Evan Prodromou
So. these are interesting results!
Right now, I'm a strong no. Anything anyone publishes before the end of the year is going to be, at best, a spoiler and a distraction.
Worst case, if it picks up steam, it could split the interest in federation, and really inhibit further growth.
Evan Prodromou
Metcalfe's law says the value of a communications medium goes up with the square of the number of participants.
If the total number of people interested in federated social networks is N, a single pool of people using compatible protocols -- AP, right now -- generates ~N^2 value.
If you split that in 2 even groups, the value of each group is ~N^2/4, and total value is N^2/2.
Every time we split the fediverse, we drive down value significantly.
So, if you care about federation, don't split.
Evan Prodromou
Long-term, sure, go for it. If your protocol is 10 times better than ActivityPub for some reason, it will get some headway.
But don't be a spoiler during this crucial period.
Evan Prodromou
So, anyway: short term, strong no. Long term, qualified no.
Evan Prodromou
For those not familiar with Metcalfe's Law:
Evan Prodromou
@gabrielbauman What about a project funded by a big company, like Blue Sky?
Gabriel Bauman
@evan ActivityPub has a ton of momentum and adoption right now thanks to Mastodon, and I don't think a dev publishing a paper or a toy implementation threatens that. People should publish early and often.
It looks like the biggest adoption spoilers might to be federation wars over moderation policies, followed by inter-instance latency.
Basically, mods have to be made irrelevant; users must be empowered to set boundaries that work for them, are transparent to others, and are enforced broadly.
Evan Prodromou
@voxpelli it's great! Bridges are good, interoperability is great. The existing Indie Web stack is great, RSS and RSSCloud is great, existing protocols like OStatus are great. Keep using them, keep building bridges.
But!
I think publishing a *new* protocol in November 2022 or launching a new network is pretty reckless, and I hope whoever thinks of doing that would think hard about whether they're providing a net good for the fediverse and for the world.
Pelle Wessman
@evan What’s your take on eg https://fed.brid.gy/ then?
Evan Prodromou
@gabrielbauman one way it doesn't happen is for people to sit on their hands and not publish their snowflake protocols.
Gabriel Bauman
@evan Say they release tomorrow. Mastodon still trending, people still joining because now that's where their friends are if they're not on Twitter. The head start is real, and switching fatigue works in our favor.
Devs/enthusiasts will read and experiment with the new thing. Unlikely that the bulk of the Twitter diaspora will care. ActivityPub can ignore/embrace/extend concepts or be replaced itself if X is really so great.
Gabriel Bauman
@evan if the worst happens and we get significant fragmentation, maybe Jabber-style gateways can work. Hopefully that doesn't happen.
Evan Prodromou
I guess my idea of "publishing a protocol" is that you're releasing a new spec and not revising or updating an existing spec.
You're right, "publishing a protocol" could mean the second, too.
Kevin Marks
@evan @voxpelli you didn't say "new" in the poll though, so it was effectively asking other existing protocols to keep quiet
Evan Prodromou
@KevinMarks @voxpelli I don't see much if any harm in updating a protocol spec right now.
Evan Prodromou
@voxpelli @KevinMarks @oblomov so, there you go! An exception that proves the rule.
Pelle Wessman
@KevinMarks @evan @oblomov One of the latest examples of this is the MicroSub protocol: https://indieweb.org/Microsub
Pelle Wessman
@KevinMarks @evan @oblomov Well, the IndieWeb like OStatus and to a degree Mastodon consists of many protocols and more may very well be added / extended / iterated upon, so they would be new, but part of something old and existing
Oblomov
@KevinMarks
I'd say the new was implicit in the publishing. Why would you publish an old protocol?
@evan @voxpelli
Evan Prodromou
So, now that I'm rereading, I think there's another potential source of confusion.
In the Web world, we sometimes use "publish" to mean "support" or "implement", especially when we're talking about feed formats.
Like, "Does that site publish a WebSockets interface?"
Or, "My blog engine publishes RSS and Atom."
"This server publishes SMTP and SSH."
That's not what I meant, so I should have picked a clearer term, like "publish a new spec".
Evan Prodromou
@funkatron @voxpelli YES
Funkatron (Ed Finkler)
@evan @voxpelli oh hey didn’t we work on some Ostatus stuff r somethin?
Evan Prodromou
@aeva well, at least there's two of us
aeva
@evan If it is of any reassurance I have absolutely no plans right now to develope any federated protocols.
Evan Prodromou
@n8 yes, I was talking about protocols!
n8 Doesn't follow you 🇺🇦
@evan Is that a statement about protocols, though? It seems more like it speaks to instances and the patterns of instance-admins refusing to federate with other instances.
Clearly there are some sharply different philosophies on who/when/how federating is done; it may remain to be seen which among those are destructive to the overall value of the network.
Evan Prodromou
Alexandre Franke
@evan
Is @matrix in scope for your question too? It beats the fediverse by a large margin when it comes to Metcalfe’s law.
Evan Prodromou
@reiver that's an interesting assumption! I need to think about that.
@reiver ⊼ (Charles) :batman:
Then what is the process for getting the people who want to create or support alternative federation protocols — to do that within the framework of ActivityPub?
Assuming you want to try to bring that "26% Strong yes" and "38% Qualified yes" to support your preference.
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