Re: Getting the group back on track

Hey,

A big +1 the the email of Christopher.

    > Right now, off top of my head implementers would be:
    >
    > 1) IBM Connections
    > 2) Pump.io
    > 3) MediaGoblin
    > 4) Objective8 (Thoughtworks)
    >
    > Anyone else?

I'm pretty sure if a clear and well thought JSON based language comes 
out, diaspora* is interested. However, AS2 is only the language part, 
personally waiting to see how the protocol parts start to take shape. 
Hoping to have more time to contribute to those stages which imho are 
more important for our use case at least. TBH, the way that objects and 
actions are presented for transfer is only a minor part in the whole big 
engine of two servers exchanging messages. For diaspora*, and the 
Friendica + Hubzilla that are connected with it using the same protocol, 
the server to server is key.

Personally I hope the language semantics part could be quickly locked 
down and the work moved on to figure out the protocol stuff. There is 
not going to be a "works for all final" version delivered by any group 
ever - everything is always iterated on, and it is better to deliver 
something concise and small first, instead of trying to tackle everything.

Just a few comments regarding how diaspora* federates. Basically we have;

* webfinger and .well-known/meta-info for discovery
* XML language for actions and content
* Salmon Magic Envelope for signing the XML content

The project is in the works of pushing out the federation code to a 
separate repository, which means it would be easier to start using 
another protocol in some future. The key things that we need however are 
pretty much the three items above;

* discovering
* describing content
* authoring

Especially the last one is something that I'd be interested in hearing 
some thoughts about, what kind of idea has this group got on how to sign 
AS2 JSON content payloads? Outside diaspora*, I've got some personal 
plans on creating a Python library to abstract several protocols, as an 
experiment if nothing else. Currently it supports diaspora* for some 
limited stuff, receiving and sending posts, and I would like to add some 
AS2 based routes there too. Content signing is *the* most important 
thing to get right.

Regarding talk about low participation. Personally I'd feel easier to 
participate in email discussions more. The conference call is at a 
difficult time and I doubt any time would suit everyone. Also, I believe 
WebEx was chosen which doesn't even work properly on Linux I guess? 
Email is imho much more powerful as discussion can happen at any time. 
Hoping to increase personal participation once things move away from the 
message semantics where something JSON based is the only choice that at 
least diaspora* would support. The AS2 draft looks very sufficient - 
something like diaspora* couldn't implement even half of it, with our 
current different social actions.

-- 
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Br,
Jason Robinson
https://jasonrobinson.me