When I showed what I'm doing to a friend, specifically what I'm doing to implement following and private content as implemented by well known social networks, he remarked that I'm just replacing one walled garden with another. He seemed happy with the explanation on why this is not the case, so I'm going to share it here.

The motivation for this project comes primarily from me being tired of the modern internet - and by that, I actually mean walled gardens. Judging by the conversation we had, it doesn't seem that there is consensus of what is meant by the term "walled garden". In general, the metaphor works by equating the account system with a wall and the content provided by the application with a garden. Obviously. But this is missing the point, as many things that are not "walled gardens" can be fitted into this model. Your home, with its coziness bounded by walls. Playgrounds with fences guarding the equipment. Instagram. A folder on your server protected by a .htaccess file. The crucial part of the metaphor is actually in the placement of the actors and their mobility. Walled gardens are hard to leave, and there is little to no interaction with the outside world, which is best left ignored. Walled gardens are like prisons.

Looking at the examples above again, none except for the social network are like prisons. Homes and playgrounds are keeping the ones inside safe, unlike prisons which bring safety to the world outside. Likewise, the mechanism I'm building is keeping the inside safe. I want to be able to share personal photos with people I know and trust - the same people I'll gladly invite to my home for a cup of coffee. There will be texts I'd like reviewed, and files I would otherwise upload to the cloud. At the same time, I fully intend to make most of the content public, and for this no special access won't be needed. Both of these use cases are what the old internet is good for; communicating directly with people you know, and meeting new friendly people and saying hi.

The name "Jira" is supposedly a result of a joke. The bug tracker everyone used was Bugzilla, and who better to kill it than Gojira - Jira for short. Yes, that's the joke.

Jira is actually an Eldritch horror. The one that makes your eyes bleed from fear you only realize you're experiencing after your hair falls out and gets replaced by scales. Your soul gets consumed in pieces by the dark legion and you become them.

What does "becoming them" mean, you ask? Oh, it's just when you start saying shit like "Jira is very powerful", or "It definitely can be done in Jira, but I'm not sure how". It's when you tout pair programming but feel content with having a single person assigned to the task, and then they miss standup but luckily someone else starts talking about the ticket and it's not confusing at all. The change happens when it's 2022, but a yellow popup asking you to refresh the page brings a smile to your face.

Wait! (says you, unfazed by Cthulu rising from the ocean and bringing terror) Jira lets you link tasks from different projects, which is crucial in a company as large as yours. It comes with LINKS! Which are otherwise not available on the web. Burndown charts, full traceability, roles; you continue spitting from mouth-like openings in your skin while Jira side-panes multiply sideways unhinged, obscuring the tickets and purpose until the inevitable crash.

I try saving what's left of you. Intuitively, I press the dot, and type "recrudesce". The wizard is easy and it's only seventeen steps. On step four I realize that by saving you I lost myself.