I just finished a first read of @evan ‘s ActivityPub book from O’Reilly.

Evan Prodromou

I’d add that there are over 100 implementations of ActivityPub, dozens of clients, and tens of thousands of servers. The number of different organizations involved is surprising.

Protocols are a social phenomenon, not a technical one. And on the social front, ActivityPub is a clear choice.

Mushi

@galactus @evan I completely agree, for what it’s worth.

Evan Prodromou

@Mushi @galactus technically I don't know a lot about AT. I try not to use it or to read its docs since there's no patent protection.

That said, I'm pretty sure it uses DIDs for identifiers, and that all content is public.

Sergio

@evan @Mushi it seems to me ATProto’s descentralization is mostly theoretical (it is not realistic for a person or a small organization to run the main aggregator service and indeed no one but bluesky does) whereas for ActivityPub is not only possible but a reality.

If Bluesky were to dissapear today, all the self-hosted PDS instances would be rendered useless immediately. If Threads or the biggest mastodon instances closed today, the fediverse would still be alive and kicking.

ch0ccyra1n :she_her::neocat_floof_cute:

@evan @Mushi @galactus I do think that it's worth incorporating DIDs into ActivityPub implementations (as I understand it, the current webfinger-based usernames fall outside the spec, please correct me if I'm wrong). Otherwise I couldn't care less about AT Protocol. I just want to be able to talk to my friends regardless of where they are.

Evan Prodromou

@ch0ccyra1n @Mushi @galactus I'd definitely recommend using the Bridgy Fed bridge. It's really smooth.

https://bsky.brid.gy/

can

@galactus @evan @Mushi It’s very simple. Just look at the facts: there’s one Bluesky service with all their 13 million users on it, and there are thousands of Mastodon servers. No need for technical discussions and what-ifs. If quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, and all that…

viq

@galactus @rysiek @evan @Mushi
IIRC @mcc tried to run PDS, and you have to have *exactly* same version as main bluesky. You try to add your own modifications, it won't work. You fail to update at the same time they do, it won't work.

Woozle Hypertwin

@galactus @evan @Mushi

I always figured there was no way they'd implement "federation" in a way that would relinquish any of that sweet centralized control.

BSky's "Federation" is just another "we use a word you like!" false-flag. National Socialism, German Democratic Republic, Freedom Caucus...

Mushi

@evan @galactus @woozle btw did threads ever federate? Which protocol did they use?

mcc

@viq @galactus @rysiek @evan @Mushi (Important nuance, possibly not super relevant to the conversation preceding: you can always *add* stuff. The version mismatch rules viq mentions only refer to *changing* stuff. So you could layer a second "application" with its own orthogonal data fields on top of AT, it's just if your implementation of the bluesky distributed application differs even a little from the Bluesky Social mothership you can get unpersoned. I am not impressed.)

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

@mcc so, BlueSky is *still* cosplaying decentralization.

@viq @galactus @evan @Mushi

Evan Prodromou

@Mushi @galactus @woozle yes, ActivityPub. Currently one way; you can follow Threads accounts from Mastodon, and reply to them, but they can't follow you. Coming soon...?

Pierre

@evan @Mushi @galactus

Please share how atproto is a proprietary protocol

According to the license file atproto is Dual MIT/Apache-2.0 License which you can view here: https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/blob/main/LICENSE.txt

Also included a screenshot

https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/466/215/791/029/803/original/116b8365c9486db2.png

Sergio

@okpierre @evan @Mushi but that's not how openness works for network protocols. Governance is critically important.

Pierre

@galactus @evan @Mushi

I'm trying to understand how atproto is proprietary. Are you saying the license is meaningless?

Sergio

@okpierre @evan @Mushi the license you pointed at concerns the distribution if the at protocol reference implementation. The propietary character of the protocol itself is a different matter.

Evan Prodromou

@okpierre @Mushi @galactus did you find the patent license that lets other codebases use the techniques patent-free? Not just their own Apache-licensed code?

Evan Prodromou

@galactus @okpierre @Mushi thanks. This is correct.

Evan Prodromou

@okpierre @Mushi @galactus I've asked @bnewbold.net and @mmasnick.bsky.social about making a patent license for ATProto.

One way they could do it is to publish the protocol as a Report of a W3C community group, like the SocialCG or even a new community group, which would give it the patent licenses that open standards require.

https://www.w3.org/community/about/process/final/

This would make protocol experimentation much more reasonable.

Only the Bluesky team can do this.