Re: Getting the group back on track

On 13 October 2015 at 16:08, Christopher Allan Webber <
cwebber@dustycloud.org> wrote:

> Evan Prodromou writes:
>
> > On 2015-10-12 10:28 AM, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
> >> I dont think taking yet another JSON serialization to REC is a good
> >> idea, when we already have a JSON REC (JSON LD) which is to all
> >> intents and purposes identical.  I am wondering if there will be some
> >> formal objection down the line.
> >
> > Have you reviewed AS 2.0? It's explicitly compatible with JSON-LD, as a
> > design goal. It's more or less a vocabulary on top of JSON-LD.
>
> Not only is it built on top of json-ld, if you go to
> http://json-ld.org/playground/ you'll see there's even an [Activity]
> button on there.  Hit the n-quads tab, you'll see that we can even
> convert to RDF.
>
> ActivityStreams is based on JSON-LD and is directly convertable to
> RDF... I think the AS direction and the linked data direction currently
> have a smooth integration path.
>
>
An HTTP response is not just a document.  It's a header too.  Both must be
compatible with tooling to work out of the box.

In particular there is an open issue regarding changing the JSON LD header
field for content type to : "application/activity+json", for no
particularly good reason, imho.

This would break most existing tooling, and reducing the developer
audience, and a whole raft of tooling.  While certain parts of the the
playground *may* work in isolation, most other stuff would not.  Im unsure
developers are going to want to retool to support AS2 given this, at least
in the short term.

The other aspect having to then register this stuff with the standards body
- mime type registered with IANA
- new file extension chosen
- file extension registered with IANA
- wait to see if any of the W3C stake holders formally object

This would substantially increase the chance of AS2 failing to gain
traction, so I think some developers are waiting to see that outcome before
investing time in implementation.