#ostatus — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #ostatus, aggregated by home.social.
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Das Netz im Netz. #OStatus #Zeitreise
Da stell ich mir die Frage, ob die Projekt potenziell noch miteinander sprechen können? -
@Mastodon launched 10 years ago as another contribution to the #Fediverse!
As soon as they arrived, we federated with them through the predecessor of #ActivityPub, called #OStatus. Learn more about the history here.
Since then, the Mastodon project has grown a lot and brought many new users to the Fediverse. We offer our warmest congratulations! 🎉 -
@Mastodon launched 10 years ago as another contribution to the #Fediverse!
As soon as they arrived, we federated with them through the predecessor of #ActivityPub, called #OStatus. Learn more about the history here.
Since then, the Mastodon project has grown a lot and brought many new users to the Fediverse. We offer our warmest congratulations! 🎉 -
Glückwunsch für 10 Jahre Mastodon 🥳.
Damals wurde eine erste Beta auf Basis des Protokolls OStatus veröffentlicht. -
"[BlackSky's] recent work on private posts represents the most explicit departure from ATProto’s default assumption that all data is public, carving out enclosure where the protocol assumes openness."
@laurenshof, 2026
https://
connectedplaces.online/where-does-community-live/This reminds me of Mastodon's arrival in the GNU Social-dominated fediverse a decade ago. Shoehorning DMs and Followers-only posts into an OStatus network which had previously only supported public posts
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"[BlackSky's] recent work on private posts represents the most explicit departure from ATProto’s default assumption that all data is public, carving out enclosure where the protocol assumes openness."
@laurenshof, 2026
https://
connectedplaces.online/where-does-community-live/This reminds me of Mastodon's arrival in the GNU Social-dominated fediverse a decade ago. Shoehorning DMs and Followers-only posts into an OStatus network which had previously only supported public posts
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Hey #FediDev gang.. Do you think this is the right way to guide people from personal/organizational websites into the #Fediverse?
Some of this is defined in #FEP3b86. Some of it exists today in #Emissary (and the #oStatus "remote follow") some is being built by @dansup as #WebIntents, and some is just scribbles on paper.
If there's interest, I'm happy to write up the rest of this as an additional #FEP
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Hey #FediDev gang.. Do you think this is the right way to guide people from personal/organizational websites into the #Fediverse?
Some of this is defined in #FEP3b86. Some of it exists today in #Emissary (and the #oStatus "remote follow") some is being built by @dansup as #WebIntents, and some is just scribbles on paper.
If there's interest, I'm happy to write up the rest of this as an additional #FEP
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Das #Fediverse ist (zumindest an ein paar Stellen) in der Mitte der Gesellschaft angekommen. Das ist stark und sicher mehr als mensch hoffen konnte als @evan damals 2008 #identica und #StatusNet gegründet und geschrieben hat.
Andererseits: Es ist auch eine Entwicklung von jetzt 17 Jahren, die zeigt, wie lange solche Projekte auch "im digitalen Zeitalter" brauchen. #ostatus #activitypub -
Das #Fediverse ist (zumindest an ein paar Stellen) in der Mitte der Gesellschaft angekommen. Das ist stark und sicher mehr als mensch hoffen konnte als @evan damals 2008 #identica und #StatusNet gegründet und geschrieben hat.
Andererseits: Es ist auch eine Entwicklung von jetzt 17 Jahren, die zeigt, wie lange solche Projekte auch "im digitalen Zeitalter" brauchen. #ostatus #activitypub -
I chatted with @evan about the good old days of the #fediverse ☺️
#ostatus #activitypub #statusnet #identica #openmicroblogging #wordpress
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I chatted with @evan about the good old days of the #fediverse ☺️
#ostatus #activitypub #statusnet #identica #openmicroblogging #wordpress
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Fediverse-Protokolle
Um sich miteinander austauschen zu können, müssen sich Instanzen im #Fediverse untereinander verstehen können. Dazu dient ein standardisiertes #Kommunikationsprotokoll für den Austausch von Daten zwischen Computern bzw. Prozessen (hier also den einzelnen Instanzen bzw. Servern), die in einem Rechnernetz (hier im Allgemeinen das #Internet) miteinander verbunden sind (verteiltes bzw. föderiertes System).
Anno 2024 kommt hierzu gern und häufig das #Protokoll #ActivityPub zum Einsatz.
Allerdings war das in der Anfangszeit des Fediversums noch nicht so. Die #OpenMicroBlogging-Spezifikation wurde im Jahr 2008 veröffentlicht und dann ab 2010 als #OStatus weitergeführt. Auch ActivityPub hieß zunächst einmal #ActivityPump. Im Januar 2018 gab das #W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) den ActivityPub-Standard frei und empfiehlt ihn seither für dezentrales Teilen von Inhalten.
Historisch wäre auch noch #Diaspora zu erwähnen. Die Fediverse-Plattform #Friendica spricht übrigens mehrere Protokolle.
Bleiben wir bei ActivityPub: Das Protokoll spezifiziert sowohl Server-zu-Server- als auch Client-zu-Server-Kommunikation. Hierbei ist zu beachten, daß sich die Instanzen im #Fediverse via Server-zu-Server-Kommunikation unterhalten. Mit einem Client oder einer App auf ein Konto auf einer #Instanz zuzugreifen, wäre ein Anwendungsfall für die Client-zu-Server-Kommunikation. Hier setzt aber zum Beispiel die #Fediverse-Plattform #Mastodon auf eine eigene Implementierung, die #Mastodon-#Client-#API, die zum Teil auch von anderen Plattformen zumindest teilweise unterstützt wird.
Da es sich bei ActivityPub um einen offenen Standard handelt, kann jeder Mensch oder jede Organisation eigene #Software implementieren, um am #Fediverse teilzunehmen. Die Instanz mastodonium.de läuft etwa auf #Mammuthus, einer eigenen Implementation des Autors dieser Zeilen.
Zum weiteren Schmökern sei auf folgende #Wikipedia-Artikel hingewiesen:
◾ https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus
◾ https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub
◾ https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netzwerkprotokoll
◾ https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web_Consortium
◾ https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(Software) -
Happy 17th Year Anniversary #Fediverse social network!
Always strong! 🎊🎉🎂🍻🎆🥳🤹🏽
( #FediverseDay #SNS #SocMed #SocialMedia #SocialWeb #OpenMicroBlogging #OStatus #ActivityPub #Laconica #Identica #Web3 )
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Happy 17th Year Anniversary #Fediverse social network!
Always strong! 🎊🎉🎂🍻🎆🥳🤹🏽
( #FediverseDay #SNS #SocMed #SocialMedia #SocialWeb #OpenMicroBlogging #OStatus #ActivityPub #Laconica #Identica #Web3 ) -
Happy 17th Year Anniversary #Fediverse social network! Always strong! 🎊🎉🎂🍻🎆🥳🤹🏽 ( #FediverseDay #SNS #SocMed #SocialMedia #SocialWeb #OpenMicroBlogging #OStatus #ActivityPub #Laconica #Identica #Web3 )
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Happy 17th Year Anniversary #Fediverse social network!
Always strong! 🎊🎉🎂🍻🎆🥳🤹🏽
( #FediverseDay #SNS #SocMed #SocialMedia #SocialWeb #OpenMicroBlogging #OStatus #ActivityPub #Laconica #Identica #Web3 )
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Happy 17th Year Anniversary #Fediverse social network!
Always strong! 🎊🎉🎂🍻🎆🥳🤹🏽
( #FediverseDay #SNS #SocMed #SocialMedia #SocialWeb #OpenMicroBlogging #OStatus #ActivityPub #Laconica #Identica #Web3 )
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@@reiver ⊼ (Charles) :batman: Mastodon did start out as a full-stack Web application AFAIK. It used the OStatus protocol, the same protocol as what GNU social was based on and what StatusNet was using prior to its merger with its own fork, GNU social.
However, at first, it was not positioned as a fully independent project of its own, much less a federated walled garden that allegedly only connected to itself. It was initially conceived and advertised as an alternative to GNU social proper with a different, "easier-to-use", more Twitter-like GUI being its main selling-point.
I guess it's pretty obvious that what was working underneath was not GNU social proper either. Two examples to prove this:
Neither Identi.ca nor StatusNet nor GNU social had a rigid, hard-coded character limit of 500 characters. Mastodon had it from the get-go.
Also, Identi.ca, StatusNet and GNU social had a summary field. It was part of the OpenMicroBlogging and OStatus protocols. Both Friendica and Hubzilla made use of this summary field as such. Mastodon did not have the summary field implemented because summaries were pointless if all you had was 500 characters.
Fast-forward to 2017. Mastodon had meanwhile repositioned itself on the "market" as a stand-alone microblogging platform, implying to be a "decentralised, federated walled garden" with its own exclusive technology that nothing else used, and that nothing else connected to. Something that just about every last Mastodon newbie takes Mastodon for still today.
