Figure I should post this here as well.
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@kfogel @mmasnick @bnewbold A patent pledge from Bluesky would make it possible for others to examine their work and apply their findings to other projects, which was the point of Mike's original post (that experimentation helps the whole ecosystem). The other option is to proactively bring their own work to a standards organization that has some patent pledge or disclosure framework. It'd be wonderful for the Bluesky team to bring ideas for improving ActivityPub directly to the SocialCG at W3C.
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@kfogel @mmasnick @bnewbold All said, I think it's a hard decision on the part of Bluesky. The protocol is their whole raison d'etre and making this kind of proactive pledge would be difficult. However, for those who don't work for the company or have a financial stake in it, knowing that we can use their findings for other projects is very helpful. If that's a priority, and if there's money in the bank, it's probably worthwhile to use their immense font of patent openness experience.
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@kfogel @mmasnick @bnewbold I should be clearer: Mike is a board member at Bluesky and has been covering patent use and abuse for decades. There is probably not another person on the planet who has done better work in this area.
patents – Techdirt
Posts about patents written by Dark Helmet, Joe Mullin, and Mike Masnick
Techdirt (www.techdirt.com)
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@evan @deadsuperhero The "simple truth" is that no changes have been made to the AP Rec since 2018 despite numerous bug reports and extensive community feedback. There's currently no W3C group with the authority to make any changes. For at least those reasons, I think it's fair to say it's currently unmaintained. I know there has been some talk about chartering a WG to do a minor update.
FEPs are not W3C, are not AP-specific and are a separate, informal process. But, of course, you know that. -
@evan @deadsuperhero I haven't seen anything from the BlueSky team stating they have a mono-protocol strategy for the social web. Do you have a reference? I've only seen you promoting it for ActivityPub. Your VC fears may be similar to the suspicions some people have about the "Social Web" Foundation being partnered with and supported by Meta given their surveillance capitalist history. (The "partners" and "support" lists are from the SWF web site).
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I wouldn't call it "unmaintained." I just gave examples of how it's maintained on a weekly basis.
There is a lively process both inside and outside the W3C for maintaining and growing the protocol.
Official standards don't change often. That's what makes them reliable.
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Emelia 👸🏻replied to Evan Prodromou last edited by [email protected]
@evan @steve @deadsuperhero We need to get the CG/WG properly setup before we can start to claim “Maintained", until then, at best it's “issue triaged”
"Maintained" implies that we'd publish new versions or edits as necessary to clarify things. We can't currently do that without the WG
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Tim Chambersreplied to The Nexus of Privacy last edited by
@thenexusofprivacy @hallenbeck @markdarb @mmasnick
"The share of fediverse population on instances that don't block Bridgy Fed is useful in that it tells us the percentage of people here who could opt in to Bridgy Fed ... but I'm not sure what it tells us beyond that."
Wouldn't it show the share of the Fedi that are at least OK with their social home being bridged to Bluesky and did not have a strong enough issue vote with their feet to go to a server that didn't? And vice versa?
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@snarfed.org Thanks for doing this ... a thoughtful post as always. It's a great distinction between a (useful!) hobbyist project and a supported infrastrcture project. The open question of "who makes the decisions" relates to what I was discussing in the previous post.
Agreed with your suggestions of the kinds of entities that could be good homes for this. It looks different if it's at a for-profit corporation like Flipboard or a revenue-generating non-profit like Ghost as opposed to a multipolar non-profit organization like IFTAS (if it's in scope) or SWF. If and when soebody does take it over I think it's crucial to continue to prioritize safety, as you very much have been doing. Obviously that's IFTAS' charter, and @mallory@techpolicy's focus on minimizing harms aligns with that as well, so perhaps some kind of partnership makes sene
And in general I think bridging, as a mechanism to connect fediverses (and subnetworks within a fediverse), hasn't been explored much. For example bridging could be a good way to deal with the likely partition of today's Fedivese once Threads starts two-way federation. Of course the "Big Fedi" view of a partition is that it's a bad thing, but unless and until platforms such as Mastodon can provide better tools for people to protect themselves (which may or may not be on the horizon), LGBTQIA2S+ people at risk of being targeted from hate groups like Libs of Tik Tok that Meta gives free rein to will be safer on instances that are transitively defederated. Meta's asymmetrical bridge -- opt-in for people on Threads, opt-out for instances and people in the rest of the Fediverse -- doesn't address that risk; and making it opt-out in both directions wouldn't help. So either Big Fed cuts itself off from LBGTQIA2S+ people, or some other approach is needed. Bridging, perhaps? So I certainly hope whoever takes over Bridgy Fed is thinking about stuff like this.
@tchambers @mackuba @markdarb @mmasnick @mike @hallenbeck @evan @jaz @chrismessina @bnewbold
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Thank you for the kind words, Jon! I've really appreciated your ongoing feedback and support throughout all of this. Glad this makes sense to you too.
You and @quillmatiq may also have common ground on bridges, he's been thinking about them too, and he might post more soon. Looking forward to that.
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The Nexus of Privacyreplied to Ryan Barrett last edited by
@snarfed.org oh intersting! @quillmatiq is (I believe) still the only person I've intereacted with here, Bluesky, and on Threads (where I'm almost never active) and always has interesting things to say ... so looking forward to it!
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Anuj Ahoojareplied to The Nexus of Privacy last edited by
@thenexusofprivacy @snarfed.org Very much aligned! And yeah, I'm on all three, and I've extended my visibility across all of them (turned on Fedi for Threads, AT-bridged my Mastodon account, and AP-bridged my Bluesky account). I want to find the folks who have similar interests to me and help me refine my thinking around ideas / opinions I have. I don't want to have to care what client, platform, or protocols they use.
People, not platforms.
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@evan This post ended up getting a lot of boosts, but I want to highlight the follow-up, based on the conversations that have stemmed from it: https://social.wedistribute.org/notice/AnhnsJxZZcb8inuDtg
It’s not all gloom and doom. To Evan’s credit, he has reached out, and we have talked at length about the subject, how things look like from our vantage points, and where we both stand. It is my hope that we can work together to improve things, and embrace a more radically inclusive and hopeful form of advocacy together.
