Hrefna (DHC)
If I read between the lines on the software design for #ActivityPub, I don't think there are actually supposed to _be_ servers per se, or more precisely that servers are supposed to be very simple passthroughs that have some forwarding/processing logic?
If so then this makes some sense, since when AP was being written was a big time for BaaS (Backend as a Service; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backend_as_a_service ) and that influenced a lot of ideas.
Evan Prodromou
@hrefna well, kind of.
I mean, it's a RESTful API, so it really needs an HTTP server to function.
But mostly, AP is about actor-to-actor communications.
We have one optimization, the shared inbox, that groups users together, which is probably the only part of the spec that reifies something like a Mastodon instance.
I think the best implementations make the server an actor in its own right, which can do activities and can be followed.
Evan Prodromou
@hrefna Webfinger has a strong concept of a server, but it's not actually required for AP.
Evan Prodromou
@hrefna you don't need to explain the history of ActivityPub to me.
Hrefna (DHC)
@evan The two groups compromised by just not mentioning it anywhere.
Hrefna (DHC)
@evan BaaS systems have a server, but it is just a very generic server, so most of the functionality and logic gets pushed down the client. That's the sort of model that I'm seeing.
Re: Webfinger. What they wanted was a concept of "follow your nose" and, originally, there appear to have been two camps around webfinger:
1. Account IDs should be a dereferencable _http_ URI.
2. Account IDs can be acct: schema so long as the other side knows how to process that and connect with webfinger.
Evan Prodromou
@hrefna @gugurumbe There's only one server in AP. Your client doesn't talk to remote servers directly. If you need to pull remote data, you use the proxyUrl of your server.
Hrefna (DHC)
@gugurumbe That fits very neatly with how BaaS systems work, so that makes sense.
Post-Release Administrivia
@hrefna There’s one server more in ActivityPub than in Solid, because you are supposed to deliver activities to your outbox, as opposed to delivering them directly to your recipient’s inboxes.
Evan Prodromou
@gugurumbe @hrefna Oh! I thought you meant, if an actor has followers on N different servers, then the total number of servers that the client interacts with is N + 1. It's actually more like 1.
Post-Release Administrivia
@evan @hrefna I was talking about the chain between two end-users: client – server – server – client, 2 servers.
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