At some point in 2017, a Mastodon user from the demo scene with some development experience submitted a pull request to Mastodon's GitHub repository which would repurpose this very same summary field as a content warning field. The pull request was accepted and merged. Ever since shortly afterwards, Mastodon users started believing that Mastodon's content warning field was invented by Eugen Rochko from scratch. And they still do.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Identi.ca #StatusNet #OStatus #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #FediverseHistory -
@@reiver ⊼ (Charles) :batman: Mastodon did start out as a full-stack Web application AFAIK. It used the OStatus protocol, the same protocol as what GNU social was based on and what StatusNet was using prior to its merger with its own fork, GNU social.
However, at first, it was not positioned as a fully independent project of its own, much less a federated walled garden that allegedly only connected to itself. It was initially conceived and advertised as an alternative to GNU social proper with a different, "easier-to-use", more Twitter-like GUI being its main selling-point.
I guess it's pretty obvious that what was working underneath was not GNU social proper either. Two examples to prove this:
Neither Identi.ca nor StatusNet nor GNU social had a rigid, hard-coded character limit of 500 characters. Mastodon had it from the get-go.
Also, Identi.ca, StatusNet and GNU social had a summary field. It was part of the OpenMicroBlogging and OStatus protocols. Both Friendica and Hubzilla made use of this summary field as such. Mastodon did not have the summary field implemented because summaries were pointless if all you had was 500 characters.
Fast-forward to 2017. Mastodon had meanwhile repositioned itself on the "market" as a stand-alone microblogging platform, implying to be a "decentralised, federated walled garden" with its own exclusive technology that nothing else used, and that nothing else connected to. Something that just about every last Mastodon newbie takes Mastodon for still today.
At some point in 2017, a Mastodon user from the demo scene with some development experience submitted a pull request to Mastodon's GitHub repository which would repurpose this very same summary field as a content warning field. The pull request was accepted and merged. Ever since shortly afterwards, Mastodon users started believing that Mastodon's content warning field was invented by Eugen Rochko from scratch. And they still do.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Identi.ca #StatusNet #OStatus #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #FediverseHistory -
@@reiver ⊼ (Charles) :batman: 2008. When @Evan Prodromou launched Identi.ca.
After all, Mastodon started out as an alternative frontend for GNU social. GNU social is a fork of StatusNet. StatusNet, in turn, was the software which Identi.ca used to run on until it was merged into GNU social in 2013. (Evan first launched Identi.ca, and then he open-sourced the technology under the name of Laconi.ca, later StatusNet.)
This also means that the OStatus protocol is part of Mastodon's history as well. OStatus is the protocol that GNU social was based on back in the day and probably still is, that later versions of StatusNet were based on, and that Mastodon was originally based on. It's the successor to OpenMicroBlogging, the protocol that Identi.ca was launched on, and that early StatusNet was based on. But it was gone when Mastodon was launched.
It's also fair to mention Friendica, the Facebook alternative launched by @Mike Macgirvin ?️ in 2010, and Hubzilla, the "federated social content management system" which, in 2015, emerged from something that Mike himself had forked off Friendica in 2012.
Both speak a whole lot of protocols. Hubzilla used to speak OStatus, Friendica still does. And so, when the very first Mastodon test release came out in early 2016, and the very first Mastodon instance was started up, it was immediately able to connect to GNU social, Friendica and Hubzilla.
It's an important part of Mastodon's history that Mastodon has never in its history been an isolated walled garden, that Mastodon has never in its history been connected to only itself.
Speaking of Hubzilla, it should be mentioned once again, namely in 2017.
The very first Fediverse project to implement ActivityPub was Hubzilla in July. Mastodon followed in September. These two were the only Fediverse projects that adopted ActivityPub before it was declared a standard. And so, for quite a while, it was only these two that could use ActivityPub to connect to each other (while still also being able to do so via OStatus, by the way). But since both have vastly different philosophies, actual compatibility was and still is limited.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Identi.ca #StatusNet #OStatus #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #ActivityPub #FediverseHistory -
@@reiver ⊼ (Charles) :batman: 2008. When @Evan Prodromou launched Identi.ca.
After all, Mastodon started out as an alternative frontend for GNU social. GNU social is a fork of StatusNet. StatusNet, in turn, was the software which Identi.ca used to run on until it was merged into GNU social in 2013. (Evan first launched Identi.ca, and then he open-sourced the technology under the name of Laconi.ca, later StatusNet.)
This also means that the OStatus protocol is part of Mastodon's history as well. OStatus is the protocol that GNU social was based on back in the day and probably still is, that later versions of StatusNet were based on, and that Mastodon was originally based on. It's the successor to OpenMicroBlogging, the protocol that Identi.ca was launched on, and that early StatusNet was based on. But it was gone when Mastodon was launched.
It's also fair to mention Friendica, the Facebook alternative launched by @Mike Macgirvin ?️ in 2010, and Hubzilla, the "federated social content management system" which, in 2015, emerged from something that Mike himself had forked off Friendica in 2012.
Both speak a whole lot of protocols. Hubzilla used to speak OStatus, Friendica still does. And so, when the very first Mastodon test release came out in early 2016, and the very first Mastodon instance was started up, it was immediately able to connect to GNU social, Friendica and Hubzilla.
It's an important part of Mastodon's history that Mastodon has never in its history been an isolated walled garden, that Mastodon has never in its history been connected to only itself.
Speaking of Hubzilla, it should be mentioned once again, namely in 2017.
The very first Fediverse project to implement ActivityPub was Hubzilla in July. Mastodon followed in September. These two were the only Fediverse projects that adopted ActivityPub before it was declared a standard. And so, for quite a while, it was only these two that could use ActivityPub to connect to each other (while still also being able to do so via OStatus, by the way). But since both have vastly different philosophies, actual compatibility was and still is limited.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Identi.ca #StatusNet #OStatus #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #ActivityPub #FediverseHistory -
@cy
The people who wrote the Fediverse
There were no "people who wrote the Fediverse". These was no committee who laid down the standards.
The Fediverse was invented by @Evan Prodromou. In 2008. By first creating a centralised Twitter alternative silo named Identi.ca.
And then open-sourcing the underlying technology as Laconi.ca, later StatusNet (merged into GNU social in 2013).
And then laying the protocol open as OpenMicroBlogging, later superseded by OStatus.
Then, in 2010, @Mike Macgirvin ?️ decided that the world needs a free, open-source, decentralised, secure alternative to Facebook that's better than Facebook. And so he made Mistpark, today Friendica.
But the features he wanted Friendica to have were impossible to achieve with any existing protocol. OStatus wasn't even that good for microblogging, much less Mike's ambitious plans. Besides, he's an experienced protocol designer. So he created a whole new protocol, DFRN, and built Friendica on top of it. Friendica did adopt OStatus as an extra protocol, though, because Friendica's goal was and still is to federate with everything and then some.
In 2011, Mike had seen many public Friendica nodes shut down with or without warning and people always losing everything and having to start over from scratch. So he decided to do something against it.
He invented nomadic identity. And built a new protocol around it, Zot, because there was no way DFRN could take care of this, let alone OStatus.
In 2012, he forked Friendica into Red and rewrote the whole backend against Zot, which, however, required the creation of yet another identity scheme.
For one, one login could now have multiple fully separate and independent identities on it. For example, my Hubzilla channel URL is https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/channel/jupiter_rowland.
Besides, one identity could now reside on multiple server instances which is what nomadic identity means.
Red was later renamed Red Matrix and, in 2015, refactored, redesigned and renamed into Hubzilla.
Mastodon and Pleroma started in 2016 as OStatus-based alternative UIs for GNU social. Mastodon was the first to be turned into a stand-alone project with not much interest in connecting to anything outside, all in spite of already being federated with Pleroma, GNU social, Friendica and Hubzilla via OStatus.
ActivityPub came out in 2017. No, not 2018. It was standardised in 2018. But it came out in 2017.
In July, 2017, Hubzilla was the first Fediverse project to integrate ActivityPub. Next to its own Zot, next to diaspora*, next to OStatus etc. On the one hand, Hubzilla tried to stay as close to the ActivityPub spec as possible and feasible. On the other hand, Hubzilla had to make its ActivityPub integration, which has always been an optional add-on, compatible to its own technology, to its own Zot protocol, to the way it works.
In September, Mastodon was the second Fediverse project to adopt ActivityPub. But Mastodon was more interested in doing its own thing and being as close to Twitter as it could than in sticking to a protocol spec, much less connecting to non-Mastodon stuff such as Hubzilla with which it already shared two protocols now.
Mastodon was the one that added Webfinger. ActivityPub doesn't even require Webfinger. The ActivityPub spec doesn't contain Webfinger. But Mastodon requires Webfinger. It can't live without Webfinger. So everything that wants to properly federate with Mastodon needs to implement Webfinger.
After ActivityPub had become a standard, more projects adopted it. But as lax a specification as ActivityPub is, it allowed for a lot of liberties.
Some devs looked at how Mastodon had integrated ActivityPub, decided it was rubbish and did it their own way.
Some devs looked at how Mastodon had integrated ActivityPub, decided they couldn't do it the same way because what they did was too different from Mastodon and did it their own way.
