Re: Getting the group back on track

On 16 October 2015 at 15:34, Christopher Allan Webber <
cwebber@dustycloud.org> wrote:

> 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


Yes it's a good point.  Languages change over time.  That is why ontologies
were invented which are a snapshot of what we know at a certain point in
time.  On the web there is an advantage to work with stable long lived
identifiers ("Cool URIs dont change"), so it's generally better to *add*
something new, than to *change* something existing.


>
>
> 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
>
>
>