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ActivityPub is more about living in a small part of a very big linked data graph and letting very different kinds of apps federate amongst themselves disjointly

by cjslep 7y ago

ActivityPub is more about living in a small part of a very big linked data graph and letting very different kinds of apps federate amongst themselves disjointly, encouraging more diverse apps that actually can interoperate with these two disjoint groups and provide niche value without the networks being a walled garden. Very different than an HTTP header.

sascha_sl 7y ago
Hey CJ. I don't think that graph will ever be readable without vendor-specific hacks applied for every piece of software participating. AS will meet the same fate as XMPP. Some very core features might work, but the diversity in user agents and servers and their quirky implementations will ultimately be to its detriment. Maybe that's leftover pessimism from the time I participated in the XMPP WG. I'd love to be wrong. I have a lot of respect for implementing AS in Go. I tried and didn't even finish my relay implementation. It was just too counter to the Go core competency and mindset. Or I'm just not a fan of wrangling interface{}s around.
- cjslep 7y ago
  Hey! I totally understand the pessimism. I am untainted by XMPP for better or worse. I started typing out a reply on my phone but I think I need to sit with a keyboard and just make a blog post on it -- I hope you don't mind a wait. I hope I'll do a fair job characterizing the problems you identity and give them my alternate outlook.
thejohnconway 7y ago
ActivityPub is too complicated and loosey-goosey. There are a couple of dozen partial implementations out there, but most of them don't federate properly or at all (which I thought was the entire point of the spec!). Ideally such a standard should be really easy to implement, so we get true diversity, and democratisation, but implementing ActivityPub is a nightmare. Of course it doesn't help that the test suite has been down for months. https://test.activitypub.rocks https://test.activitypub.rocks
- sascha_sl 7y ago
  (You should note you're telling the author of go-fed how hard it is to implement AS)
  - thejohnconway 7y ago
    Ha! Do you agree?
    - cjslep 7y ago
      ActivityPub is not easy to implement due to two paradigms. One: most applications are not linked data aware, which depending on the tools could require a different way of retrofitting an existing application. Two: the tooling around the loosey goosey behaviors isn't as defined as, say, something like Swagger. Since AP is machine readable and RDF based it shouldn't be a stretch to evolve an ecosystem that helps developers. I chose to go down a very difficult route with go-fed, something I don't think anyone else has done with JSON-LD. So my perspectives on the challenges in the area are very warped. For example, over the course of a mere 8 hours of work I've used go-fed to get my personal blog federated. But I stand very biased.

by cjslep 7y ago

sascha_sl 7y ago

Hey CJ. I don't think that graph will ever be readable without vendor-specific hacks applied for every piece of software participating. AS will meet the same fate as XMPP. Some very core features might work, but the diversity in user agents and servers and their quirky implementations will ultimately be to its detriment. Maybe that's leftover pessimism from the time I participated in the XMPP WG. I'd love to be wrong. I have a lot of respect for implementing AS in Go. I tried and didn't even finish my relay implementation. It was just too counter to the Go core competency and mindset. Or I'm just not a fan of wrangling interface{}s around.

cjslep 7y ago
Hey! I totally understand the pessimism. I am untainted by XMPP for better or worse. I started typing out a reply on my phone but I think I need to sit with a keyboard and just make a blog post on it -- I hope you don't mind a wait. I hope I'll do a fair job characterizing the problems you identity and give them my alternate outlook.

thejohnconway 7y ago

ActivityPub is too complicated and loosey-goosey. There are a couple of dozen partial implementations out there, but most of them don't federate properly or at all (which I thought was the entire point of the spec!). Ideally such a standard should be really easy to implement, so we get true diversity, and democratisation, but implementing ActivityPub is a nightmare. Of course it doesn't help that the test suite has been down for months. https://test.activitypub.rocks https://test.activitypub.rocks

sascha_sl 7y ago
(You should note you're telling the author of go-fed how hard it is to implement AS)
- thejohnconway 7y ago
  Ha! Do you agree?
  - cjslep 7y ago
    ActivityPub is not easy to implement due to two paradigms. One: most applications are not linked data aware, which depending on the tools could require a different way of retrofitting an existing application. Two: the tooling around the loosey goosey behaviors isn't as defined as, say, something like Swagger. Since AP is machine readable and RDF based it shouldn't be a stretch to evolve an ecosystem that helps developers. I chose to go down a very difficult route with go-fed, something I don't think anyone else has done with JSON-LD. So my perspectives on the challenges in the area are very warped. For example, over the course of a mere 8 hours of work I've used go-fed to get my personal blog federated. But I stand very biased.