Some devs didn't look at what anyone else did and did it their own way.
Probably none of them looked at how Hubzilla had integrated ActivityPub because none of them even knew that Hubzilla existed. Except for those who were maintaining Friendica now. And Friendica had to make it compatible with DFRN and with the way it had been working since 2010.
Fast-forward to 2023. Mike's current piece of work was the streams repository which contains an intentionally nameless fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork) of Hubzilla, slimmed down from Hubzilla, but modernised and technologically even more advanced.
It was then that @silverpill, creator and maintainer of Mitra, got into contact with him because he wanted to add nomadic identity to Mitra. Something that's built on ActivityPub and only supports ActivityPub. A first. No-one had ever done nomadic identity with nothing but ActivityPub before.
So the two started working on how to implement nomadic identity using only ActivityPub. Mike had a vision of a Fediverse with nomadic identity all over and Fediverse identities cloned beyond server application borders. Like, a (streams) channel cloned to Mitra, Mastodon, PeerTube and Mobilizon, all with the same identity.
This, however, required another, brand-new way of identifying Fediverse actors. And so FEP-ef61 "Portable Objects" was created.
We're probably in the middle of xkcd 927 now.
Mike set up an experimental branch of (streams) to develop and test nomadic identity via ActivityPub, also since (streams) already had nomadic identity anyway.
Around summer, the "nomadic" branch (for nomadic identity via ActivityPub) seemed reliable enough to merge it into "dev". And in July, "dev" was merged into "release", complete with nomadic-identity-via-ActivityPub code.
It was shortly after that merge that I created my two (streams) channels. The channel URL of my channel for Fediverse memes is https://streams.elsmussols.net/channel/fedimemes_on_streams. But its DID, which all channels created on accounts registered after that merge got, is https://streams.elsmussols.net/.well-known/apgateway/did:key:z6Mkf2dhUa65zBYCNVqs3AHyt8uPixauZ7bPzEJn15LJANsd/actor. And that's only two IDs of the same channel. There are also others for (streams)' native Nomad protocol, Hubzilla's Zot6 protocol, ActivityPub, OAuth, OAuth2 and probably also OpenWebAuth magic single sign-on, another one of Mike's creations. Not to mention that (streams) channels, like Hubzilla channels and Friendica accounts, can also optionally be group actors.
In fact, this blew up into (streams) users' faces because (streams) confused the various IDs to such degrees that it wouldn't federate at all anymore. It took Mike a whole lot of work to iron this out again, so much that he officially retired from Fediverse development on August 31st.
And in the middle of this, he even created yet another fork, Forte, which is (streams) minus Nomad, minus Zot6, based on and supporting only ActivityPub. My guess is still that one of the reasons to create Forte at that point was to get rid of the Nomad and Zot6 IDs to sort the ID mess out.
Even if nomadic identity via ActivityPub should ever become stable and start spreading, I don't expect DIDs to become the one norm in the Fediverse. Not with all those barely or unmaintained projects and those devs who refuse to acknowledge that devs of other projects do great stuff, too.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #OStatus #DFRN #Zot #ActivityPub #Nomad #Laconi.ca #Identi.ca #StatusNet #GNUsocial #Friendica #Hubzilla #Mastodon #Pleroma #Streams #(streams) #Forte #FEP_ef61 -
@cy
The people who wrote the Fediverse
There were no "people who wrote the Fediverse". These was no committee who laid down the standards.
The Fediverse was invented by @Evan Prodromou. In 2008. By first creating a centralised Twitter alternative silo named Identi.ca.
And then open-sourcing the underlying technology as Laconi.ca, later StatusNet (merged into GNU social in 2013).
And then laying the protocol open as OpenMicroBlogging, later superseded by OStatus.
Then, in 2010, @Mike Macgirvin ?️ decided that the world needs a free, open-source, decentralised, secure alternative to Facebook that's better than Facebook. And so he made Mistpark, today Friendica.
But the features he wanted Friendica to have were impossible to achieve with any existing protocol. OStatus wasn't even that good for microblogging, much less Mike's ambitious plans. Besides, he's an experienced protocol designer. So he created a whole new protocol, DFRN, and built Friendica on top of it. Friendica did adopt OStatus as an extra protocol, though, because Friendica's goal was and still is to federate with everything and then some.
In 2011, Mike had seen many public Friendica nodes shut down with or without warning and people always losing everything and having to start over from scratch. So he decided to do something against it.
He invented nomadic identity. And built a new protocol around it, Zot, because there was no way DFRN could take care of this, let alone OStatus.
In 2012, he forked Friendica into Red and rewrote the whole backend against Zot, which, however, required the creation of yet another identity scheme.
For one, one login could now have multiple fully separate and independent identities on it. For example, my Hubzilla channel URL is https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/channel/jupiter_rowland.
Besides, one identity could now reside on multiple server instances which is what nomadic identity means.
Red was later renamed Red Matrix and, in 2015, refactored, redesigned and renamed into Hubzilla.
Mastodon and Pleroma started in 2016 as OStatus-based alternative UIs for GNU social. Mastodon was the first to be turned into a stand-alone project with not much interest in connecting to anything outside, all in spite of already being federated with Pleroma, GNU social, Friendica and Hubzilla via OStatus.
ActivityPub came out in 2017. No, not 2018. It was standardised in 2018. But it came out in 2017.
In July, 2017, Hubzilla was the first Fediverse project to integrate ActivityPub. Next to its own Zot, next to diaspora*, next to OStatus etc. On the one hand, Hubzilla tried to stay as close to the ActivityPub spec as possible and feasible. On the other hand, Hubzilla had to make its ActivityPub integration, which has always been an optional add-on, compatible to its own technology, to its own Zot protocol, to the way it works.
In September, Mastodon was the second Fediverse project to adopt ActivityPub. But Mastodon was more interested in doing its own thing and being as close to Twitter as it could than in sticking to a protocol spec, much less connecting to non-Mastodon stuff such as Hubzilla with which it already shared two protocols now.
Mastodon was the one that added Webfinger. ActivityPub doesn't even require Webfinger. The ActivityPub spec doesn't contain Webfinger. But Mastodon requires Webfinger. It can't live without Webfinger. So everything that wants to properly federate with Mastodon needs to implement Webfinger.
After ActivityPub had become a standard, more projects adopted it. But as lax a specification as ActivityPub is, it allowed for a lot of liberties.
Some devs looked at how Mastodon had integrated ActivityPub, decided it was rubbish and did it their own way.
Some devs looked at how Mastodon had integrated ActivityPub, decided they couldn't do it the same way because what they did was too different from Mastodon and did it their own way.
Some devs didn't look at what anyone else did and did it their own way.
Probably none of them looked at how Hubzilla had integrated ActivityPub because none of them even knew that Hubzilla existed. Except for those who were maintaining Friendica now. And Friendica had to make it compatible with DFRN and with the way it had been working since 2010.
Fast-forward to 2023. Mike's current piece of work was the streams repository which contains an intentionally nameless fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork) of Hubzilla, slimmed down from Hubzilla, but modernised and technologically even more advanced.
It was then that @silverpill, creator and maintainer of Mitra, got into contact with him because he wanted to add nomadic identity to Mitra. Something that's built on ActivityPub and only supports ActivityPub. A first. No-one had ever done nomadic identity with nothing but ActivityPub before.
So the two started working on how to implement nomadic identity using only ActivityPub. Mike had a vision of a Fediverse with nomadic identity all over and Fediverse identities cloned beyond server application borders. Like, a (streams) channel cloned to Mitra, Mastodon, PeerTube and Mobilizon, all with the same identity.
This, however, required another, brand-new way of identifying Fediverse actors. And so FEP-ef61 "Portable Objects" was created.
We're probably in the middle of xkcd 927 now.
Mike set up an experimental branch of (streams) to develop and test nomadic identity via ActivityPub, also since (streams) already had nomadic identity anyway.
Around summer, the "nomadic" branch (for nomadic identity via ActivityPub) seemed reliable enough to merge it into "dev". And in July, "dev" was merged into "release", complete with nomadic-identity-via-ActivityPub code.
It was shortly after that merge that I created my two (streams) channels. The channel URL of my channel for Fediverse memes is https://streams.elsmussols.net/channel/fedimemes_on_streams. But its DID, which all channels created on accounts registered after that merge got, is https://streams.elsmussols.net/.well-known/apgateway/did:key:z6Mkf2dhUa65zBYCNVqs3AHyt8uPixauZ7bPzEJn15LJANsd/actor. And that's only two IDs of the same channel. There are also others for (streams)' native Nomad protocol, Hubzilla's Zot6 protocol, ActivityPub, OAuth, OAuth2 and probably also OpenWebAuth magic single sign-on, another one of Mike's creations. Not to mention that (streams) channels, like Hubzilla channels and Friendica accounts, can also optionally be group actors.
In fact, this blew up into (streams) users' faces because (streams) confused the various IDs to such degrees that it wouldn't federate at all anymore. It took Mike a whole lot of work to iron this out again, so much that he officially retired from Fediverse development on August 31st.
