Re: Statement

Emelia,
Completely understood. That was my own fault and oversight there.

Yes, lets reopen the PR and wait for the agreed-upon 14 day CfC period.

And meanwhile, in parallel, I also fully agree with the sentiment and the
signatories in the letter, but that doesn't mean we can go around group
consensus.


On Sat, Sep 6, 2025, 2:51 PM emelia <emelia@brandedcode.com> wrote:

> So I do have a copy already on a different domain, I'm waiting for others
> to decide what is right for the document that currently exists.
>
> If you _really_ want it taken down, despite the significant number of
> people involved in the SWICG and standards processes who have co-signed it,
> then here is a statement for that:
>
> > A statement document was originally published here, however, we have
> since received an objections to its publication citing that proper
> processes were not followed, and therefore it has been taken down and
> republished on [Emelia's website] instead, whilst we seek community group
> consensus. When Emelia merged the pull request, she had been granted
> permission to do so by the co-chair of the Social Web CG, and given the
> number of signatories with various significant contributions to ActivityPub
> and ActivityStreams, Emelia believed that there was enough agreement to
> publish.
>
> I will note that Dan Appelquist (Co-Chair of the W3C Advisory Board) also
> left a comment on the issue for additional signatures in support of the
> document. There is quite a lot of people who agree with the sentiment of
> this statement, and I wonder what is the benefit to either protocol to take
> it down, besides to fan flames of a protocol war that serves to benefit
> nobody. We are stronger together against walled gardens than what we are
> divided, and this current division does not benefit the people we aim to
> serve by building open social web protocols. We need to put people first,
> not protocols not platforms.
>
> In writing the document, I tried my best to keep it focused on the
> similarities that we do have, and on the fact that all standards work
> involves multiple parties coming together to participate in a cordial
> manner. I'm not saying anyone has to like or adopt AT Protocol, and that we
> can be different to each other and that there is enough room in this world
> for both protocols to co-exist as they currently serve different needs for
> different people, and that it okay.
>
> AT Protocol is clearly not going to disappear, nor is ActivityPub, and we
> have a lot more in common than our differences in current architecture. For
> instance, the learnings that AT Protocol have had with OAuth are quite
> likely the same learnings that we would have with an OAuth for ActivityPub
> API, and are similar to the learnings that Solid has had with OIDC/OAuth.
>
> However, I would also be amiss to not note that the two core dissenting
> voices here are also the two people most documented to have been
> participating in protocol tribalism with warring, with both being fairly
> well documented at this point. That is why I will leave it up to the Social
> Web CG Chairs to decide what to do.
>
> Yours,
> Emelia Smith
>
> On 6 Sep 2025, at 20:31, Ryan Barrett <public@ryanb.org> wrote:
>
> Agreed!
>
> Personally, I like the statement. I agree with Eugen that online tribalism
> and flame wars are inevitable, and generally not meaningful problems that
> need to be addressed, but I'm still all for the letter's sentiment...
>
> ...but when Emelia asked me to review it, I missed that it was on the
> SWICG GitHub specifically. Not the right process(es), and likely not the
> right place. Seems like the simplest fix right now would be to keep it
> intact and just move it somewhere else?
>
> On Sat, Sep 6, 2025, 11:20 AM Evan Prodromou <evan@prodromou.name> wrote:
>
>> It's interesting to consider how and when the CG should publish
>> non-consensus policy statements, open letters, or other documents. There
>> are a lot of ways it could be done.
>>
>> And, of course, it's a big Web (and a big social web), so there's other
>> space for members or groups of members to have their say, outside the
>> systems maintained by the CG. The Web is a permissionless publishing
>> platform; that's one of the reasons it's so great.
>>
>> If a document purports to be a position statement by the CG as a whole,
>> though, I think it should go through our consensus processes.
>>
>> That includes discussion in GitHub issues or on the mailing list or
>> during a sync meeting. We also require sufficient time for CG members to
>> review and participate in a call for consensus.
>>
>> Evan
>>
>> On Sep 6, 2025 13:53, Aurélien <opsocket@proton.me> wrote:
>>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> I havn't been approached (ba dum tss!) and I mostly agree with Evan and
>> Eugen on this one.
>>
>> However, there is clearly a need for communication that may not be
>> addressed by current procedures. I don't have in-depth knowledge of these
>> yet, but enabling public communication with some kind of qualified majority
>> could ease tensions (which is ironic, btw) in the future.
>>
>> Aurélien
>>
>> Le samedi 6 septembre 2025 à 12:58 PM, Eugen Rochko <
>> eugen@zeonfederated.com> a écrit :
>>
>> Hi Emelia, Evan,
>>
>> I've been approached with a draft of this statement last night and asked
>> for a signature and I've expressed quite the same opinion -- there isn't
>> enough time to review this. It's the weekend, nobody is around. I'm also
>> not sure why this statement from the Social CG is necessary. People argue
>> about IRC vs XMPP, Vim vs Emacs, all the time.
>>
>> Kind regards,
>> Eugen Rochko
>>
>> On Sat, 6 Sep 2025, at 18:31, emelia wrote:
>>
>> The statement is co-signed by the following people involved in the
>> specification of ActivityPub and ActivityStreams:
>>
>>
>>    - Dmitri Zagidulin (Social CG co-chair) — @dmitri@social.coop
>>    <https://social.coop/@dmitri>
>>    - Tantek Çelik (Former Social Web Working Group co-chair) —
>>    @tantek.com <https://tantek.com/>
>>    - James (Former SocialCG co-chair) — jamesg.blog (
>>    @jamesg.blog@jamesg.blog <https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://jamesg.blog/>)
>>    - Chris Messina (Citizen Agency, creator of ActivityStreams) —
>>    @chrismessina.me <https://chrismessina.me/>
>>    - Christine Lemmer-Webber (Executive Director of Spritely,
>>    ActivityPub co-author/co-editor) — @cwebber
>>    <https://social.coop/@cwebber> / https://dustycloud..org
>>    <https://dustycloud.org/>
>>    - Darius Kazemi (Social Web CG member) — @darius@friend.camp
>>    <https://friend.camp/@darius>
>>    -
>>    (full list here:
>>    https://github.com/swicg/general/blob/master/statements/2025-09-05-activitypub-and-atproto-discourse.md#co-signed-by-the-following-community-members
>>     )
>>
>>    All the statement says is that we can be respectful towards one
>>    another, stop spreading misinformation about each
>>    other, and instead work together and learn from one another. That
>>    _is_ a good thing for the AcitvityPub and the
>>    entire open social web, in mine, and from what I can tell, their
>>    opinions.
>>
>>    You are free to dissent though. So far you're the only voice within
>>    the people who work on the specifications that I have heard dissenting,
>>    though.
>>
>>    Yours,
>>    Emelia
>>
>>    On 6 Sep 2025, at 18:22, Evan Prodromou <evan@prodromou.name> wrote:
>>
>>    There's a statement published on the SWICG GitHub repo that had
>>    neither a proposal nor a CFC period.
>>
>>    I strongly disagree with it. Can we take it down until consensus is
>>    reached?
>>
>>    Evan
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>

Received on Saturday, 6 September 2025 19:22:22 UTC