working with everyone to help maintain vichan and keep it alive. Thank you very much to everyone who came to talk, and especially to Fred for caring about this software so much.

Thanks again! Closing the issue.