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> What happened is that it massively sucks. Until you say a naughty word on some forum, and Google bans your account and you cannot log in anywhere. Or you sa

> What happened is that it massively sucks. Until you say a naughty word on some forum, and Google bans your account and you cannot log in anywhere. Or you say a naughty word on some forum and Microsoft bans you, so your GH account gets closed, your xbox stops working and you have to wipe Windows and install Linux and hope like hell that you have a local copy of all your 365 docs. Far fetched? Maybe it is, but I feel less anxiety by having separate accounts everywhere.

lolinder 3y ago
The premise of ForgeFed is that you'd have one account but that one account would not need to be under the control of a corporation, you could have a private instance that you used interact with all open source software projects.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > The premise of ForgeFed is that you'd have one account but that one account would not need to be under the control of a corporation, you could have a private instance that you used interact with all open source software projects. Yes, but maintaining my own private instance sucks more than remembering a handful of account credentials.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    You don't need to. You get the choice. So if you want separate accounts on multiple sites, nobody stops you. If you want to run your own, nobody stops you. If you want to trust a given instance nobody strops you. But likewise, if you don't want to trust provider A, but do trust provider B, nobody stops you *even if you want to interact with projects at provider A.
    - lelanthran 3y ago
      > If you want to trust a given instance nobody strops you. Maybe I am understanding it wrong: when your instance (inA) federates with inB, doesn't that make inB available to everyone who is federated with inA?
      - vidarh 3y ago
        ActivityPub instances can relay messages, but generally they don't unless it's a dedicated relay that instances have to specifically sign up to receive messages from. Most instances are not subscribed to any relays, but only receives messages addressed to at least one user on that instance.
jeroenhd 3y ago
If you're afraid of Google and Microsoft, you don't need to create a Google or Microsoft account with federated websites. It's not like Google or Microsoft are ever going to bother with ForgeFed or any other type of ActivityPub for that matter. They would totally drop email if they could convince their customers to exclusively communicate through Teams/GChat. For federated protocols, you can run your own server, or use a medium sized hosted service. If this gets merged upstream into Gitea eventually, you could use Codeberg or one of the many other Gitea servers out there. If you want to deal with a million accounts, you can. There's nothing stopping you from registering accounts for every service you use even if this takes off and everyone else moves on to federated services.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > If you want to deal with a million accounts, you can. There's nothing stopping you from registering accounts for every service you use even if this takes off and everyone else moves on to federated services. I apologise for any confusion; I wasn't contending that ForgeFed would prevent me from using individual accounts, I was contending the statement > What happened is that it massively sucks. IMO, it doesn't. It sucks, but not massively so! Maintaining individual accounts across, maybe, six or seven providers[1], does indeed suck, but not massively so, and not enough to go to the trouble of maintaining my own instance within a federated system. [1] I will probably never have anywhere close to a million individual accounts at code-hosting providers, even if it were federated. There will also never be more than a handful of providers where 99.9% of everyone goes. As we've seen again, and again, and again ... any distributed system (like cryptocurrency exchanges, federated social networking, etc) slowly consolidates into three, maybe four places that get almost all the traffic/users. It becomes centralised. Is there any reason you think that this time, with ForgeFed, it will be different? Federated systems are a technical solution to a social problem, which is why it always fails - i.e. results in centralisation eventually. If you have any examples where the result truly is normally distributed amongst all the instances I'd really like to see that.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    > [1] I will probably never have anywhere close to a million individual accounts at code-hosting providers, even if it were federated. There will also never be more than a handful of providers where 99.9% of everyone goes. I think we're talking past each other. I celebrate the move towards federated systems because if done right I won't need accounts on a bunch of individual systems. Unlike today where I do have individual accounts on multiple different code hosting sites. > Is there any reason you think that this time, with ForgeFed, it will be different? It's irrelevant to me if 99% of users are on a single ForgeFed instance as long as it's still federated so I don't need to be there if I don't want to but can still interact. ActivityPub support also means that even if they do nothing to provide easy migration, spidering all the relevant content to move it elsewhere if a dominant ForgeFed instance goes rogue is easy.
vidarh 3y ago
Hence the drive towards federated services rather than a centrally controlled identity.

