Re: Federating by Commune design idea

2013-06-14 15:30, Michał 'rysiek' Woźniak skrev:
> Sorry for replying so late. I wanted to go in-depth on it.

Better late than too hasty! Thanks for taking the time.

> While I do not entirely agree with Marx on many, many matters, I do believe 
> that we should -- so to speak -- bring these "means of production" to the 
> hands of the "producers". Users should control their own Internet presence and 
> their own infrastructure as much as possible. or more.

An ideal I think (hope) this entire list agrees upon one way or another.

> There is no reason why it shouldn't be possible to create software that 
> implements different interfaces to the same community. Some prefer forums, 
> some prefer mailing lists. Let them use their favourite tool, but have a 
> single discussion!

It would be wonderful if this was possible (and it's certainly a goal to
strive for).

If however I'm going to play a bit of devil's advocate, I may grab Simon
Tennant's argument here that "the devil is in the details". It would be
technically _impossible_ to produce a network where these front-ends
would share a consistent experience. If I may suggest so, I believe
that's why he argued the way he did over at:
  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-fedsocweb/2013May/0067.html

A concrete example, with non-consistent experiences and your mentioned
forum/mailing list interaction:

   1. I create a thread from my e-mail client.
   2. This thread is integrated into a "forum view" on a website.
   3. A web user replies, saying it's off-topic. (I get this reply)
   4. A moderator "deletes" or "locks" the thread.

So this action (4) instantiates a multiverse. SMTP has no way of marking
a previous mail as "deleted" or "locked". The moderator can of course
not do anything with _my_ IMAP account, which would've allow deletion. I
_may_ get a mail that says "this thread is deleted", and the web view
would probably present the thread as deleted/locked (and never update it).
Anyone on "the e-mail side" would still be able to discuss unless
drastic measures are made on how their mail server handles "forum email"

This is probably one of the world view differences among us on this
list: multiverse or not. And how one would (if at all) force the
federated nodes into a single, compatible universe.
Which I mentioned (and you, Michał, +1'd) probably is /impossible/.

It may all be solved in the future, with the One Single Protocol, but
right now - I don't think any first-adopters really care. As long as
they federate, control their own data or /at least an admin they trust/.

> Another idea is to have "instant mailing lists". Sending e-mail to several 
> people + a "nonexistant-list-name@lists.example.com" (provided there's a 
> proper software set-up on example.com) could automagically create an impromptu 
> mailing list with addressees automagically added. Any reply to the list with a 
> new addressee in To or CC fields would add this address to the list.

Of course! Awesome proposal. If this isn't something mailman already
supports - I think it's something which should be implemented
immediately. mailman is Python, right? Let's hop on it.

(though, as a detail for discussion, I don't think anyone should be
added to the list/group until they themselves send a reply - either with
content or just empty for subscription :P)


>> No, I haven’t put all of this together. There’s no Commune Demo Site.
>> Sorry about that. But the idea has struck me several times while tying
>> together my GNU Social-based Free & Social user database for
>> postfix/dovecot for email and Prosody for XMPP. So I figured I’d type it
>> all together at last.
> 
> If you're interested in doing this, my Foundation will be happy to provide a 
> publicly-accessible VM instance for you to play on, along with a mailing list.
> 
> I would help from time to time (depending on the current workload in other 
> areas of my work). This is a serious offer.

Thanks. For my personal part, I've got enough server power myself to
experiment. Though I suppose and hope there may be others too interested
in pushing these suggestions to a working reality and may need that support.

Right now I'm doing all kinds of experiments with Freesocial.org and the
Prosody XMPP server software (rendering freesocial.org essentially
unusable, but my lusts fulfilled :).

Zash (Kim Alvefur, CC:d), a Prosody developer, seems pretty committed to
helping out as well. He's been doing all kinds of awesome plugins for
Prosody, from *DAV support to client certificate logins that definitely
helps to tie stuff together.

-- 
Mikael Nordfeldth
http://blog.mmn-o.se/
Xmpp/mail: mmn@hethane.se