Re: Agenda items for Friday

Is the meeting at the usual place :- https://meet.jit.si/social-web-cg


On Thu, 2 May 2024 at 17:45, Lisa Dusseault <lisa@dtinit.org> wrote:

> If we have time for it, I'd like to kick off a conversation about
> tradeoffs between different approaches in copying content in a data
> transfer. Here's some of the context.  And if we don't have time, I plan to
> schedule the next Portability TF call anyway & work on it.
>
> We have significant tradeoffs in portability between two approaches:
> 1.  Trying to reproduce a change log
> 2.  Trying to reproduce a content repository.
>
> Assume in either of these cases we'd figure out how to transfer likes,
> replies, listens, read etc.  The question remains still how we treat
> content objects.
>
> To *reproduce a change log*, we'd specify that the destination AP server
> copies over Create activities holding Note objects - but also Update and
> Delete activities.   Consequences:
>
>    - Destination servers would have to understand, parse, and know how to
>    transform the envelopes around content as well as the content items.
>    - I believe this would automatically result in 3rd parties notifying
>    their users of "new" posts even though the users had seen them before.
>    - It wouldn't be a simple copy of changelog intact.  Every changelog
>    entry would have to be parsed and transformed for its new context.
>
> To *reproduce a content repository*, we'd specify that the destination AP
> server copies over "Note" objects (and other content objects too of course)
>
>    - The destination server can now put content objects in an Outbox with
>    an activity wrapper if it decides to.
>    - It may be possible to put the Note in the outbox without an activity
>    wrapper ( I think some implementations do this) - I would love to know more
>    from implementers how this works in the wild
>    - The destination server can also copy the content somewhere else
>    entirely, not just to an outbox. This approach could also more easily be
>    used by systems other than AP servers -- it would have greater generality
>    than the change-log copy approach.
>
> I'd especially like to know more about the amount of implementation work
> for each of these.  It seems at the surface that it's cheaper to transfer
> the outbox, but as I dig into the details of that I don't think it's really
> as simple as it seems to copy the outbox.  Many kinds of events in the
> outbox, the destination server would not want to copy over at all, or can
> get in another way that might be easier (the Likes collection, for example,
> on an Actor).
>
> Related, I'd also love to know what implementations do to present the
> "back catalog" of content.  Do implementations do anything besides allowing
> friendly servers to page back through outbox history?
>
> Lisa
>
>
>
> On Wed, May 1, 2024 at 8:03 PM Evan Prodromou <evan@prodromou.name> wrote:
>
>> I have three agenda items for Friday.
>>
>> 1. I'd like to discuss the upcoming work I'll be doing for Summer of
>> Protocols on implementing E2EE direct messages in AP.
>>
>> 2. I'd like to collect feedback on the Miscellaneous Terms document,
>> solicit implementations, and consider moving it forward as a CG draft.
>>
>> https://swicg.github.io/miscellany/
>>
>> 3. I'd like to continue the conversation about adding publicKey,
>> publicKeyPem, owner and Key to the Activity Streams 2.0 context document.
>>
>> We have a lot of other projects (Webfinger, HTTP Signatures,
>> Forums/Threaded, Data Portability) to report out on, but I'd love to get
>> these three items covered.
>>
>> Evan
>>
>

-- 
Aaron Gray - @AaronNGray@fosstodon.org

Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language Researcher,
Information Theorist, and Computer Scientist.