Forte lives!

Jupiter Rowland

Oh, by the way, in case you haven't noticed because chances are that you actually haven't: Forte has entered the Fediverse yesterday.

Mike Macgirvin has rebased his private, semi-secret instance from his own streams repository to his most recent project. Just yesterday, Mike sent the very first message from Forte into the Fediverse, a comment on a post from his public (streams) channel. Unfortunately, the whole thread is private, as is the comment.

So, what is Forte? Forte is the very first and currently only Fediverse project that features nomadic identity via only ActivityPub. It's a fork of the streams repository, created in mid-August this year.

To put it in a nutshell, Forte is (streams) without Nomad and without support for Zot, purely relying on ActivityPub. Also, unlike (streams), Forte has a name, it has a branding (which, however, can be changed on the instance level just like on (streams)), it has nodeinfo, it has a license, and it's a project again.

At least as of now, Forte may have trouble connecting to Mastodon. This may be because Mastodon doesn't understand decentralised IDs as per FEP-ef61, it may be because Forte also had some non-standard, Mastodon-specific code removed. Or it may be due to the user agent filter that Mike has introduced to (streams) and most likely also Forte a few weeks ago that actually has the capability of, for example, blocking Mastodon in its entirety on an instance level. Whatever it is that may or may not stand in Mastodon's way of connecting with Forte, Mike declared it "intentional".

Speaking of "intentional", I'm intentionally not posting this to Fediverse News. While this may go largely unnoticed outside the Hubzilla/(streams) bubble, maybe plus Friendica, it may just as well prompt people to set up their own instances. People who haven't even laid their hands on Friendica, much less Hubzilla or (streams), and who don't know how the "Facebook-like" side of the Fediverse looks and feels, much less how nomadic identity is handled. They may expect another "Mastodon + more characters + x on top", end up disappointed because nothing on Forte looks, feels or works like Twitter or Mastodon, and declare that Forte objectively sucks.

Also, as long as Mike doesn't at least hint at Forte being stable and daily-driveable for people who don't develop it, it probably isn't.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Streams #(streams) #Forte

F4GRX SÃ©bastien

@jupiter_rowland Nomadic identity is very interesting. thats the only feature missing on the fediverse to make it ideal imho. migration is possible but it feels clunky and incomplete. I'll have a look.

F4GRX SÃ©bastien

@jupiter_rowland ooooh it's made in php so I could actually test it without an extra complex infrastructure?? cool!

Fitik

@jupiter_rowland Are there any test instances I could take a look at?

morph ⌂

@Fitik It's a very early state.

Der Pepe (Hubzilla) ⁂ ⚝

I still don't understand the idea behind ‘Forte’. Apart from the fact that it is a concept for a platform derived from the streams repo, which again comes with its own identity, name, standard licence and possibly a logo. This makes it the further development of (streams) into a Fediverse service that can be used in practice.

What I don't understand: Why did Zot/Nomad have to be kicked out? Zot/Nomad has the nomadic identity in its DNA. It is part of the basic concept of the protocol and is now fully developed. Sure... its use is limited to the ‘grid’, i.e. the entirety of Hubzilla hubs. But it simply works there.

Giving AcivityPub a nomadic identity is a really strong achievement by Mike. It really is a great extension of the AP protocol. But... if he now develops Forte exclusively with AP into a functioning platform, the nomadic identity will again be limited to the resulting ‘Forte Grid’, because I expect a number <1 that will implement AP nomadics in a new or existing AP Fediverse service. And with Mastodon, this nomadic identity will exist no later than the day that Christmas and Easter fall on the same day.

Now there were probably a few problems with the introduction of the nomadic AP in (streams). But I think they could have been eliminated and still used the tried and tested Zot/Nomad as the basis. Forte would have been the result... with better AP functionality. But it would have given you the opportunity to operate nomadically with the Hubzilla grid and thus have a much larger base.

But as it is, it's not really interesting for me. Why should I focus on a new niche project and leave my established (no longer quite so) niche project (after all, 174 hubs with just under 8,000 users at present)?

