[jlehman]

Ideas are cheap, and Urbit isn't just an idea any longer. It's a working system that's been built by dozens of people over the years, and it's only picking up steam.

In Ron Garrett's words:

> The mere fact that Urbit is still a thing, that it has not yet collapsed under the weight of its own intentionally induced baggage, is worrisome to me. Something is keeping that project alive, and it's not technical merit. I don't see a lot of viable options other than some kind of fanaticism.

Looks like he and his ilk are just wrong and having a hard time believing that. It's alive because an increasing number of people want it to be, and no amount of theorizing can deny the reality of actual growth — which, in case everyone forgot, is what the OP is showing.

[ineptech]

I agree that urbit has far outlasted all of the nay-sayers in a technical sense. People have been saying "this is some elaborate joke" for years, but the project has made steady progress and really is pretty usable now. It does what it says on the side of the tin, that's quite an achievement.

But, whatever its technical merits, do you think it can ever get to a point where it reached enough users to be useful (in the "chicken and egg problem" sense that platforms need a critical mass of users to be useful platforms), given the millstone around its neck? Do threads like this (where detailed, technical explanations get downvoted to oblivion, and "I heard Yarvin is racist" is the top comment) make you want to throw in the towel?

[jlehman]

It has enough users to be useful now, which number in the thousands. It's also not a service that anyone maintains on behalf of others, so there's no one that needs to have a critical mass for it to be useful. Nearly everyone running Urbit is self-hosting locally or on some VPS somewhere, and they can do that indefinitely even if no more code was ever pushed.

If this kind of stuff made anyone want to throw in the towel Urbit wouldn't be a thing anymore. There's only a millstone around its neck on HN, but HN is gradually becoming more and more irrelevant. To our base and the people finding us, "I don't think about you at all" reflects their sentiment for HN conversations and the tenor of conversation that happens here.

I'm just here because someone told me (from within Urbit) that this post went up, it's Friday and I don't have as many meetings, and I couldn't resist myself. You seem fine though, so boot a comet and hit me up on the network if you want a planet or something to keep the conversation going.