And in the middle of this, he even created yet another fork, Forte, which is (streams) minus Nomad, minus Zot6, based on and supporting only ActivityPub. My guess is still that one of the reasons to create Forte at that point was to get rid of the Nomad and Zot6 IDs to sort the ID mess out.
Even if nomadic identity via ActivityPub should ever become stable and start spreading, I don't expect DIDs to become the one norm in the Fediverse. Not with all those barely or unmaintained projects and those devs who refuse to acknowledge that devs of other projects do great stuff, too.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #OStatus #DFRN #Zot #ActivityPub #Nomad #Laconi.ca #Identi.ca #StatusNet #GNUsocial #Friendica #Hubzilla #Mastodon #Pleroma #Streams #(streams) #Forte #FEP_ef61 -
@cyThe people who wrote the Fediverse
There were no "people who wrote the Fediverse". These was no committee who laid down the standards.
The Fediverse was invented by @Evan Prodromou. In 2008. By first creating a centralised Twitter alternative silo named Identi.ca.
And then open-sourcing the underlying technology as Laconi.ca, later StatusNet (merged into GNU social in 2013).
And then laying the protocol open as OpenMicroBlogging, later superseded by OStatus.
Then, in 2010, @Mike Macgirvin ?️ decided that the world needs a free, open-source, decentralised, secure alternative to Facebook that's better than Facebook. And so he made Mistpark, today Friendica.
But the features he wanted Friendica to have were impossible to achieve with any existing protocol. OStatus wasn't even that good for microblogging, much less Mike's ambitious plans. Besides, he's an experienced protocol designer. So he created a whole new protocol, DFRN, and built Friendica on top of it. Friendica did adopt OStatus as an extra protocol, though, because Friendica's goal was and still is to federate with everything and then some.
In 2011, Mike had seen many public Friendica nodes shut down with or without warning and people always losing everything and having to start over from scratch. So he decided to do something against it.
He invented nomadic identity. And built a new protocol around it, Zot, because there was no way DFRN could take care of this, let alone OStatus.
In 2012, he forked Friendica into Red and rewrote the whole backend against Zot, which, however, required the creation of yet another identity scheme.
For one, one login could now have multiple fully separate and independent identities on it. For example, my Hubzilla channel URL is https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/channel/jupiter_rowland.
Besides, one identity could now reside on multiple server instances which is what nomadic identity means.
Red was later renamed Red Matrix and, in 2015, refactored, redesigned and renamed into Hubzilla.
Mastodon and Pleroma started in 2016 as OStatus-based alternative UIs for GNU social. Mastodon was the first to be turned into a stand-alone project with not much interest in connecting to anything outside, all in spite of already being federated with Pleroma, GNU social, Friendica and Hubzilla via OStatus.
ActivityPub came out in 2017. No, not 2018. It was standardised in 2018. But it came out in 2017.
In July, 2017, Hubzilla was the first Fediverse project to integrate ActivityPub. Next to its own Zot, next to diaspora*, next to OStatus etc. On the one hand, Hubzilla tried to stay as close to the ActivityPub spec as possible and feasible. On the other hand, Hubzilla had to make its ActivityPub integration, which has always been an optional add-on, compatible to its own technology, to its own Zot protocol, to the way it works.
In September, Mastodon was the second Fediverse project to adopt ActivityPub. But Mastodon was more interested in doing its own thing and being as close to Twitter as it could than in sticking to a protocol spec, much less connecting to non-Mastodon stuff such as Hubzilla with which it already shared two protocols now.
Mastodon was the one that added Webfinger. ActivityPub doesn't even require Webfinger. The ActivityPub spec doesn't contain Webfinger. But Mastodon requires Webfinger. It can't live without Webfinger. So everything that wants to properly federate with Mastodon needs to implement Webfinger.
After ActivityPub had become a standard, more projects adopted it. But as lax a specification as ActivityPub is, it allowed for a lot of liberties.
Some devs looked at how Mastodon had integrated ActivityPub, decided it was rubbish and did it their own way.
Some devs looked at how Mastodon had integrated ActivityPub, decided they couldn't do it the same way because what they did was too different from Mastodon and did it their own way.
Some devs didn't look at what anyone else did and did it their own way.
Probably none of them looked at how Hubzilla had integrated ActivityPub because none of them even knew that Hubzilla existed. Except for those who were maintaining Friendica now. And Friendica had to make it compatible with DFRN and with the way it had been working since 2010.
Fast-forward to 2023. Mike's current piece of work was the streams repository which contains an intentionally nameless fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork) of Hubzilla, slimmed down from Hubzilla, but modernised and technologically even more advanced.
It was then that @silverpill, creator and maintainer of Mitra, got into contact with him because he wanted to add nomadic identity to Mitra. Something that's built on ActivityPub and only supports ActivityPub. A first. No-one had ever done nomadic identity with nothing but ActivityPub before.
So the two started working on how to implement nomadic identity using only ActivityPub. Mike had a vision of a Fediverse with nomadic identity all over and Fediverse identities cloned beyond server application borders. Like, a (streams) channel cloned to Mitra, Mastodon, PeerTube and Mobilizon, all with the same identity.
This, however, required another, brand-new way of identifying Fediverse actors. And so FEP-ef61 "Portable Objects" was created.
We're probably in the middle of xkcd 927 now.
Mike set up an experimental branch of (streams) to develop and test nomadic identity via ActivityPub, also since (streams) already had nomadic identity anyway.
Around summer, the "nomadic" branch (for nomadic identity via ActivityPub) seemed reliable enough to merge it into "dev". And in July, "dev" was merged into "release", complete with nomadic-identity-via-ActivityPub code.
It was shortly after that merge that I created my two (streams) channels. The channel URL of my channel for Fediverse memes is https://streams.elsmussols.net/channel/fedimemes_on_streams. But its DID, which all channels created on accounts registered after that merge got, is https://streams.elsmussols.net/.well-known/apgateway/did:key:z6Mkf2dhUa65zBYCNVqs3AHyt8uPixauZ7bPzEJn15LJANsd/actor. And that's only two IDs of the same channel. There are also others for (streams)' native Nomad protocol, Hubzilla's Zot6 protocol, ActivityPub, OAuth, OAuth2 and probably also OpenWebAuth magic single sign-on, another one of Mike's creations. Not to mention that (streams) channels, like Hubzilla channels and Friendica accounts, can also optionally be group actors.
In fact, this blew up into (streams) users' faces because (streams) confused the various IDs to such degrees that it wouldn't federate at all anymore. It took Mike a whole lot of work to iron this out again, so much that he officially retired from Fediverse development on August 31st.
And in the middle of this, he even created yet another fork, Forte, which is (streams) minus Nomad, minus Zot6, based on and supporting only ActivityPub. My guess is still that one of the reasons to create Forte at that point was to get rid of the Nomad and Zot6 IDs to sort the ID mess out.
Even if nomadic identity via ActivityPub should ever become stable and start spreading, I don't expect DIDs to become the one norm in the Fediverse. Not with all those barely or unmaintained projects and those devs who refuse to acknowledge that devs of other projects do great stuff, too.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #OStatus #DFRN #Zot #ActivityPub #Nomad #Laconi.ca #Identi.ca #StatusNet #GNUsocial #Friendica #Hubzilla #Mastodon #Pleroma #Streams #(streams) #Forte #FEP_ef61 -
@cyThe people who wrote the Fediverse
There were no "people who wrote the Fediverse". These was no committee who laid down the standards.
The Fediverse was invented by @Evan Prodromou. In 2008. By first creating a centralised Twitter alternative silo named Identi.ca.
And then open-sourcing the underlying technology as Laconi.ca, later StatusNet (merged into GNU social in 2013).
And then laying the protocol open as OpenMicroBlogging, later superseded by OStatus.
Then, in 2010, @Mike Macgirvin ?️ decided that the world needs a free, open-source, decentralised, secure alternative to Facebook that's better than Facebook. And so he made Mistpark, today Friendica.
But the features he wanted Friendica to have were impossible to achieve with any existing protocol. OStatus wasn't even that good for microblogging, much less Mike's ambitious plans. Besides, he's an experienced protocol designer. So he created a whole new protocol, DFRN, and built Friendica on top of it. Friendica did adopt OStatus as an extra protocol, though, because Friendica's goal was and still is to federate with everything and then some.
In 2011, Mike had seen many public Friendica nodes shut down with or without warning and people always losing everything and having to start over from scratch. So he decided to do something against it.
He invented nomadic identity. And built a new protocol around it, Zot, because there was no way DFRN could take care of this, let alone OStatus.
In 2012, he forked Friendica into Red and rewrote the whole backend against Zot, which, however, required the creation of yet another identity scheme.
For one, one login could now have multiple fully separate and independent identities on it. For example, my Hubzilla channel URL is https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/channel/jupiter_rowland.
Besides, one identity could now reside on multiple server instances which is what nomadic identity means.
