Jupiter Rowland on Nostr: @Johannes Ernst Okay, from the beginning: There used to be a steering committee at ...
@Johannes Ernst Okay, from the beginning:
There used to be a steering committee at W3C that basically designed ActivityPub and, most of all, defined the standard which all projects have to adhere to. This committee is no more. It disbanded when they felt that ActivityPub was completed, and there was nothing more to do with them.
As for advancements on ActivityPub, according to an interview with Mike Macgirvin which you have shared yourself, the W3C ActivityPub committee shrugged and said that Mastodon is now the reference implementation because it has the most users, and everyone should simply do as Mastodon does.
What Mastodon actually does, however, is twist and bend the established and defined ActivityPub standard without breaking it and be incompatible to other projects. For example, not only can't it do text formatting, quotes and embedded images, things that are absolutely normal elsewhere and covered by the ActivityPub standard AFAIK, it even flat-out refuses to render these things correctly when they come in from outside.
If you need a demonstration on this, I've done one. Ask, and I shall link to it.
If Mastodon already refuses to include such things, it's very highly unlikely that Mastodon will be the pioneer project for nomadic identity through ActivityPub.
A problem which I haven't mentioned yet is that Eugen Rochko isn't the right person to advance ActivityPub. He is an application designer. Everyone else who creates or maintains ActivityPub-based projects is an application designer.
This, however, would be a job for a protocol designer. Mike Macgirvin is one, and he has created quite a number of protocols already. Remember that Friendica's DFRN is his work, as is Zot/Nomad, and nomadic identity is his brain child.
Essentially, if you want ActivityPub to advance, you'd have to lay it into Mike's hands.
This would create a new problem: The creators/maintainers of other projects would not want to use a standard which is worked on by the creator/maintainer of another, potentially competing product. And Mike has created Mistpark/Friendica, Red Matrix/Hubzilla, Osada, Zap, Roadhouse and (streams), and he is still the core maintainer of the latter.
Creators of other projects may refuse to use something made by "the Friendica/Hubzilla/(streams) guy" because they see him as competition, and they don't want an important part of their own project to be in the hands of a direct competitor who could use this power to sabotage the "competition". Regardless of the fact that Mike does not want competition but cooperation in the Fediverse (see the linked interview again).
With Eugen Rochko as the de-facto master of ActivityPub, it's different. What he does is law. And if you don't follow that law, your project becomes incompatible with Mastodon which, for better or worse, is still so huge that, I guess, the majority of its users thinks Mastodon is the Fediverse, full stop. In practice, anything that can't connect to Mastodon properly isn't part of the Fediverse. Not by definition, but in practice.
And then there are those who find Mastodon perfect as it is and don't want it to introduce anything new. The LGBTQIA+ community is protesting against any suggestion to introduce quotes (or full-text search) to Mastodon because these features are used on Twitter to harass them.
Others don't want bold type and italics and other text formatting on Mastodon because they fear it'd be abused and make posts harder to read. Think computer newbie who plays around with Word for the first time and makes "documents" with all bells and whistles, with bold type and italics and underline and huge fonts and colours and whatnot just because they've discovered that all these features are there.
Now imagine Mastodon actually announcing the development and introduction of nomadic identity. You WILL have protests again, this time from the simplicity-loving, tech-illiterate iPhone users who fear that nomadic identity would make using Mastodon more difficult because each new feature makes it more difficult.
And I'm pretty sure the LGBTQIA+ community will be against it, too. They may find a theoretical way for ultra-right-wing homophobes and transphobes coming over from Twitter to Mastodon to abuse nomadic identity in some way or other to harass gays, lesbians, trans-people etc. just like they did on Twitter and/or to evade moderation against this harassment that way. Thus, so they demand, nomadic identity must NEVER be introduced on Mastodon.
So yes, this technological advancement which would be very useful for many would certainly also have its very vocal opponents.
There used to be a steering committee at W3C that basically designed ActivityPub and, most of all, defined the standard which all projects have to adhere to. This committee is no more. It disbanded when they felt that ActivityPub was completed, and there was nothing more to do with them.
As for advancements on ActivityPub, according to an interview with Mike Macgirvin which you have shared yourself, the W3C ActivityPub committee shrugged and said that Mastodon is now the reference implementation because it has the most users, and everyone should simply do as Mastodon does.
What Mastodon actually does, however, is twist and bend the established and defined ActivityPub standard without breaking it and be incompatible to other projects. For example, not only can't it do text formatting, quotes and embedded images, things that are absolutely normal elsewhere and covered by the ActivityPub standard AFAIK, it even flat-out refuses to render these things correctly when they come in from outside.
If you need a demonstration on this, I've done one. Ask, and I shall link to it.
If Mastodon already refuses to include such things, it's very highly unlikely that Mastodon will be the pioneer project for nomadic identity through ActivityPub.
A problem which I haven't mentioned yet is that Eugen Rochko isn't the right person to advance ActivityPub. He is an application designer. Everyone else who creates or maintains ActivityPub-based projects is an application designer.
This, however, would be a job for a protocol designer. Mike Macgirvin is one, and he has created quite a number of protocols already. Remember that Friendica's DFRN is his work, as is Zot/Nomad, and nomadic identity is his brain child.
Essentially, if you want ActivityPub to advance, you'd have to lay it into Mike's hands.
This would create a new problem: The creators/maintainers of other projects would not want to use a standard which is worked on by the creator/maintainer of another, potentially competing product. And Mike has created Mistpark/Friendica, Red Matrix/Hubzilla, Osada, Zap, Roadhouse and (streams), and he is still the core maintainer of the latter.
Creators of other projects may refuse to use something made by "the Friendica/Hubzilla/(streams) guy" because they see him as competition, and they don't want an important part of their own project to be in the hands of a direct competitor who could use this power to sabotage the "competition". Regardless of the fact that Mike does not want competition but cooperation in the Fediverse (see the linked interview again).
With Eugen Rochko as the de-facto master of ActivityPub, it's different. What he does is law. And if you don't follow that law, your project becomes incompatible with Mastodon which, for better or worse, is still so huge that, I guess, the majority of its users thinks Mastodon is the Fediverse, full stop. In practice, anything that can't connect to Mastodon properly isn't part of the Fediverse. Not by definition, but in practice.
And then there are those who find Mastodon perfect as it is and don't want it to introduce anything new. The LGBTQIA+ community is protesting against any suggestion to introduce quotes (or full-text search) to Mastodon because these features are used on Twitter to harass them.
Others don't want bold type and italics and other text formatting on Mastodon because they fear it'd be abused and make posts harder to read. Think computer newbie who plays around with Word for the first time and makes "documents" with all bells and whistles, with bold type and italics and underline and huge fonts and colours and whatnot just because they've discovered that all these features are there.
Now imagine Mastodon actually announcing the development and introduction of nomadic identity. You WILL have protests again, this time from the simplicity-loving, tech-illiterate iPhone users who fear that nomadic identity would make using Mastodon more difficult because each new feature makes it more difficult.
And I'm pretty sure the LGBTQIA+ community will be against it, too. They may find a theoretical way for ultra-right-wing homophobes and transphobes coming over from Twitter to Mastodon to abuse nomadic identity in some way or other to harass gays, lesbians, trans-people etc. just like they did on Twitter and/or to evade moderation against this harassment that way. Thus, so they demand, nomadic identity must NEVER be introduced on Mastodon.
So yes, this technological advancement which would be very useful for many would certainly also have its very vocal opponents.