Should a single company control the Social Web?
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@evan Is there any appetite within the community to work with AT to bring those things it does over to AP as part of an open standardisation process? Or if not that then appetite to make AT a W3C standard alongside and in collaboration with AP, acknowledging they serve somewhat different needs? The subtext I am picking up is a fear that Bluesky is leveraging VC funding to rapidly divide and conquer the social web. A sort of zero-sum protocol war funded by a company with a product.
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@hallenbeck I would very much like to have the Bluesky team join the SocialCG and bring some of their work to AP. That'd be great; that's how open standards work.
Unfortunately, I don't think it's possible to do without them joining and signing a patent pledge (which every participant in W3C projects has to sign).
Others can't proactively go through their protocol to pick and choose features, because if there are patented parts, we will poison AP.
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@hallenbeck "The subtext I am picking up is a fear that Bluesky is leveraging VC funding to rapidly divide and conquer the social web. A sort of zero-sum protocol war funded by a company with a product."
There is an alternate frame of reference, that the BS team is just another group trying some new technical approaches, but with $36M in venture funding so far, it's hard too see that frame being valid.
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@evan Seems like there are a few relatively simple steps Bluesky could take here to allay some fears show real willingness and intent. To put their money where their mouth is and become an authentic collaborator and Good Actor. This to me as a non-expert sounds necessary. Hardly surprising so many form a perception that they have an ulterior motive if they don't take these steps. Seems disingenuous, simplistic, and a bit gaslighty to suggest the debate has arisen because "the fediverse is mean".
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@hallenbeck I asked Mike Masnick and Bryan Newbold to work on a patent pledge at a corporate level, so others in the area can review and learn from their work. I also think participating in groups like the SocialCG, and making sure to bring their learnings proactively, help a lot too.
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@evan Seems entirely reasonable and healthy.
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Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon:replied to Emelia 👸🏻 last edited by [email protected]
@thisismissem @evan
I will believe it when I can respond to a post on threads and actually have a conversation with someone there like I could on here: right now they just seem to think of this as extended reach for their influencers to talk at. -
Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon:replied to j0̷ last edited by
@j0 @evan @hallenbeck
I will give you that, that is a problem too.But let's be clear, that's not all of us: I try to be pretty supportive of anyone I think is trying to make a good faith effort to get in on the network, because I want the protocol to be open and widely adopted, and I want the network to be mainstream. I feel like the people who get angry at new entrants have every right to feel threatened by it, but we have to remember that they are a minority.
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@evan though I feel it's probs gonna not have much variation, ye should try this poll on other social medias and see how ze results differ. Could be interesting
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@munsterlandr I did it on Threads with similar but more qualified results.
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@munsterlandr I don't use X or Bluesky, but feel free to post other places and let me know the results!
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@thejvmbender I don't understand why this made you vote "Strong yes". Just to spoil the results?
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@khleedril First of all, thanks for the note. Second, why do you think this is such a daft poll?
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@evan There is nothing to learn from this; the outcome is a foregone conclusion.
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@khleedril Not for me, actually. It's been really helpful to get some confirmation that I'm not an outlier on this one.
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@evan @hallenbeck
We have brought some of our work to the W3C community, including the recent TPAC meeting:
https://social.coop/@bnewbold/113199431948755006
I've had a Bluesky-affiliated W3C account for some time, and just joined the SocialCG just now (I thought I had done this previously, but apparently had only signed up for the mailing list) -
other folks have raised similar concerns in the past. you can see an open and and collaborative conversation from October 2023, resulting in license changes in November 2023:
https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto-website/issues/218 -
@bnewbold @hallenbeck that shows some real proactive engagement, Bryan.
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@bnewbold @hallenbeck awesome!
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@bnewbold @hallenbeck one thing that we could do, if you wanted to, is publish the AT Protocol specs as a CG Report. That process is pretty lightweight, but includes granting licenses on trademark, copyright, patents, etc. It would be a quick way to make this move.