Red was later renamed Red Matrix and, in 2015, refactored, redesigned and renamed into Hubzilla.
Mastodon and Pleroma started in 2016 as OStatus-based alternative UIs for GNU social. Mastodon was the first to be turned into a stand-alone project with not much interest in connecting to anything outside, all in spite of already being federated with Pleroma, GNU social, Friendica and Hubzilla via OStatus.
ActivityPub came out in 2017. No, not 2018. It was standardised in 2018. But it came out in 2017.
In July, 2017, Hubzilla was the first Fediverse project to integrate ActivityPub. Next to its own Zot, next to diaspora*, next to OStatus etc. On the one hand, Hubzilla tried to stay as close to the ActivityPub spec as possible and feasible. On the other hand, Hubzilla had to make its ActivityPub integration, which has always been an optional add-on, compatible to its own technology, to its own Zot protocol, to the way it works.
In September, Mastodon was the second Fediverse project to adopt ActivityPub. But Mastodon was more interested in doing its own thing and being as close to Twitter as it could than in sticking to a protocol spec, much less connecting to non-Mastodon stuff such as Hubzilla with which it already shared two protocols now.
Mastodon was the one that added Webfinger. ActivityPub doesn't even require Webfinger. The ActivityPub spec doesn't contain Webfinger. But Mastodon requires Webfinger. It can't live without Webfinger. So everything that wants to properly federate with Mastodon needs to implement Webfinger.
After ActivityPub had become a standard, more projects adopted it. But as lax a specification as ActivityPub is, it allowed for a lot of liberties.
Some devs looked at how Mastodon had integrated ActivityPub, decided it was rubbish and did it their own way.
Some devs looked at how Mastodon had integrated ActivityPub, decided they couldn't do it the same way because what they did was too different from Mastodon and did it their own way.
Some devs didn't look at what anyone else did and did it their own way.
Probably none of them looked at how Hubzilla had integrated ActivityPub because none of them even knew that Hubzilla existed. Except for those who were maintaining Friendica now. And Friendica had to make it compatible with DFRN and with the way it had been working since 2010.
Fast-forward to 2023. Mike's current piece of work was the streams repository which contains an intentionally nameless fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork) of Hubzilla, slimmed down from Hubzilla, but modernised and technologically even more advanced.
It was then that @silverpill, creator and maintainer of Mitra, got into contact with him because he wanted to add nomadic identity to Mitra. Something that's built on ActivityPub and only supports ActivityPub. A first. No-one had ever done nomadic identity with nothing but ActivityPub before.
So the two started working on how to implement nomadic identity using only ActivityPub. Mike had a vision of a Fediverse with nomadic identity all over and Fediverse identities cloned beyond server application borders. Like, a (streams) channel cloned to Mitra, Mastodon, PeerTube and Mobilizon, all with the same identity.
This, however, required another, brand-new way of identifying Fediverse actors. And so FEP-ef61 "Portable Objects" was created.
We're probably in the middle of xkcd 927 now.
Mike set up an experimental branch of (streams) to develop and test nomadic identity via ActivityPub, also since (streams) already had nomadic identity anyway.
Around summer, the "nomadic" branch (for nomadic identity via ActivityPub) seemed reliable enough to merge it into "dev". And in July, "dev" was merged into "release", complete with nomadic-identity-via-ActivityPub code.
It was shortly after that merge that I created my two (streams) channels. The channel URL of my channel for Fediverse memes is https://streams.elsmussols.net/channel/fedimemes_on_streams. But its DID, which all channels created on accounts registered after that merge got, is https://streams.elsmussols.net/.well-known/apgateway/did:key:z6Mkf2dhUa65zBYCNVqs3AHyt8uPixauZ7bPzEJn15LJANsd/actor. And that's only two IDs of the same channel. There are also others for (streams)' native Nomad protocol, Hubzilla's Zot6 protocol, ActivityPub, OAuth, OAuth2 and probably also OpenWebAuth magic single sign-on, another one of Mike's creations. Not to mention that (streams) channels, like Hubzilla channels and Friendica accounts, can also optionally be group actors.
In fact, this blew up into (streams) users' faces because (streams) confused the various IDs to such degrees that it wouldn't federate at all anymore. It took Mike a whole lot of work to iron this out again, so much that he officially retired from Fediverse development on August 31st.
And in the middle of this, he even created yet another fork, Forte, which is (streams) minus Nomad, minus Zot6, based on and supporting only ActivityPub. My guess is still that one of the reasons to create Forte at that point was to get rid of the Nomad and Zot6 IDs to sort the ID mess out.
Even if nomadic identity via ActivityPub should ever become stable and start spreading, I don't expect DIDs to become the one norm in the Fediverse. Not with all those barely or unmaintained projects and those devs who refuse to acknowledge that devs of other projects do great stuff, too.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #OStatus #DFRN #Zot #ActivityPub #Nomad #Laconi.ca #Identi.ca #StatusNet #GNUsocial #Friendica #Hubzilla #Mastodon #Pleroma #Streams #(streams) #Forte #FEP_ef61 -
@cyThe people who wrote the Fediverse
There were no "people who wrote the Fediverse". These was no committee who laid down the standards.
The Fediverse was invented by @Evan Prodromou. In 2008. By first creating a centralised Twitter alternative silo named Identi.ca.
And then open-sourcing the underlying technology as Laconi.ca, later StatusNet (merged into GNU social in 2013).
And then laying the protocol open as OpenMicroBlogging, later superseded by OStatus.
Then, in 2010, @Mike Macgirvin ?️ decided that the world needs a free, open-source, decentralised, secure alternative to Facebook that's better than Facebook. And so he made Mistpark, today Friendica.
But the features he wanted Friendica to have were impossible to achieve with any existing protocol. OStatus wasn't even that good for microblogging, much less Mike's ambitious plans. Besides, he's an experienced protocol designer. So he created a whole new protocol, DFRN, and built Friendica on top of it. Friendica did adopt OStatus as an extra protocol, though, because Friendica's goal was and still is to federate with everything and then some.
In 2011, Mike had seen many public Friendica nodes shut down with or without warning and people always losing everything and having to start over from scratch. So he decided to do something against it.
He invented nomadic identity. And built a new protocol around it, Zot, because there was no way DFRN could take care of this, let alone OStatus.
In 2012, he forked Friendica into Red and rewrote the whole backend against Zot, which, however, required the creation of yet another identity scheme.
For one, one login could now have multiple fully separate and independent identities on it. For example, my Hubzilla channel URL is https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/channel/jupiter_rowland.
Besides, one identity could now reside on multiple server instances which is what nomadic identity means.
Red was later renamed Red Matrix and, in 2015, refactored, redesigned and renamed into Hubzilla.
Mastodon and Pleroma started in 2016 as OStatus-based alternative UIs for GNU social. Mastodon was the first to be turned into a stand-alone project with not much interest in connecting to anything outside, all in spite of already being federated with Pleroma, GNU social, Friendica and Hubzilla via OStatus.
ActivityPub came out in 2017. No, not 2018. It was standardised in 2018. But it came out in 2017.
In July, 2017, Hubzilla was the first Fediverse project to integrate ActivityPub. Next to its own Zot, next to diaspora*, next to OStatus etc. On the one hand, Hubzilla tried to stay as close to the ActivityPub spec as possible and feasible. On the other hand, Hubzilla had to make its ActivityPub integration, which has always been an optional add-on, compatible to its own technology, to its own Zot protocol, to the way it works.
In September, Mastodon was the second Fediverse project to adopt ActivityPub. But Mastodon was more interested in doing its own thing and being as close to Twitter as it could than in sticking to a protocol spec, much less connecting to non-Mastodon stuff such as Hubzilla with which it already shared two protocols now.
Mastodon was the one that added Webfinger. ActivityPub doesn't even require Webfinger. The ActivityPub spec doesn't contain Webfinger. But Mastodon requires Webfinger. It can't live without Webfinger. So everything that wants to properly federate with Mastodon needs to implement Webfinger.
After ActivityPub had become a standard, more projects adopted it. But as lax a specification as ActivityPub is, it allowed for a lot of liberties.
Some devs looked at how Mastodon had integrated ActivityPub, decided it was rubbish and did it their own way.
Some devs looked at how Mastodon had integrated ActivityPub, decided they couldn't do it the same way because what they did was too different from Mastodon and did it their own way.
Some devs didn't look at what anyone else did and did it their own way.
Probably none of them looked at how Hubzilla had integrated ActivityPub because none of them even knew that Hubzilla existed. Except for those who were maintaining Friendica now. And Friendica had to make it compatible with DFRN and with the way it had been working since 2010.
Fast-forward to 2023. Mike's current piece of work was the streams repository which contains an intentionally nameless fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork) of Hubzilla, slimmed down from Hubzilla, but modernised and technologically even more advanced.
It was then that @silverpill, creator and maintainer of Mitra, got into contact with him because he wanted to add nomadic identity to Mitra. Something that's built on ActivityPub and only supports ActivityPub. A first. No-one had ever done nomadic identity with nothing but ActivityPub before.
