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@stefano@bsd.cafe @chrism@social.nfbsd.dev @justine@snac.smithies.me.uk

I'm pretty naive and tend to trust people until I have reason not do. It might be an unusual development setup but given the quality of what it has produced thus far, I'm happy. Very happy.

There's always risk if you go looking for it. My main concern is probably that @stefano@bsd.cafe appears to be a single point of failure and a potential bottleneck in this setup and let's not forget he has a day job too. However, the project was released just a fortnight ago and already a V2 release is imminent.

Also, the project could be forked if it ever stalled or Stefano walked away to open a pizza restaurant.

As for contributing, while it's not ideal, the source is available so theoretically one could submit a patch to Stefano and let the devs have the headache of merging into the development branch.

There was also risk on my previous hosted Mastodon instance. The admins may have got bored or the costs of hosting may have proved prohibitive, meaning the instance closed down (it's happened many times). I've been bitten before, that's one reason I got GoToSocial and Snac running yesterday. Firstly, to check the interoperability with LittleFedi and secondly as a lifeboat, just in case.

@jac@404brain.boo Yes. My use of 'non-technical' users is slightly tongue in cheek and self-deprecating.

I often used the term at work to lure clients (Oracle DBA's) into a false sense of security ('Oh god, he's just another pesky consultant') and then ambush them with deep, probing, technical questions. Never blag a blagger ! :-)

I suspect your technical skills are similar to mine. We can acquire a domain name, purchase some cheap VPS hosting, spin up a Linux instance, maintain, secure and update that server, install/remove Linux packages, follow instructions to install third party software packages and log bug reports and enhancement requests to (hopefully) provide useful feedback to the developers.

However, I wouldn't class my as a developer and can't troubleshoot network and firewall issues without resorting to Google.

So yes, we are 'technical' but just not wizards !

@andyc @evan@cosocial.ca @stefano@bsd.cafe The relay URL returns

{
  "@context": [
    "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
    "https://w3id.org/security/v1",
    "https://purl.archive.org/socialweb/webfinger",
    "https://purl.archive.org/miscellany"
  ],
  "id": "https://tags.pub/user/_____relay_____",
  "type": "Service",
  "inbox": "https://tags.pub/user/_____relay_____/inbox",
  "webfinger": "_____relay_____@tags.pub",
  "publicKey": {
    "id": "https://tags.pub/user/_____relay_____/publickey",
    "type": "CryptographicKey",
    "owner": "https://tags.pub/user/_____relay_____",
    "publicKeyPem": "-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----\nMIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEAqfyIbcZBXNHinOQbDjaY\nj1c7WJSnb5t/QhuGXt/4rbs7NFYkKexASLy8lGkStHeSkuIRBCg7KbN+DoRKjaMI\nSpfwBXmpYmYLy8TTzMU9cIv/wDWbeWnKkCizMObYWMMPOmCdoQ3SfyrI3bA1a+kP\ndqbEnK/tQhwRRjvYhGj4+g6FDrrUgLZRArqOfVdPFg4v7BvK42FSHz70wFrTys/U\nM6VUQ3YQzwDmnbQMjvILy0wX6r5E7onDBk4PW8ktG/xXLQvIjrWIJLVDaOmyTPLU\ntebS7NZt7Kc9Y9Bfv6ndAvzTRDseoXrE/kSXl8DuLn3hJ43IBIbjsUb/2+cmyp3I\nhQIDAQAB\n-----END PUBLIC KEY-----\n",
    "to": "as:Public"
  },
  "endpoints": {
    "sharedInbox": "https://tags.pub/shared/inbox"
  },
  "followers": "https://tags.pub/user/_____relay_____/followers",
  "following": "https://tags.pub/user/_____relay_____/following",
  "liked": "https://tags.pub/user/_____relay_____/liked",
  "manuallyApprovesFollowers": false,
  "name": "Mastodon Relay Server Bot",
  "outbox": "https://tags.pub/user/_____relay_____/outbox",
  "preferredUsername": "_____relay_____",
  "summary": "A bot for accepting relay subscriptions",
  "to": "as:Public",
  "url": {
    "type": "Link",
    "href": "https://tags.pub/profile/_____relay_____",
    "mediaType": "text/html"
  }
}