Re: Getting the group back on track

This is great news.  So that's MediaGoblin, Diaspora, Pump.IO,
Friendica, the Clojure stuff from Thoughtworks, IBM's project (I'm
forgetful of the name), and from my conversations off-list, quite
possibly OwnCloud.  It looks like the willingness to implement AS2 is
fairly strong in those groups.

I agree with you that the serialization format is hardly the only
critical point to be discuss, but figuring out at least that is a
requirement to move forward on nailing down other things.

Here's where this group is frequently stuck now: http://shed.bike/

Again, we have to agree on a format before we move forwards on other
things.  It may as well be our deliverable.

Kevin Marks raised in the last meeting that there seems to be a
disagreement about whether or not this group is to build something
prescriptive and defining a standard, or evaluatory and summing the
state of the field.  I agree that there's disagreement over this!  We've
already done a lot of the latter, summing the state of the world and
doing evaluation; I want to use that information to move on to actually
building something people can implement.  That requires making
decisions.

<kevinmarks> cwebber2: I found this quote that sums up well what I am getting
             at: https://kindle.amazon.com/post/HLglK_6oRhOnsiQSo829eg

So, it's true that things change over time, and wikis are great, but we
already have wikis that are discussing these things.  I don't think we
need a group at the w3c to continue a wiki process that is already
working well outside it.

I want to define a standard, and move forward with it.  I'm burning
resources to spend on this, and that burn time will run out if we can't
move ahead.

I may have raised things poorly in the last meeting by suggesting that
we agree on ActivityStreams as a MUST requirement.  How about a SHOULD?

If we agree on SHOULD, at least, we can move forward.

If this group can't agree on "SHOULD" of its own standard, something is
totally bonkers here.


Jason Robinson writes:

> Hi,
>
> Michael Vogel from Friendica confirmed to me directly (since this list 
> is read only for him) that Friendica will also implement AS2, when such 
> is agreed upon.
>
> There is cross-federation between diaspora* <-> Friendica 
> <->Redmatrix/Hubzilla, using currently the diaspora* protocol, so we're 
> hoping the work of this group would give something common to use for the 
> future. But, at least for diaspora*, I can say that the interest is in 
> JSON implementations.
>
> Br,
> Jason
>
> On 14.10.2015 22:13, Jason Robinson wrote:
>> 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.
>>
>> -- 
>> -----
>> Br,
>> Jason Robinson
>> https://jasonrobinson.me

Received on Friday, 16 October 2015 15:11:40 UTC