Boris Mann
I’ve found the BlueSky team to be very purposeful. It’s not run or owned by Jack, it’s not Jack’s thing, although he is on the board (it’s a Public Benefit Corporation in the US). Jay Graber is the CEO & founder who fought for it to be independent of Twitter & calling it Jack’s thing erases her. It’s not great. It’s another open protocol that makes different trade offs than ActivityPub. I wrote more about the protocol and open source code earlier https://cosocial.ca/@boris/110149727703071833 40 comments
Boris Mann
@simon_brooke the link I included had more info. It’s all open source, it’s a protocol that anyone can build on at https://atproto.com, there are already devs building more https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto-ecosystem This is very comparable to Eugen & Mastodon GmbH and their paid work on the Mastodon codebase. 
Simon Brooke
@boris Yes, I read the link. We have open standards-setting bodies which work through discussion and rough concensus for a reason: it is through open standards that the world is able to communicate. Yes, there are alternative ways of doing things. But setting up your own protocol and declaring that it is 'open' is not one of them.
Robin Berjon
@simon_brooke @boris We don't have very much in the way of standards organisations that aren't captured by big tech. You can do some useful work there still if you're focused on something they ignore, but we shouldn't pretend that in their current state an SDO can offer those guarantees. Sometimes they work.
Robin Berjon
@simon_brooke @boris That's not to say that we shouldn't fix this or that Bluesky won't be an excellent place to start building community ownership when it's out of the "making it work" phase (which we need because greenfield standards hardly ever work). We should and it will be.
Boris Mann
@simon_brooke New stuff doesn’t start with the W3C or any other big standards org. That happens after running code and roigh consensus (the slogan of the IETF) from bottoms up processes. Right now I expect Mastodon and other codebases to evolve the the ActivityPub standard. It’s unclear how long that will take or who will sit at the W3C and speak for bottoms up community.
Simon Brooke
@boris You just bung an RFC to the IETF, and that starts the process. Mind you, they may bung it back at you if they think it isn't useful, I've had that happen to me.
Boris Mann
@simon_brooke that’s not the only path. See the #UCAN spec https://github.com/ucan-wg/spec — it’s something my team and multiple other people and organizations have been working on for years. It’s about to have a v1.0 release. It looks RFC like. It has multiple open source implementations. It’s an open standard. 
𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱🍐【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)
@boris money decides. no story telling erases that fact
Boris Mann
@serapath hey Serapath! Yes, all open source software in the world needs people to write it and maintain it, and then other people need to decide to run servers and do moderation. Just like Mastodon. Just like Mastodon GmbH. And some software writers and some server runners will ask users to contribute -- just like we're doing with our CoSocial co-op instance. 
Evan Prodromou
@boris I wrote about it last month. I think it's at best a spoiler for the fediverse -- potentially eating up some of our momentum. I hope they get smart and support ActivityPub instead of wasting people's energy and time with an incompatible snowflake protocol.
Boris Mann
@evan I’m a big tent decentralized social web guy myself. Jay and her team are pretty great humans. 
Sebastian Lasse
@boris 
maegul
@evan @boris I recently visited Twitter and had a quick look at my timeline and was quite surprised to see tech people (who've stayed there) talking very positively and essentially advocating for BlueSky. I didn't inquire (or see anything on) why BlueSky and not the fediverse, but I'd guess there's some "reasoning", however cultural or cognitively dissonant.
Boris Mann
@maegul @evan it doesn’t match my experience of multiple paths of open source development all learning from each other. Or the messaging / group chat space. Which is bad (no interop) but also good and robust. Or that I think “decentralized social” is actually a base account layer that can eventually encompass all apps, and one protocol isn’t going to get it all right. I’d be more sympathetic if there was robust community protocol evolution for AP and a non BDFL major codebase.
maegul
@boris @evan Good response! I buy all of those arguments, and have maybe thought/made them myself (though certainly more crudely!). A simpler take with a similar spin might be that AP/Fediverse hasn't "earned" being the exclusive and final protocol ... ? Either way ... I personally suspect your perspective is more representative of the "world's" and what will broadly come in the short-medium term. Thanks for the perspective/thoughts!
Evan Prodromou
I think that's a really good challenge for the AP community. We need to get SWICG meetings happening more regularly, and I and my co-authors need to start servicing the issue queue on GitHub. I don't think the BS project is good for the social web, but I do think it's going to be short-lived, so I guess minimising the damage is the best we can hope for. 