It is exciting. But the advantages of nomadic identity are very limited until the majority of other AP-based Fediverse services also implement it.

Jupiter Rowland

@morph ⌂ And so there's exactly one instance, Mike's own private private instance, with Mike, the only developer, being its only user.

Again, it's from mid-August. Mike hasn't declared it stable yet. And yesterday was literally the very very first time a message came from Forte, namely from Mike's private instance, into the Fediverse.

So no, there aren't any public, open-registration instances.

@Fitik If you want to get to know the basic functionality, except for how Forte federates, the closest thing would be (streams) which Forte was forked from. (streams) may have its own issues, but it has at least one public instance that can theoretically be joined.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Streams #(streams) #Forte

Jupiter Rowland

@F4GRX SÃ

bastien In theory, yes. Everything Mike has made runs happily on a LAMP stack.

Beware, though: Forte is a super extremely early version. It was forked from (streams) when (streams) itself was buggy.

Nomadic identity via ActivityPub is extremely experimental. It probably uses technology that Mastodon doesn't understand. Yesterday was literally the very first time ever that content from something based on nomadic ActivityPub has hit the Fediverse. The only other implementation is a development version of Mitra whose code is not public, and which is only deployed on non-public instances run by the developer.

Also, like everything else that Mike has made (Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams)), in terms of handling and functionality, Forte is much farther away from Mastodon than Mastodon is from Twitter.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Forte

Jupiter Rowland

@Der Pepe (Hubzilla) ⁂ ⚝

What I don't understand: Why did Zot/Nomad have to be kicked out?

Probably due to the ID chaos.

Federation on (streams) went bellies-up with the introduction of FEP-ef61 DIDs due to the plethora of IDs everything had suddenly. All kinds of different IDs from conventional ActivityPub. Plus at least one Nomad ID. Plus at least one Zot6 ID. And now the DID on top. (streams) ended up being confused about this maze of IDs itself and used all the wrong IDs in all the wrong use-cases.

Remember how federation still was on the fritz in mid-August? When Forte was forked off?

One of the reasons Mike created Forte was to throw Nomad and Zot6 out without throwing Nomad and Zot6 out of (streams). It was probably a kind of quick fix to assume control over this ID chaos by removing the non-ActivityPub parts and, most importantly, the non-ActivityPub IDs.

That kind of lines up with what Mike did earlier. Like in 2018 when he made Osada and Zap, the two experimental development platforms for Zot6. Why didn't he do that in a development version of Hubzilla with all of Hubzilla's features still in place? And, most importantly, only one development version with all the shebang?

That's because in 2018, when Zot6 was only an idea, this idea had one big caveat: Mike's earliest concept of Zot6, especially its nomadic identity implementation, clashed with all other protocols.

So he created Zap that only spoke Zot6. Zap was only able to federate with Hubzilla because Zot6 was still sufficiently compatible with Hubzilla's version of Zot. Zap was the platform to develop the nomadic identity side of Zot6.

And he created Osada that spoke a bunch of other things, including ActivityPub and diaspora*. But it had no nomadic identity.

He slimmed both down a great deal. Articles, cards, wikis, webpages etc., it all had to go. Why? To also slim down development. Otherwise he would have had to touch much, much more code. Besides, Hubzilla already had all that stuff. Same reason why (streams) can't subscribe to feeds anymore: less code to maintain and upgrade all the time.

The reason why the first Osada was discontinued was because it turned out that a) Zot6 could indeed be made compatible with at least ActivityPub, and b) having Osada as a "bridge" between Zap and the rest of the Fediverse was just plain bonkers. You wanted to use Zap, but you wanted to keep your Mastodon and diaspora* friends? You also needed one non-nomadic Osada channel for each one of your nomadic Zap channels. And you had to use Osada to share-post all your Zap posts because Zap had no repeats yet, and you needed Osada to interact with the stuff your non-nomadic friends posted. Oh, did I mention that Osada was non-nomadic, and you'd lose everything if your Osada instance went under?