So the two started working on how to implement nomadic identity using only ActivityPub. Mike had a vision of a Fediverse with nomadic identity all over and Fediverse identities cloned beyond server application borders. Like, a (streams) channel cloned to Mitra, Mastodon, PeerTube and Mobilizon, all with the same identity.
This, however, required another, brand-new way of identifying Fediverse actors. And so FEP-ef61 "Portable Objects" was created.
We're probably in the middle of xkcd 927 now.
Mike set up an experimental branch of (streams) to develop and test nomadic identity via ActivityPub, also since (streams) already had nomadic identity anyway.
Around summer, the "nomadic" branch (for nomadic identity via ActivityPub) seemed reliable enough to merge it into "dev". And in July, "dev" was merged into "release", complete with nomadic-identity-via-ActivityPub code.
It was shortly after that merge that I created my two (streams) channels. The channel URL of my channel for Fediverse memes is https://streams.elsmussols.net/channel/fedimemes_on_streams. But its DID, which all channels created on accounts registered after that merge got, is https://streams.elsmussols.net/.well-known/apgateway/did:key:z6Mkf2dhUa65zBYCNVqs3AHyt8uPixauZ7bPzEJn15LJANsd/actor. And that's only two IDs of the same channel. There are also others for (streams)' native Nomad protocol, Hubzilla's Zot6 protocol, ActivityPub, OAuth, OAuth2 and probably also OpenWebAuth magic single sign-on, another one of Mike's creations. Not to mention that (streams) channels, like Hubzilla channels and Friendica accounts, can also optionally be group actors.
In fact, this blew up into (streams) users' faces because (streams) confused the various IDs to such degrees that it wouldn't federate at all anymore. It took Mike a whole lot of work to iron this out again, so much that he officially retired from Fediverse development on August 31st.
And in the middle of this, he even created yet another fork, Forte, which is (streams) minus Nomad, minus Zot6, based on and supporting only ActivityPub. My guess is still that one of the reasons to create Forte at that point was to get rid of the Nomad and Zot6 IDs to sort the ID mess out.
Even if nomadic identity via ActivityPub should ever become stable and start spreading, I don't expect DIDs to become the one norm in the Fediverse. Not with all those barely or unmaintained projects and those devs who refuse to acknowledge that devs of other projects do great stuff, too.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #OStatus #DFRN #Zot #ActivityPub #Nomad #Laconi.ca #Identi.ca #StatusNet #GNUsocial #Friendica #Hubzilla #Mastodon #Pleroma #Streams #(streams) #Forte #FEP_ef61 -
From @tonytins on the history of the Fediverse, Mastodon, and ActivityPub, and how it has similarities to Bluesky's history.
https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed/issues/5348#issuecomment-2481224759
#ActivityPub #BlueSky #DeSo #GNUSocial #Mastodon #OStatus #StatusNet
-
From @tonytins on the history of the Fediverse, Mastodon, and ActivityPub, and how it has similarities to Bluesky's history.
https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed/issues/5348#issuecomment-2481224759
#ActivityPub #BlueSky #DeSo #GNUSocial #Mastodon #OStatus #StatusNet
-
@Tealk Ja, aber das ist nicht mit Mastodon erfunden worden. Und das Fediverse ist auch nicht mit ActivityPub erfunden worden.
Das Fediverse fing eigentlich zweigleisig an.
Einmal war da OStatus, ehemals OpenMicroBlog. Das hatte ab 2008 Identi.ca und das daraus abgeleitete Laconi.ca/StatusNet-Projekt, aus dem ja auch GNU social hervorging. Dann ab 2010 Friendica, dann ab 2012 die Red Matrix (Friendica-Fork), aus der 2015 Hubzilla wurde, dann ab 2016 Pleroma und Mastodon. Auch Mastodon fing auf OStatus an.
Nebenher gab's noch das diaspora*-Protokoll, das nie so wirklich offen war. Das hatte ab 2010 nur diaspora*. Dann hat sich in einer sechsmonatigen Sisyphusarbeit Friendica einseitig mit diaspora* verbunden, das keine Protokolldokumentation hatte, geschweige denn eine API.
Das kann man sich so vorstellen, wie wenn man Hardware an einen Computer anschließen will, es aber keine Schnittstelle dafür gibt und das Ganze dann auch noch geschützt ist. Erst verbringst du mehrere Monate, die Funktionsweise des Computers zu reverse-engineeren. Dann bohrst du mit einem Diamant-Kernlochbohrer ein Loch ins Computergehäuse, das aus Stahlbeton besteht. Und dann nimmst du dein Kabel und lötest 25 einzelne Litzen direkt auf eine oder mehrere Platinen. So in der Art lief die Föderation von Friendica nach diaspora* ab. Aber von da an wußte man wenigstens, wie das geht.
2011 kam also Friendica dazu, 2012 die Red Matrix, die wie gesagt 2015 zu Hubzilla wurde. Später haben sich da noch ein paar andere mit eingeklinkt.
Eigentlich waren das zwei getrennte Netzwerke, weil direkte Konversation zwischen StatusNet und diaspora* nicht möglich war. Und tatsächlich war die diaspora*-Seite nachher sogar größer. Das lag einmal daran, daß diaspora* an sich nicht klein war. Außerdem hat es dem StatusNet/GNU social-Konglomerat geschadet, daß Identi.ca 2013 von OStatus auf pump.io umgestellt wurde und dadurch mit nichts anderem mehr kompatibel war. Und Identi.ca machte mindestens 90% des Gesamtvolumens von StatusNet aus.
ActivityPub kam erst 2017. Wie gesagt, da gab es Mastodon schon, da gab es Pleroma schon, da gab es auch Misskey schon seit 2014, wobei ich nicht weiß, welches Protokoll das ursprünglich verwendete. Friendica und Hubzilla gab es ja auch, aber die hatten ihre eigenen Protokolle (DFRN und Zot), und Hubzilla hat es heute noch.
Im Juli 2017 hat Hubzilla als erste Serversoftware überhaupt ActivityPub implementiert, und Hubzilla spricht ja immer noch fast soviel wie Friendica. Im September 2017 hat Mastodon nachgezogen, das bis 2019 sowohl ActivityPub als auch OStatus sprach.
2018 hat der W3C dann ActivityPub hochoffiziell zum Web-Standard erklärt. Da zogen dann peu à peu andere nach. Bis dahin gab es ActivityPub nur auf Hubzilla und Mastodon, und zwischen den beiden gab's damals schon Meinungsverschiedenheiten.
Also: Ja, ActivityPub ist inzwischen der Standard.
Aaaber: Der Standard ist nicht Mastodons Implementation von ActivityPub. Der Standard ist der Wischiwaschi-"Standard" in der offiziellen W3C-Spezifikation. Und dazu gibt's noch die FEPs.
Mastodon biegt sich den W3C-Standard so hin, wie es ihm paßt, und geht dabei an die Grenzen des noch Erlaubten. Vieles ignoriert Mastodon gleich gänzlich, z. B. wehrt es sich schon immer mit Zähnen und Klauen dagegen, in irgendeiner Form volle HTML-Textformatierung auch nur anzuzeigen. Article-Type Objects (= Blogartikel) haben es im Fediverse sehr schwer, weil Mastodon sich standhaft weigert, die vernünftig darzustellen. Das heißt: Mastodon stellt sie überhaupt nicht dar, sondern verlinkt drauf. Das ist Mastodons Reaktion auf Hubzillas Beschwerde darüber, daß Mastodons HTML-Sanitiser vollformatierte Article-Type-Posts bis zur Unkenntlichkeit verstümmelt hat.
Obendrein baut Mastodon auf einer Asbach-Uralt-Version des W3C-Standard auf. FEPs interessieren Mastodon nicht. Statt dessen baut Mastodon ständig proprietäre Nicht-Standard-Sachen ein (Sensitive-Flag für Bilder, Webfinger, CW-Feld, eigene Server2Client-API, fediverse:creator usw.), und alles, was diese proprietären Nicht-Standard-Sachen von Mastodon nicht auch implementiert, stellt Mastodon dann eben als "kaputt" hin.
Und weil immer noch die überwältigende Mehrzahl der Mastodon-Nutzer glaubt, Mastodon sei der Ursprung des Fediverse und der Goldstandard im Fediverse, werden ganz neue Fediverse-Projekte nur oder hauptsächlich gegen Mastodon gebaut und nicht gegen den W3C-Standard plus FEPs. Die werden also tatsächlich als Extras an Mastodon drangeschraubt. Ältere Projekte machen da aber nicht unbedingt mit.
