Re: Why not AS2? was Re: Getting the group back on track

On 19 October 2015 at 17:27, Christopher Allan Webber <
cwebber@dustycloud.org> wrote:

> Christopher Allan Webber writes:
>
> > Sarven Capadisli writes:
> >
> >> The design of the Social API doesn't need to rely on any particular
> >> vocabulary. People will use whatever vocabulary they deem to be
> >> appropriate to describe their own "social" data. The Social API will
> >> merely enable the data to be passed. The challenge for the Social API is
> >> to lay down some form of a common denominator of the social API-like
> >> things that's needed. IMHO, the API shouldn't be restricted to the
> >> current candidates (with varying degree of quality and coverage):
> >> ActivityPump, MicroPub, SoLiD. Certainly there are other decentralized
> >> approaches out there which should be studied?
> >
> > So I'm of a different opinion.  There's a hodgepodge of federation
> > standards out there.  They exist outside of the group already, and we
> > have multiple within the group, and that's fine, but one of the reasons
> > I joined this group is that despite trying to create a decentralized
> > network, *almost none of these sites can work together*.
> >
> > My goal is to work on a standard so that we can get past this fragmented
> > state of federation.  I think the exploration work is fine and
> > interesting, but is that really defining a standard?  And it's not going
> > to help address the issue above.
>
> To put it another way, we have OStatus, Micropub, Solid, and
> ActivityStreams out there.  None of these sites can work together.  So
> we have a "fractured federation" at the moment.
>
> Here is the key question: is this group aiming to solve this problem?
>
> If the answer is yes, *by what mechanism?*
>

It helps to know *why* things dont interoperate.

The root cause is incompatibility introduced through varying forms of
centralization.

I had a lightbulb moment on this topic when timbl described specs as a form
or centralization.  That was something I never fully appreciated, and
coming from one of the creators of the main specs we use on the web, it
really got me thinking.

Centralization is good when it allows people to work together with an
inclusive approach, which is the basis of standardization.  The most basic
example of this is language, which is formed through a set of characters,
words with meanings, and grammar.  These common understandings are
universal enough to let everyone do more or less what they want.

However, there are more restrictive forms or centralization which lead to
fracturing and balkanization.  What indieweb call "silos" and
"monocultures" are two of them, meaning that a certain software or website
restricts social interaction based on its own policy in a meaningful way.

The idea of a universal space is facilitated on the web using the URI.
This is an identification system that allows anything to be named, and is
on a par with the power of language itself.  A system that is built on URIs
(like the web) is normally powerful enough to let anyone do what they want.

Most systems dont have something as powerful and universal as the URI
backing it, and I think it's no coincidence that such systems become
fractured.


>
> And if the answer is yes, and there is no desire to even agree upon a
> serialization format, please do spell out how this can happen!  "Create
> a new standard" won't solve the problem, because people are already
> entrenched in their existing solutions, to the point where the group
> can't even achieve consensus on adopting its own standard as a
> serialization format.
>
> If the answer is no, then that's okay, but it means I will need to
> re-evaluate my time.
>
>