So Mike discontinued the old Osada which next to nobody had used anyway, forked a second Osada from Zap and added ActivityPub to it so he had purist, Zot6-only Zap with no ActivityPub in the way of experimenting with Zot6 plus Osada with which he could test the interaction of ActivityPub and Zot6. Other devs would have strapped ActivityPub onto Zap. Not Mike, though.

But... if he now develops Forte exclusively with AP into a functioning platform, the nomadic identity will again be limited to the resulting ‘Forte Grid’, because I expect a number <1 that will implement AP nomadics in a new or existing AP Fediverse service.

Mitra is working on nomadic ActivityPub, too. Very hard so. Since 2022. Silverpill was the very creator of FEP-ef61, and he is even more of a driving force behind adding nomadic identity to ActivityPub than Mike. I wouldn't be surprised if it was him who had nudged Mike into developing ActivityPub-based pan-Fediverse nomadic identity.

Let all this work out. Let Forte become stable. Let Mitra roll out nomadic identity. Let it become possible to clone between the two. Let this hit Fediverse News. And you'll have quite a number of heads turning, including developer heads. Of course, most likely not those of the Mastodon devs. But it isn't unlikely that others will be interested.

And the more things in the Fediverse have working, stable, ActivityPub-based nomadic identity, the more Mastodon users will nag the Mastodon devs to implement it because they're fed up with being stuck on their instances already now. Until the point at which someone forks Mastodon, adds nomadic identity and submits the changes to the Mastodon code repo as a PR.

But it would have given you the opportunity to operate nomadically with the Hubzilla grid and thus have a much larger base.

Sooner or later, Hubzilla, the nomadic identity pioneer, will have to at least learn to understand ActivityPub-based nomadic identity. Once the latter is fully fleshed out, this might not even be that difficult. It can always be tested on development hubs like Zotum first.

Mario already said Hubzilla will hold on to Zot6. This may mean that it won't be possible to clone between Hubzilla and anything else if ActivityPub-based nomadic identity isn't fully implemented. But this wouldn't be much different from what things are like right now.

It is exciting. But the advantages of nomadic identity are very limited until the majority of other AP-based Fediverse services also implement it.

Well, for each Fediverse project individually that implements it, it's a big step forward.

Let's assume some Forkey implements it. The big news won't be so much that you can now clone your account to (streams) and Mitra. It'll rather be first and foremost that you can clone to another instance of the same Forkey and save your identity from doom by instance shutdown. Cross-border cloning is just a nice extra.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #NomadicIdentity #Forte

Scott M. Stolz

@Der Pepe (Hubzilla) ⁂ ⚝

What I don't understand: Why did Zot/Nomad have to be kicked out?

I think from a development standpoint, it is just easier to strip things down and focus on one thing. Less to maintain. Less potential conflicts. You know any errors or conflicts are because of ActivityPub, not something else. Et cetera.

Right now he seems to be focusing on getting nomadic identity to work with ActivityPub. The first two projects that will support it will most likely be Forte and Mitra, since they appear to be collaborating on nomadic identity together.

Hopefully it will make it into Hubzilla, which would make it three platforms. If Mike decides to continue maintaining Streams, that would make it four platforms.

Jupiter Rowland

@{[email protected]

I think from a development standpoint, it is just easier to strip things down and focus on one thing. Less to maintain. Less potential conflicts. You know any errors or conflicts are because of ActivityPub, not something else. Et cetera.

That's likely one of the reasons. Same reason why he threw RSS/Atom support out of (streams). Not because Nomad could no longer be kept compatible with it, but it was one less thing to maintain.

Also, as I've already said, he probably wanted to get rid of two whole protocols standing in the way and meddling with ActivityPub. Even without FEP-ef61, ActivityPub had a whole pile of IDs. Nomad has its own IDs. Zot has its own IDs. On top of it came the DIDs necessary for nomadic identity via ActivityPub. That Jenga tower of Fediverse IDs came tumbling down this summer. And my two brand-new channels were caught in the chaos.

Lastly, come to think of it, I guess if you have both Nomad and nomadic ActivityPub, Nomad may always try to take the highest priority in nomadic identity which is bad if you want to play with nomadic identity via ActivityPub.