Nehmen wir mal Mike Macgirvin. Der hat seit 2010 zwei Fediverse-Protokolle (DFRN, Zot/Nomad) und round about elf Fediverse-Serveranwendungen erschaffen, von denen vier heute noch existieren, und er hat 2011 nomadische Identität erfunden. Der wanzt sich nicht mehr an Mastodon an. Der baut ActivityPub-Sachen nur noch strikt nach W3C-Standard und FEPs. Wenn es dann nicht mit Mastodon funktioniert, dann ist Mastodon kaputt, weil es seine (streams) und Forte sind, die sich an Standards und Übereinkünfte halten.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Fediverse #OStatus #diaspora* #ActivityPub #W3C #FEP -
Throwback to the precursor to the #Fediverse where @chrismessina, @will and others collaborated on the #DiSo project and worked on creating new specifications that could underpin a decentralized social web: https://factoryjoe.com/2008/12/20/where-were-going-with-activity-streams/
That’s where eg. #ActivityStreams got started and that’s the movement which most specifications that later made up #OStatus came out of
-
Throwback to the precursor to the #Fediverse where @chrismessina, @will and others collaborated on the #DiSo project and worked on creating new specifications that could underpin a decentralized social web: https://factoryjoe.com/2008/12/20/where-were-going-with-activity-streams/
That’s where eg. #ActivityStreams got started and that’s the movement which most specifications that later made up #OStatus came out of
-
That's right folks! Stripey Sums it up below.
#Fediverse is often misconstrued as that network in the #DeSoc space powered by #ActivityPub exclusively - NOPE!
In fact, even mastobruhs would be wise to note that Eugen's original creation was an #OStatus networked product until quite recently in Fediverse evolution years.
Still, there's a lot of otherwise respected tech personalities that continue to insist and spread disinformation to the contrary. Shame on them - someone, everyone, needs to edjumacate those individuals spreading FUD and confusion to the next generation of n00bs arriving in this free and thriving world of privacy respecting, horizontally scaling, #FOSS based social communication systems.
Apparently, what I've quoted below was part of a larger, longer conversation, yet I'm confident that just what #Stripey points out below in correcting someone else's erroneous assumptions more than correctly describes Fediverse and puts an end to any misunderstanding for all sentient #Fedizens 🤘🤠🤘
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RE: https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/users/strypey/statuses/113015290565128857
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#snac2, #PeerTube, #WordPress #Misskey, #Akkoma; it's especially refreshing to see a #snac instance in the list.
And only a single mastopub box in the list, lolz.
People are starting to learn that there's no such thing as a mastodon network, and further that there's waaaay mo better #Fediverse platforms to meet whatever their needs and desires are in #DeSoc - many of those Fediverse severs in fact bridging the #protocol_divide by supporting not just #ActivityPub in the Fediverse, but also #OStatus (yes, still), #AT_Protocol, #Nomad, #Zot, #nostr, #Diaspora, and other emerging Fediverse protocols under current development!
w00t 🤘🤠🤘
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RE: https://fediverse.one/objects/fdc30534-1166-c797-1d9c-12e934354315
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@podcasts del #fediVerso en la arena del #fediVerse @studi0
Novedades, algúnos cuentos y explicaciones sobre
nuestras redes libres descentralizadas.
#activityPub #diaspora #ostatus #mastodon
#OBS #ubuntStudio 2024.04LTS #kubuntuStudio #GIMP #podcast -
@Jupiter Rowland It's interesting that you claim the Fediverse to be defined by ActivityPub in a reply to @Evan Prodromou. The man who invented the Fediverse in 2008 by launching the Identi.ca site, the Laconi.ca project (later StatusNet, now merged into GNU social) and the OpenMicroBlog protocol (later superseded by his own OStatus).
The term "Fediverse" was first used in 2012, some five years before the first two implementations of ActivityPub and some six years before its spec was established as a standard. Back then, it was StatusNet, Friendica and the fledgling, experimental, in-development Friendica fork Red that were connected through OpenMicroBlog. In addition, Friendica and Red were federated with Diaspora* through its own protocol.
Several other projects joined in before the creation of ActivityPub. Red/the Red Matrix and Hubzilla inherited their OpenMicroBlog connector from Friendica even though it had to be rewritten. And just like Mastodon, Pleroma started as an alternative frontend for StatusNet. The only one in the bunch whose goal it actually was to pull everything together in one big network was Friendica.
Interestingly, it took "if it exists, we federate with it" Friendica until 2019 to adopt ActivityPub. Hubzilla was the first to do so in July, 2017, followed by Mastodon in September, both before official standardisation. So for a while, it was only these two which have never really gotten along with each other too well until today.I am trying to think of a platform that incorporated ActivityPub from the start.
I think the whole Threadiverse did. Lemmy certainly did. /kbin definitely did because it was still in an early experimental stage when the Redditors came rushing in. And I guess so did Sublinks which is too new to have started out without ActivityPub.
Other stuff like Plume, Funkwhale, Mitra and micro.blog might have been built on top of ActivityPub right away, too.
If you count forks, then this applies to all Forkeys because forking the hell out of Misskey hadn't been a thing before 2018, also all three incarnations of Osada (all now defunct), Mistpark 2020 (now defunct), Redmatrix 2020 (now defunct), Roadhouse (now defunct) and the streams repository.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #OStatus #ActivityPub -
@Jupiter Rowland It's interesting that you claim the Fediverse to be defined by ActivityPub in a reply to @Evan Prodromou. The man who invented the Fediverse in 2008 by launching the Identi.ca site, the Laconi.ca project (later StatusNet, now merged into GNU social) and the OpenMicroBlog protocol (later superseded by his own OStatus).
The term "Fediverse" was first used in 2012, some five years before the first two implementations of ActivityPub and some six years before its spec was established as a standard. Back then, it was StatusNet, Friendica and the fledgling, experimental, in-development Friendica fork Red that were connected through OpenMicroBlog. In addition, Friendica and Red were federated with Diaspora* through its own protocol.
Several other projects joined in before the creation of ActivityPub. Red/the Red Matrix and Hubzilla inherited their OpenMicroBlog connector from Friendica even though it had to be rewritten. And just like Mastodon, Pleroma started as an alternative frontend for StatusNet. The only one in the bunch whose goal it actually was to pull everything together in one big network was Friendica.
Interestingly, it took "if it exists, we federate with it" Friendica until 2019 to adopt ActivityPub. Hubzilla was the first to do so in July, 2017, followed by Mastodon in September, both before official standardisation. So for a while, it was only these two which have never really gotten along with each other too well until today.I am trying to think of a platform that incorporated ActivityPub from the start.
I think the whole Threadiverse did. Lemmy certainly did. /kbin definitely did because it was still in an early experimental stage when the Redditors came rushing in. And I guess so did Sublinks which is too new to have started out without ActivityPub.
Other stuff like Plume, Funkwhale, Mitra and micro.blog might have been built on top of ActivityPub right away, too.
If you count forks, then this applies to all Forkeys because forking the hell out of Misskey hadn't been a thing before 2018, also all three incarnations of Osada (all now defunct), Mistpark 2020 (now defunct), Redmatrix 2020 (now defunct), Roadhouse (now defunct) and the streams repository.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #OStatus #ActivityPub -
identi.ca says 16 years 😊
We are officially old @evan
...and 13 years ago I already started to work on an #OStatus implementation for #WordPress 🙂
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identi.ca says 16 years 😊
We are officially old @evan
...and 13 years ago I already started to work on an #OStatus implementation for #WordPress 🙂
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@jupiter_rowland @danie10 @thenexusofprivacy @mikedev
Okay first I should state that I've never actually said that masto isn't a solid and capable platform. It is, but at a severe cost - the design of masto, notwithstanding the insistence on maintaining a historically lackluster feature set when compared with almost any other Fediverse software, is such that it really isn't built for #DeSoc - it really strives to be some sort of unachievable ideal for the monolithic silo model.
No one but me seems to site this nowadays, but masto doesn't even really shine with respect to cost in terms of system resources and stability until you approach the 20,000 user account mark. What? Why would you do that? Back when these stats were being bandied about, Pleroma was showcasing its new #Gopher protocol (browsing) support, and reminding people that it felt perfectly at home on an #rPi. No such claim was ever made for masto, lolz. That doesn't mean that the other platforms aren't just as capable of scaling vertically... but... why? Who's going to foot the bill? Who's going to manage all of those un-vetted people creating accounts on your machines? Why would someone bother with that in the first place?
Community? Nope - there's no sense of community on masto servers, and I'll get to that later. Because you want to create your own private Idaho? Probably.
mastodon.socialis one of, if not the, largest deprecated monolithic silos existing in the Fediverse today. Why? What possible benefit could be derived by driving a million people into a single funnel under the auspices of telling them that they're escaping that very same model? It's ludicrous.No matter what happens in the short term, Eugen is assured of his parachute and comfortable retirement fund, except for the part where he forgot to have his new significant other sign a pre-nup - that might dash his net worth later, but that's another consideration entirely. I hope his marriage is actually a long and fruitful one that lasts forever, he's not a bad guy, he's just been courted and corrupted by the "Ooh shiney" phenomenon of financial entrapments that come with relative success in the media and pop culture.
The reason masto needs to be hard forked (several times, IMO) is not to create a better masto that will lend itself to DeSoc, #smolweb, and self-hosting on people's home networks, but rather, to further dilute the trademark, and especially the brand, effectively killing it if possible, supplanting it with Fediverse instead. People like to bounce around that term inclusivity, well, this accomplishes that.