Jonathan Glick
Evan Prodromou
@Jonathanglick Great question! For issues in GitHub, I think there are four main outcomes: 1. Updating the Errata for the specs (for typos, errors, etc. in the text) I and my co-authors are the only ones who can do 1 and 3. But it would be really helpful for more people to help with 2 and 4.
Evan Prodromou
@Jonathanglick here's what I'm going to do: I'm scheduling an hour biweekly on Wednesdays from 11:30 to 12:30 ET to do backlog triage on AS2 and AP. I'll be on Jitsi here: https://meet.jit.si/moderated/c1c3c53fd2a3a78819e0cbb534848202b26b6af380c0af284edab895e35cb3c1 I'll be starting next Wed, 19 Apr 2023. Public is welcome, but you should treat it like a Twitch stream. After stuff is triaged, we can get volunteers to help with documentation, spin offs, or other work.
Evan Prodromou replied to Jonathan
@Jonathanglick just a note to @jasnell @erincandescent @rhiaro and @tsyesika that I'd welcome their presence and help at this or future meetings. 
Luca Sironi
Tim Bray
Disclosure: Was in the very early Bluesky conversations, asked by Jack&Parag if I wanted to lead it. Disclosure: Fan of Jay. TBH I was interested *because* it was being driven by Twitter. I cared less about the protocol details and more about the chances for adoption; Twitter-that-was being a client was huge in that regard. I was OK with AP but saw it as a well-intentioned faction that wasn't (then) getting traction. Twitter's implosion changed the picture, obviously.
Vic Uzumeri
I am asking a favor. A few years ago, I wrote a blog article about a specific model of futurism: https://uzumeri.com/sampling-the-futures/ (read the first section if you are time-pressed). It's my sense that the Fediverse, at this point in its development, needs some of this type of analysis. You have the skillset that might, collectively with your contacts, supply it. e.g., A curated collection? PS, Tom Matano read my blog post and was very gracious.
Boris Mann
@vicuzumeri some of this was discussed at #Fediforum hosted by @J12t and is likely a good home for activities like this. I think doing some #WardleyMaps exercises is roughly what this looks like, see this for info https://learnwardleymapping.com/ I think commodifying hosting would be one movement I see, which is why I’m starting a list of hosting co-ops here https://github.com/CoSocial-Canada/notes/blob/main/Canadian%20Tech%20Co-ops.md It would be great to expand and gather other resources. 
Johannes Ernst
@vicuzumeri @timbray @evan @boris @maegul i think you are proposing to identity some plausible future scenarios for the #fediverse, and perhaps how they might come to happen. This would be very useful to do imho, even if only as a lightening rod :-) Re next #fediforum, that would certainly be an interesting session! In the meantime, a few blog posts might be a good idea.
Vic Uzumeri
@J12t @timbray @evan @boris @maegul I am thinking in terms of a collection of scenarios. A one-screen blog post (with a graphic or image where possible and appropriate) would be a rough target. My experience, aligned with comments from Tom Matano, argues keeping the format flexible. Whatever feels right and works. Contributions could come from anyone ... collect them, sort them into categories ... add light touch moderation. They needn't (arguably shouldn't) all agree. Just my $0.00002 
Jonathan Glick
@boris Don’t you think it would be helpful for BS if Jack was not involved? Seems like it sends a lot of very bad signals. But maybe I’m seeing it wrong.
Boris Mann
@Jonathanglick I think a lot of people are projecting, don’t know what a board member does, hate company structures of all kinds. Jay spent 6 months negotiating to get an independent structure and set up a Public Benefit Corporation to make sure the ATProtocol could act separately. So I think the network, open source collaboration, and other actions should speak for themselves.
Jonathan Glick
@boris I know what a board member does, and I suspect he’s the largest donor. The question is whether it’s helpful for him to be involved, given his actions at Twitter. (I’m totally open to the answer being ‘yeah, it’s helpful anyway.)
Boris Mann
@Jonathanglick not a donor personally, it was funded out by Twitter before it was purchased. Not saying _you_ don’t know what a board member is, just giving some flavour of what I’m saying from a lot of OSS people who haven’t built companies before.
Boris Mann
@Jonathanglick the blog has most of the public info right now and is a good read https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog I’ve always paid for my AP-based accounts and pay for a MicroBlog account. I think all these systems need to travel the same exploratory path around business models if the goal is to serve large numbers of people globally. Much like AP instances there will be a variety. |
Gregory's Server
@boris An 'open' protocol owned by a single capitalist entity is an interesting and novel use of the word 'open'.