Loops became Open Source!

[chozo@fedia.io]

Dan is constantly talking about buyout requests he's receiving for Loops and Pixelfed, so much so that it makes me a bit suspicious of those claims. Nearly every other post I see from his Mastodon feed is bragging about another alleged buyout offer, and how he's not for sale.

Has he ever shown proof of any of these offers he's received? It's not that I want to doubt him, but he's been very persistent with this claim and I think it's fair to scrutinize it at this point.

[breadcat@sh.itjust.works]

the backend not the app

[psyspoop@lemm.ee]

It wasn't. He had previously said that he would open source it after it had become more stable, but there was a lot of skepticism that he would follow through.

[m_f@discuss.online]

Looks like skeleton code to me? I don't see how that could be what the site/app are running on

[m_f@discuss.online]

It wouldn't surprise me at all. Pixelfed got mainstream notice, and there's always someone willing to give you money. Pretty much every popular Firefox/Chrome addon developer gets emails about buying it, but those are usually just shady companies looking to push malware onto the existing install base.

Even apart from those, it wouldn't really surprise me to see some VC interest when Pixelfed hit #1 on the play store. They love the idea of glomming onto something that looks like a rocket and trying to ride it to the moon

[chicosuave@lemmy.world]

It is a time of predatory billionaires grabbing all forms of media. It would not surprise me if he did get offers. It would also be very unprofessional to broadcast the valuation of Loops and Pixelfed while turning down the offer. It would be like recording and showing someone asking for a date and getting rejected.

[adameatsass@lemmy.world]

I could give you like $20?

[xanthobilly@lemmy.world]

Is there no iPhone app?

[fxomt@lemm.ee]

Where's the code? There's only 9 commits to the backend and its only scaffold code. There's not even activitypub?

Same with the app. Was this just a publicity stunt?

[fxomt@lemm.ee]

Thank you for your generous offer, AdamEatsAss

[cmlvi@lemmy.world]

The Loops app certainly feels like it. Not to diminish a solo dev doing something on his own, but it just seems like a standard video player with like, comment, follow. Search feature is only by user; when you type a comment, it doesn't wrap the text, it just moves horizontally until you post it. I think the feed is literally just a chronological list of every video posted, and for some reason, most of the videos I see on it are just like...atmospheric videos. Still camera, nature background, rain in someone's backyard. People love the concept, but I don't see how it's anywhere near ready to compete for users like other options are right now.

[jqubed@lemmy.world]

If that quote is what was sent to him to entice him to sell that sounds strongly like a scam

[fxomt@lemm.ee]

The web UI has been teased for so long, too. I'm losing trust with dan. I mean im glad he found success with pixelfed, and i wouldn't even have a problem with how long it takes loops; but he's just dishonest. If he was more honest, transparent and open sourced the code early on i would've had no problem. But this? what is this?

[ste41th@lemmy.ml]

Appears to be in TestFlight

[cmlvi@lemmy.world]

I'm not a big Fediverse proponent, like...the concept is good, if not still a little young (activity pub isn't ironed out across mediums and is still a bit jank in my opinion) but it seems a bit like a cash grab to be the savior dev making all the X-equivalent of Fediverse, and just hopefully something sticks. With PixelFed blowing up, feel like Loops is gonna take a back seat for quite a while.

[ze_rosie_ro@lemmy.cafe]

Pardon my ignorance, I am new to the fediverse and have no idea what I’m doing.
But, when I signed up for loops on the website, I had to wait 3 days for them to send me a link to download a test-flight app for loops. I cannot recall if TestFlight is standard on iPhone or if I downloaded it previously.

[jimmycakes@lemmy.world]

Pretty sure those are ai linked in bots that send that message to every single email they can scrape off the open web lmao.

[mosiacmango@lemm.ee]

You should haggle a bit mate. I think a few things are on the table here.

[hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

He open sourced the "code". If you actually look in detail, there's no actual working code.

He also disabled issues on GitHub, so there's no way to report bugs (and thus discuss his code).

While he could be getting offers, everything about it just feels like a scam.

[stevo887@lemmings.world]

Test flight is opt in if I remember correctly and allows you to download beta versions of apps. So I would assume you signed up or activated it or whatever for an app.