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This brings up a point I think about a lot: Is email our last success in popularizing an open and federated standard? Maybe you can count OAuth, but IMO i hav

This brings up a point I think about a lot: Is email our last success in popularizing an open and federated standard? Maybe you can count OAuth, but IMO i have low confidence that we'll in the near future be able to collaborate on an open protocol so that many benefits of email such as control without vendor lock-in can be enjoyed. We have too many entrenched interests by the main players. I have been working briefly on improving the exchange of trust/reputation data online, but it seemd for us that there was no alternative to a proprietary system if you wish to see widespread adoption. EDIT: I guess Bitcoin has good potential.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> Is email our last success in popularizing an open and federated standard? If you mean one with a distinct and separate S2S/federation protocol (SMTP) from the main C2S protocol(s) (POP/IMAP), probably. OTOH, it could just be that separate S2S protocols are less favored in the first place -- the web is newer than email, open, and federated (in that web servers -- but doesn't have a separate S2S protocol. A web server that needs information from another web server to do its job uses HTTP just like any other client.
marcosdumay 12y ago
> Is email our last success in popularizing an open and federated standard? Isn't the Web younger?
- nchuhoai 12y ago
  You are right, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email quotes 1982, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web 1989 Either way, my point still stands that besides the rapid development of the "internet", we have yet to see another standard emerge (besides OAuth and Bitcoin)
  - daigoba66 12y ago
    SOAP? It was almost a good idea.
    - lmm 12y ago
      It was a great idea, badly implemented. I feel confident that we'll rediscover SOAP, or something like it - it's still pretty much the best option for RPC in typed languages, which are coming back into fashion. (Maybe Thrift is better, but it's morally the same thing IMO).
  - hollerith 12y ago
    1982 is when SMTP was defined. Non-SMTP email on the ARPANET goes back to 1971.
tdaltonc 12y ago
I don't think that entrenched interests are not the problem here. I think it's that a small private team can always out flank a standards committee. This difference is amplified when it's not clear exactly what needs to be built and a lot of iterative design is needed.

dragonwriter 12y ago

> Is email our last success in popularizing an open and federated standard? If you mean one with a distinct and separate S2S/federation protocol (SMTP) from the main C2S protocol(s) (POP/IMAP), probably. OTOH, it could just be that separate S2S protocols are less favored in the first place -- the web is newer than email, open, and federated (in that web servers -- but doesn't have a separate S2S protocol. A web server that needs information from another web server to do its job uses HTTP just like any other client.

marcosdumay 12y ago

> Is email our last success in popularizing an open and federated standard? Isn't the Web younger?

nchuhoai 12y ago
You are right, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email quotes 1982, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web 1989 Either way, my point still stands that besides the rapid development of the "internet", we have yet to see another standard emerge (besides OAuth and Bitcoin)
- daigoba66 12y ago
  SOAP? It was almost a good idea.
  - lmm 12y ago
    It was a great idea, badly implemented. I feel confident that we'll rediscover SOAP, or something like it - it's still pretty much the best option for RPC in typed languages, which are coming back into fashion. (Maybe Thrift is better, but it's morally the same thing IMO).
- hollerith 12y ago
  1982 is when SMTP was defined. Non-SMTP email on the ARPANET goes back to 1971.

tdaltonc 12y ago

I don't think that entrenched interests are not the problem here. I think it's that a small private team can always out flank a standards committee. This difference is amplified when it's not clear exactly what needs to be built and a lot of iterative design is needed.