Re: Let's turn aspiration into fact?

> On Feb 9, 2024, at 12:25, Ryan Barrett <public@ryanb.org> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Feb 9, 2024 at 12:02 PM Johannes Ernst <johannes.ernst@gmail.com <mailto:johannes.ernst@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> I don’t think this would actually be all that hard.
>> 
>> But regardless, what is stopping us from doing this kind of thing?
> 
> I do think it would be hard. The current two core types of identity in the fediverse, URL ids and webfinger addresses, both have server hostnames baked into them. They're at the core of all of the fediverse's current code, stored data, and big chunks of UX and users' mental models. We'd have to change all of that.
> 
> We have a handful of portable identity designs - Nomad, FEP-ef61, etc - which is great! And we may want another that's DNS-based instead of keypair-based; I know at least some people here would favor that. I myself might too, given the recoverability concerns around pure keypair-based identity.
> 
> Regardless, even once we've settled on a specific design, migrating the entire fediverse to it, including servers and clients and existing data and users, seems like a huge undertaking. That's not stopping us, of course, but it's worth being clear-eyed about.

If we went down that refactor-everything route, I agree it would be a big effort. I think though there are some things we can do that would be simpler, providing most of the benefits, specifically by building on ideas such as Mastodon’s https://mastodon.social/@j12@social.coop to represent a remote identity locally.

But I don’t want to get into those weeds before we have more of a shared vision.

I’m glad Sean laid out this set of ideas. What else?

I think I’m going to start a list somewhere collecting them.

Cheers,




Johannes.


Johannes Ernst

Fediforum <https://fediforum.org/>
Dazzle Labs <https://dazzlelabs.net/>