lolinder 3y ago

The premise of ForgeFed is that you'd have one account but that one account would not need to be under the control of a corporation, you could have a private instance that you used interact with all open source software projects.

lelanthran 3y ago
> The premise of ForgeFed is that you'd have one account but that one account would not need to be under the control of a corporation, you could have a private instance that you used interact with all open source software projects. Yes, but maintaining my own private instance sucks more than remembering a handful of account credentials.
- vidarh 3y ago
  You don't need to. You get the choice. So if you want separate accounts on multiple sites, nobody stops you. If you want to run your own, nobody stops you. If you want to trust a given instance nobody strops you. But likewise, if you don't want to trust provider A, but do trust provider B, nobody stops you *even if you want to interact with projects at provider A.
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    > If you want to trust a given instance nobody strops you. Maybe I am understanding it wrong: when your instance (inA) federates with inB, doesn't that make inB available to everyone who is federated with inA?
    - vidarh 3y ago
      ActivityPub instances can relay messages, but generally they don't unless it's a dedicated relay that instances have to specifically sign up to receive messages from. Most instances are not subscribed to any relays, but only receives messages addressed to at least one user on that instance.

jeroenhd 3y ago

If you're afraid of Google and Microsoft, you don't need to create a Google or Microsoft account with federated websites. It's not like Google or Microsoft are ever going to bother with ForgeFed or any other type of ActivityPub for that matter. They would totally drop email if they could convince their customers to exclusively communicate through Teams/GChat. For federated protocols, you can run your own server, or use a medium sized hosted service. If this gets merged upstream into Gitea eventually, you could use Codeberg or one of the many other Gitea servers out there. If you want to deal with a million accounts, you can. There's nothing stopping you from registering accounts for every service you use even if this takes off and everyone else moves on to federated services.

lelanthran 3y ago
> If you want to deal with a million accounts, you can. There's nothing stopping you from registering accounts for every service you use even if this takes off and everyone else moves on to federated services. I apologise for any confusion; I wasn't contending that ForgeFed would prevent me from using individual accounts, I was contending the statement > What happened is that it massively sucks. IMO, it doesn't. It sucks, but not massively so! Maintaining individual accounts across, maybe, six or seven providers[1], does indeed suck, but not massively so, and not enough to go to the trouble of maintaining my own instance within a federated system. [1] I will probably never have anywhere close to a million individual accounts at code-hosting providers, even if it were federated. There will also never be more than a handful of providers where 99.9% of everyone goes. As we've seen again, and again, and again ... any distributed system (like cryptocurrency exchanges, federated social networking, etc) slowly consolidates into three, maybe four places that get almost all the traffic/users. It becomes centralised. Is there any reason you think that this time, with ForgeFed, it will be different? Federated systems are a technical solution to a social problem, which is why it always fails - i.e. results in centralisation eventually. If you have any examples where the result truly is normally distributed amongst all the instances I'd really like to see that.
- vidarh 3y ago
  > [1] I will probably never have anywhere close to a million individual accounts at code-hosting providers, even if it were federated. There will also never be more than a handful of providers where 99.9% of everyone goes. I think we're talking past each other. I celebrate the move towards federated systems because if done right I won't need accounts on a bunch of individual systems. Unlike today where I do have individual accounts on multiple different code hosting sites. > Is there any reason you think that this time, with ForgeFed, it will be different? It's irrelevant to me if 99% of users are on a single ForgeFed instance as long as it's still federated so I don't need to be there if I don't want to but can still interact. ActivityPub support also means that even if they do nothing to provide easy migration, spidering all the relevant content to move it elsewhere if a dominant ForgeFed instance goes rogue is easy.

vidarh 3y ago

Hence the drive towards federated services rather than a centrally controlled identity.