Notices by Evan Prodromou (evan@prodromou.pub)

@helge I haven't looked into the FEP process. I think SWICG is the right place for that kind of work.

Building on top of AP is easy, because of Activity Streams.

Adding new verbs and object types is quick and painless. On top of this, existing AP processors can handle unknown verbs and object types, because every activity and object has a fallback HTML and optional image representation.

Does that answer your questions?

AP has turned a corner. It's standardized and in wide use.

Building extensions on top of AP is useful and necessary, but starting over with incompatible protocols is a bad plan.

Blue Sky in particular is a bad project. It started after AP was standardized. The team had access to many many people's time and all the docs and experience of the fediverse.

But they opted to make a snowflake protocol instead. I think because they want to capture value at the protocol level.

Don't use Blue Sky.

'Prodromou, however, has strong words for any organization looking to enter social media with a new decentralized social media protocol. “I’m not interested in any protocol besides ActivityPub,” he says. “Anyone working on brand new protocols in 2023 should stop immediately. They are going to do more harm than good."'

This may be surprising for people who have known me for a long time. I've generally been supportive of trying new protocols and tools.

A lot of people worry that commercial networks joining the fediverse will inevitably take over the network, "like Gmail took over email."

Except, y'know, Gmail hasn't taken over email.

There are 4.5B active email users (Radicati), 1.5B Gmail users (CNBC). About 1/3.

Maybe all the people you know use Gmail.

Maybe that says more about the people you know than about the state of the email network.

Email remains robust, decentralized and diverse in 2023.

In 1998 the W3C introduced the fact that some URIs can be cool 😎, gave exactly one property of cool URIs, and has not provided any further instructions on how to be cool in the subsequent 25 years.

https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI

So many people are on fediverse instances related to their profession that it feels like we're medieval English villagers with last names matching our jobs.

Dick Baker? He's a baker. Jane Carpenter? She's a carpenter.

dick@infosec.exchange? He's in infosec. jane@hci.social? She does HCI.

I guess we mostly like trains!

If you like trains but don't like how they work in your country, tell your politicians and help make our rail travel infrastructure work for everyone.

Rail travel is a crucial part of the Transition. #TrainsNotPlanes

#introduction

My name is Evan Prodromou. I'm an Open Source software enthusiast, best known for my work in wikis and in social software.

I work as Director of Open Technology at the Open Earth Foundation.

I live in Montreal, love to garden with native plants, make wine, cook, and live an examined life.

I am hiring a lead full-stack Web engineer to help build #OpenSource software to fight #ClimateChange.

If you've shipped 1-2 Web projects and been the tech lead for 1 software project: we need your help.

Please boost for reach! #fedihire

https://www.womenwhocode.com/jobs/14733