Forks of masto aren't going to create a better masto. No way. Sure, some improvements on this one, other features on that one, but dilution of the brand until it is only as significant as any other deserving Fediverse platform is and should be the ultimate goal. It's not well suited, architecturally for horizontal scaling anyway, unless you don't mind throwing all those system resources at it that could better serve you elsewhere with something like #GoToSocial or one of the #Misskey and #Pleroma family fork members.
True leaders in the Fediverse will initially be those platforms that have planned ahead and accommodate other DeSoc protocols, arguably Fediverse protocols, at this time, #Diaspora, #OStatus, #Nomad, #Zot, and even others that some #Fedizens turn their noses up at, like #nostr and #Bluesky's #ATP. #ActivityPub is NOT the end-all, be-all for the future. It is the golden calf of today, and just as others that have come before, it will morph and evolve or be obviated by others that will be plugged into the platforms currently running it - #Friendica, #Hubzilla, and Streams are prime examples of this, and Friendica especially, considering it's the only extant original member of the Fediverse for all intents and purposes. One could say that Friendica is the #Slackware of the Fediverse, lolz.
With respect to Friendica in particular, but also Hubzilla and others that have arrived at this obvious conclusion, ActivityPub is merely the major vehicle by which it communicates with other decentralized social communications systems on the Internet. I don't think it has ever lost sight of that, like another of its contemporaries, #GNU_Social did.
Hemming large masses of people onto a single (and at this time appearing to be) and open walled garden has the immediate effect of control over large swaths of population - you can say this, but not that. You can think this, but not that. You can be this, but not that. You can believe this, but not that - under penalty of excommunication.
In reality, we don't have strong friendships with our neighbors - that's why we have fences. We wave to them and say hi, call the cops when they're on vacation and see someone suspicious lurking about their property. That's about the extent of being a neighbor. We invite our friends and coworkers over for BBQ's and to swim in our pools, not so much our neighbors.
The current masto social architecture is the antithesis of that, and so is it's physical architecture - put all the lobsters in the same pot of boiling water. Turn on and off their ability to speak all at once. Force them en masse to endure advertising blitzes (Oh, mark my word that's coming) decided upon by the server admin. It's like Baba O'Reilly by The Who - "Meet the new boss, Same as the old boss".
That's not the promise of Fediverse. it's the antonym.
masto also hinders innovation, attempting to define, dictate even, what should and should not be available - Nomadic identity is but one emerging facet of what is fracturing the masto monopolistic initiative - and that's a good thing, because with the help of FEPs, already, others are adopting various cooperative models for this as well, but discussing that now, and here, at this time, is more of a tangent so I'll get back to the point.
Jupiter:
> That's why people still fork Mastodon to add features that are available just about everywhere else.Indeed it is, and why it has managed to enjoy a reasonable level of notoriety. There's also the wholly undeserved notion of community that actually, in direct opposition to, masto has continually sought to break and in a very big way, break.
There are certainly platforms (mostly forumware) that curate a sense of community, but those days are largely past. Whether it was #gplus, #Myspace, #Faceplant, #InstaSPAM, or #Twitter; because just as it is in real life, #COMMUNITY is that which you define for yourself through your connections - your follows and those who choose to follow your account. The biggest failures in the Fediverse that I've personally observed are those that seek to localize, geographically or by shared interest, a monolithic ivory tower of sameness and similarity amongst people.
I felt so awful for one guy who, so enthusiastically upon discovering the Fediverse, started registering domain names corresponding to several states, thinking that he would be successful in launching a geographically oriented family of masto based servers tending to the shared interests of people by offering them a place to congregate. He quickly discovered the fatal flaw in his model, but was stuck with hefty data center bills to maintain all these masto servers that were largely uninhabited.
Trying to get rid of your masto subscribers when you figure out that you need to egress from it is not an easy task without disenfranchising your user base. I know, because a few years back, not long after
@Gledarchived his #mastodo fork and urged everyone to adopt Pleroma instead, I face the daunting task of trying to convince my user base to migrate elsewhere - it took more than a year to accomplish!Danie:
> thing is though there are also many existing alternatives to Mastodon already on the Fediverse, so why fork it?In a nutshell, because it serves to, at the very least, dilute the masto brand, and more likely kill it. It has served its purpose and now that it has been exposed as a vehicle antithetical to #DeSoc, it's time to deprecate it.
My introduction to the #Fediverse occurred when I stumbled upon an earlier incarnation of #Friendica, started looking at #Red_Matrix, and discovered that the monolithic model, if not having been shown the door, had at least been handed its hat.
The problem at that time, was the effect of Prettiness, and of course, UX. Friendica wasn't too bad in that latter sense, when compared to that of Faceplant, but it sure didn't even come close to being as pretty as Faceplant - or even Myspace, which had only recently fallen into the abyss. That's changed A LOT, even in just the past year, with respect to Friendica and Hubzilla - they're much more intuitive for a layperson parachuting to the ground after jumping from the cesspit over at Faceplant.
I think that more than anything, not being pretty enough for the subjugated chattel coming from Twitter and Faceplant, was the most difficult thing for onboarders to embrace. Mike placed all of his focus on functionality and forward thinking vision with respect to what these and later efforts could provide the masses, but the "prettification" was left to others who didn't step up for the challenge for many years. I'm all for features six-ways to Sunday, but I also feel that many things need to be hidden from the landing page a new user sees upon account creation - the very basics they expect should be there, akin to those available in the deprecated monolithic space; users expect this, but they don't yet know they not only want, but really need all of these other feature sets too, yet some things should left, IMO, to be discovered later by the user.
And in my conversations years ago with Mike, I gleaned as much from him [paraphrased, of course]: "Here's this really bitchen gift for the masses, it does all this kewl stuff, now I leave it up to others to make it pretty" (and with a sense of coherency that these former subjugated chattel can initially get their heads around). Putting all that stuff right in their face was awe inspiring, but foreboding at the same time for many.
Well, finally, people are making it pretty :) And they're also moving much of the overwhelming busy-ness elsewhere in the UI. As a result, there's been an explosion of adoption - not even primarily from former masto folks either.
I'd like to touch on the notion of community one more time in closing. It might be convenient for n00bie onboarders to glean a bit about how a particular platform functions, but just like in your own neighborhood where you live, you make friends elsewhere mostly - at work, at functions of the hobbies you engage in, with friends you meet at the grocery store or libraries, and the beaches or on hiking or 4x4 weekend excursions. It's the same way in the Fediverse, you make your friends through connections here and there through people you discover along the way, and 99% of them ARE NOT on your particular server instance.
They don't need to be either, because this is the Fediverse :)
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> The ability to opt-out of quote posts is also currently planned, which makes it that Mastodon’s implementation will not be compatible with other fediverse implementations of quote posting.
Not surprising. Even before ActivityPub was announced, when the #fediverse was still powered by #OStatus, Mastodon was already breaking compatibility. There were countless of heated debates about almost every Mastodon-only "feature" they implemented that all other Fediverse devs were _forced_ to implement.
And here we are with yet another.
I wonder what will supporters of opt-out or anti-quotepost camp will do if the other Fediverse devs ignore this Mastodon-only "feature", and just continue with the common implementation of quote posts? Are we going to see a new reason for "fediblock", and finally fragment the Fediverse network?
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> The ability to opt-out of quote posts is also currently planned, which makes it that Mastodon’s implementation will not be compatible with other fediverse implementations of quote posting.
Not surprising. Even before ActivityPub was announced, when the #fediverse was still powered by #OStatus, Mastodon was already breaking compatibility. There were countless of heated debates about almost every Mastodon-only "feature" they implemented that all other Fediverse devs were _forced_ to implement.
And here we are with yet another.
I wonder what will supporters of opt-out or anti-quotepost camp will do if the other Fediverse devs ignore this Mastodon-only "feature", and just continue with the common implementation of quote posts? Are we going to see a new reason for "fediblock", and finally fragment the Fediverse network?
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@liaizon Personally, and the way the term was used, since it was first coined, was any software with #OStatus support (later #ActivityPub).
When there were discussions of having a new name, I ran suggestion threads and polls about it, and one suggestion/choice was mycelial, mycelium. I like it so I started using it myself.
By definition:
* A mycelium is a single network.
* A mycelial is a collection of various mycelium.Adopting it to #SocialWeb:
* The "Fediverse" is one mycelium network.o, based on ActivityPub
* "The Federation" / #diaspora* is another mycelium network.
* #Matrix is a mycelium network.
* #ATproto is another mycelium network.
* #XMPP / #Jabber is a mycelium network.Together, they are called Mycelial Web. A collection of "decentralised, distributed, federated, and open, network". A subset of the Social Web.
A "sister", if you will, of the Mycelial Web is IRC and e-mail, as examples.
So:
I. Web
A. Social Web
1. IRC
2. E-mail
3. Mycelial Web
* Fediverse/ActivityPub
* ATproto
* diaspora
* Matrix
* XMPP.
