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> Up until the present date that same company made it difficult for anyone to run their own server, only permitting to self-host their own data rather than the

> Up until the present date that same company made it difficult for anyone to run their own server, only permitting to self-host their own data rather than the promoted decentralized open data > It also restricts anyone from adding their algorithms or even create new clients to access the data. It is a _defacto_ walled garden that somehow gets promoted on mainstream media This is not remotely close to true and the verge article you picked was from the initial rollout of federation which was only 2 weeks after they got rid of invite codes and the service became public. ---------- Feed generators (aka the algorithm) are open. You can create your own feeds and their app literally has a UX for adding new feeds. Labelling and Moderation services are also federated. And data storage like you mentioned. And the "firehose" (the event relays). And even the app-view system/API services. Oh and of course the Bluesky app's web, android, and iOS implementations are open sourced as well. There are certainly some things they still control but that's because this project is still actively being developed to basic feature completeness. An example of that is the primary DID format used for defining accounts. The standard DNS record based DID format is federated by it's nature but ATProto's in house DID format is still limited to their instance until they can get it to a production state where they feel comfortable opening it up to federation (like they have every other aspect of their codebase so far). I'm actually not sure how they could be more open about their push for federation. They want to relegate themselves to the position of developer and infrastructure maintainer as quickly as possible and their work has all been towards that effort.

cma 2y ago
They do need to disclose their corporate charter.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  Is that really important in your opinion? I can't remember the last time I saw a corporate charter that was more than vague corporate speak sounding grandiose and impactful while saying absolutely nothing.
  - cma 2y ago
    It is more important in a public benefit corp, if there is supposed to be something different about them.
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      Legally there aren't many (any?) meaningful differences with a public benefit corp. Law changes in 2020 made it such that a PBC is more of a marketing thing than anything else in my opinion. We've already seen the number of PBCs increase quite a bit since the law change, there was exactly 1 before 2020 if I'm not mistaken. I fully expect companies to start using it as virtue signaling, making the distinction effectively meaningless.
nunobrito 2y ago
Excuses, excuses, excuses. NOSTR is literally doing all of that in the open with the community involved since the beginning, without a single excuse. This isn't exactly a new thing. Walled garden companies will feed hope for years while dripping a bit of freedom as slowly as they possibly can get away with it. Reminds when google wanted to support XMPP, Microsoft stating they love Linux and more recently Meta now claiming they will support mastodon. It isn't an open development, it isn't open data. Just another VC-funded company with deep pockets for advertisements everywhere.
- CuriousCosmic 2y ago
  > It isn't an open development, It is literally open development. There isn't a CLA and they accept patches/PRs from the community. The "least open" aspect is their contribution guidelines which are essentially just "the maintainer is not required to waste time on low quality PRs and reserves a right to veto PRs that move counter to the vision they have for the project". If that's not open development then neither is Linux or Git. > it isn't open data. And how is it not open data? The data is literally self-hostable, the relays and API servers are self hostable. And you can choose between an in-progress ID standard and a DNS based DID standard. There is literally no part of the data that isn't open.

cma 2y ago

They do need to disclose their corporate charter.

_heimdall 2y ago
Is that really important in your opinion? I can't remember the last time I saw a corporate charter that was more than vague corporate speak sounding grandiose and impactful while saying absolutely nothing.
- cma 2y ago
  It is more important in a public benefit corp, if there is supposed to be something different about them.
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    Legally there aren't many (any?) meaningful differences with a public benefit corp. Law changes in 2020 made it such that a PBC is more of a marketing thing than anything else in my opinion. We've already seen the number of PBCs increase quite a bit since the law change, there was exactly 1 before 2020 if I'm not mistaken. I fully expect companies to start using it as virtue signaling, making the distinction effectively meaningless.

nunobrito 2y ago

Excuses, excuses, excuses. NOSTR is literally doing all of that in the open with the community involved since the beginning, without a single excuse. This isn't exactly a new thing. Walled garden companies will feed hope for years while dripping a bit of freedom as slowly as they possibly can get away with it. Reminds when google wanted to support XMPP, Microsoft stating they love Linux and more recently Meta now claiming they will support mastodon. It isn't an open development, it isn't open data. Just another VC-funded company with deep pockets for advertisements everywhere.

CuriousCosmic 2y ago
> It isn't an open development, It is literally open development. There isn't a CLA and they accept patches/PRs from the community. The "least open" aspect is their contribution guidelines which are essentially just "the maintainer is not required to waste time on low quality PRs and reserves a right to veto PRs that move counter to the vision they have for the project". If that's not open development then neither is Linux or Git. > it isn't open data. And how is it not open data? The data is literally self-hostable, the relays and API servers are self hostable. And you can choose between an in-progress ID standard and a DNS based DID standard. There is literally no part of the data that isn't open.