Today's question for a resilient #Fediverse is whether various different initiatives are willing to collaborate and cross-pollinate, while keeping their independence.
There's great opportunity to increase the cohesion of the #GrassrootsFedi#ActivityPub developer community and creating strong joins:
Facebook/Meta starts talking about the "Extend" phase of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish as predicted:
"“You could imagine an extension to the protocol eventually — of saying like, ‘I want to support micropayments,’ or … like, ‘hey, feel free to show me ads, if that supports you.’ Kind of like a way for you to self-label or self-opt-in. That would be great,”
GNU @Taler is free software, and @NGI_Taler has open calls to let you implement the payment system for your free software. It would totally make sense to apply at protocol level to solve it for #ActivityPub federation.
Yes, as co-facilitator of #FEP, that is the point. Highly in favor of a bottom-up 3-phase standards process designed to guarantee an open ecosystem and tech landscape. Wrote a bunch about that on #SocialHub:
So, the thing about basing a communication protocol on json-ld (or any rdf format, it doesn't matter) is that it's an incredibly bad idea. To illustrate, consider the long term nuclear storage warning messages. And consider an rdf processor for those messages which understand the concept of places and events, but nothing else.
This is a place.
Something happened here.
It's still happening.
It's in the center of the place.
I wanna do an ActivityPub API that's really just that... a robust, general purpose backend capable of serving a variety of client apps.
Maybe v2 would have customizable API for compatibility with existing clients.
First things first though... I checked with Awesome ActivityPub to see if there were any active projects already doing something like this that I could just jump in on.
@notroot there'd definitely be a need for what you wanna achieve. However, you will also find that what you want to build isn't straightforward at all, and you are working with the rough outline of an ultra-flexible protocol framework that still has a lot unspecified.
I'd advise joining #SocialHub and/or W3C SocialCG. People to follow are @helge (AP + Python) @hrefna (FeatherPub) and @steve (AP Linked Data), among others, who explore this space.
@Chocobozzz@dansup oh thats amazing to hear you are down for this collaboration. I wonder if it would make sense to open a thread on #SocialHub to work out what interoperability would look like? @smallcircles what do you think of a short form video fediverse working group?
This year's topic was decoding digital colonialism.
This session was particularly improvised as the original plan was to share a dialogue with @hellais on open technologies to guarantee human rights. Enjoy!
How does this work.. The FEP-f1d5 talks about a node info endpoint, but the FEP states no obligatory endpoint. References lead to an old library that recommends /.well-known/x-nodeinfo2 (for that v2 library). How did a FEP become final without this crucial piece of information or am I simply missing that information in the finalised FEP? #ActivityPub#Fediverse
For those who were not able to attend the technical alignment meeting of the informal "Threadiverse Working Group", I have taken minutes during the meeting and are sharing them here.
Thank you to all those who attended, we will meet again next month! Follow myself or the WG category to be notified about additional developments.
Attendees
Angus McLeod
Julian Lam
Evan Prodromou
Aaron Grey
Rimu Atkinson
Erlend Sogge Heggen
Laurens Hof
Other participants are not listed as they are not mentioned in notes below, but there were ~20 participants.
Notes
Participant introductions
“Forasphere”/”Foraverse” vs “Threadiverse”
Both have a topic-like structure and so much of the technical structure is the same
More helpful to focus on the differences from microblogging as the de facto implementation of ActivityPub
No matter what name, it is mostly UI distinctions with some different handling based on nomenclature
Rimu brings up discussion regarding nomenclature; related document
“We don’t call things the same words”
Aaron posits that “Circles” could be a useful common term
Julian posits that end of the day no implementor here will likely consider changing their already-established terminology
Aaron proposes a goal for the group: determine a common set of terms to use in discussions going forward; a lingua franca
Evan proposes a goal to produce documentation that other forum (or reddit-like alternatives) can use to become compatible
Additional goal (added later): reaching out to other forum devs (who aren’t already in this WG or looking into AP). Additional outreach/engagement from other forum softwares.
Julian suggests that perhaps the FEP process would be a possible path forward
Mastodon’s microblogging concept leads to other implementations following suit
Coordinated effort to increase compatibility between threadiverse-type applications is attractive
Erlend wants to see better interop between threadiverse apps. Discourse to NodeBB, etc.
Angus states that we’ve reached half-way point and summarizes (see above)
Meeting focus shifts to debate re: FEP process or Task force under SocialCG
Julian proposes on behalf of Johannes Ernst (in absentia) that the WG be organized under the FediDevs umbrella
Evan proposes that the WG be an official task force under the SocialCG
W3C/ActivityPub has many task forces already, one for data portability, one for webfinger, one for testing, etc.
Differences between task force report and FEP:
Both similar documents
FEP has a more asynchronous process for clearing out objections, less cohesion than SocialCG
Discussions take place on SocialHub
Most FEPs individually authored
SocialCG reports collaboratively edited and put forth to W3C
Some questions re: FEP process
Evan answers: Anyone can propose, comments collected. After 6 months author can determine it finalized, but implementation varies. Many draft FEPs are dropped due to lack of interest or are hypothetical in nature.
Penar asks whether FEP or W3C report process is faster
Both are roughly equivalent, SocialCG reports are “a few months” to draft, and “a few months” to be accepted/finalized.
Aaron posits that SWICG (or SocialCG) is a better group since it eventually goes into a published W3C article
Aim towards convergence, consistent UI. Safe and usable user experience where the end-user has choice.
Laurens remarks on the increased level of cooperation that has not been often found in the fediverse, sees this as an opportunity to forge a path toward what we want instead of being bound by an FEP.
Angus motions that we join the SWICG as a task force
Motion carries with 12 ayes out of 16 present
Next meeting of SWICG 5 Apr 1pm Eastern; Angus and Julian to attend
3pm Eastern; meeting scheduled end, Evan and Erlend (and some others) drop out
What do we call the group “foraverse” “forasphere” “threadiverse”
Benti posits that it is weird to call ourselves representatives of the threadiverse as that distinction is reserved for Lemmy and nutomic is not present
Julian suggests that the term is not exclusive to Lemmy/kbin and asks to simply expand the definition to include Piefed, Discourse, NodeBB, Flarum, et al.
Additional back and forth regarding how and where to carry on discussions outside of monthly calls
Shared Google Doc sufficient for now, can explore additional options later
Julian posits that a federated option is ideal, acknowledges bias when suggesting that NodeBB be used. However, as it would be federated, where the discussions take place is mostly incidental.
A federated solution would be easiest way to reach fediverse developers.
Angus motions that we call ourselves the Threadiverse Working Group (or Task Force)
Motion carries with 9 ayes out of 13 present
Action Items
Angus or Julian to set up shared Google Doc for meeting/agenda prep for next meeting
Meaning its optional. By no means is it required to discuss there, if you don't want to. For any FEP a forum topic is created, but you can discuss anywhere else.
Each FEP document in the #codeberg repo gets an accompanying tracking issue that list all the places where discussion takes place.
Iemand vanuit #Mastodon benadrukt het belang van #OpenStandaarden. Hij roept op dat daar meer financiering voor moet komen om deze door te ontwikkelen. Zeker in het licht van verregaande koppelingen tussen andere sociale media zoals Instagram en Facebook die hier grote budgetten voor hebben.
Een interessante link voor #Overheden is ons #ActivityPub for Administrations 3-delige workshop die we in 2021 georganiseerd als #SocialHub hebben. Hier is de link:
Ja, dat was ik denk ik, op het #CommonsNetwork event in Den Haag. Enige verwarring daarbij is dat ik niet van Mastodon ben, maar hen indirect wel vertegenwoordig. Ik sta nl. in het algemeel de Fedi voor en haar #OpenStandaarden. O.a. mede-faciliteer en representeer ik al geruime tijd de #SocialHub dev community en het #FEP process beheer.
#SocialHub is an online platform that serves as a forum for discussions and collaboration related to the development and implementation of #ActivityPub decentralized social networking protocols and technologies. The platform is focused on the Fediverse, a network of decentralized social media platforms that use the ActivityPub protocol to communicate with each other.
The #APconf event is lacking focus and energy from our "cats" so we will likely have a #fedifourm I talked to these guys during the last event, they are new 'native" from the #twittermigration that
bring the "normal" power politics with them.
An event that pushes liberal #NGO agendas is fine as a part of a balance.
Though we have our "native" libertarian cats so the balance will be a challenge that we need to work on #socialhub
With NodeBB, Discourse and Flarum, this makes three #forum software that can now participate in the #Fediverse. The ongoing #SocialCG meeting will certainly endorse the new working group dedicated to topic-centric fediversity, along with @lemmy and @kbin.
> Unit tests with real dependencies. Testcontainers is an open source framework for providing throwaway, lightweight instances of databases, message brokers, web browsers, or just about anything that can run in a Docker container.