Notices by Steve Bate (steve@social.technoetic.com)

@evan @deadsuperhero The "simple truth" is that no changes have been made to the AP Rec since 2018 despite numerous bug reports and extensive community feedback. There's currently no W3C group with the authority to make any changes. For at least those reasons, I think it's fair to say it's currently unmaintained. I know there has been some talk about chartering a WG to do a minor update. 🤞 FEPs are not W3C, are not AP-specific and are a separate, informal process. But, of course, you know that.

@evan @deadsuperhero One alternative.. talk about how the problems with #ActivityPub will be addressed in a reasonable time frame given it’s not actively maintained and the evolution of it is “closed” (tightly controlled by the W3C). I think this would be more effective for attracting developers than FUD and misinformation about other protocols and attacks on those with more inclusive perspectives. That strategy doesn’t help ActivityPub, in either the short or the long term.

I've been developing an #ActivityPub C2S-based (with extensions) API facade/proxy proof-of-concept for Mastodon. It runs as a separate process that supports proxying the Masto operations but also adds a postable C2S outbox with support for AP C2S activities. These activities are converted into upstream Mastodon API calls. This extended C2S API also supports search, streaming events, managing bookmark collections, and retrieving timeline collections. 1/2

I submitted a draft FEP describing the Mastodon and LitePub/Pleroma #ActivityPub relay protocols. Comments and corrections are welcome.

https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/ae0c/fep-ae0c.md

@silverpill Is there a script for checking a new FEP before submitting a PR? (For content and metadata issues, for example)

@jan Does that list include the software implementation details about the relays? I didn’t see it.

Does anybody know which #ActivityPub relay implementation is the most widely deployed?

@evan You're supporting my point about calling the SWF the ActivityPub Foundation when you give the *Linux* Foundation and the *Python* Foundation as examples. It would be misleading if they were called the "Operating System Foundation" or the "Programming Language Foundation".

I want to be clear, I have been criticizing the "Social Web" Foundation's attempt to define the social web as #ActivityPub-only, but I have much respect and gratitude for @evan 's amazing contributions to various social network protocols over the years. I just hope he'll reconsider the Foundation's definitions of "social web" and either clarify the Foundation's objectives or make it more inclusive (more than just ActivityPub).

Mastodon doesn't implement the #ActivityPub "API" (C2S). They don't conform to either the client or server profiles in the AP Recommendation. They implement a very small subset of AP/AS2 and they don't conform to the AS2 Recommendation for the parts they implement. Their software supports > 80% of the MAU in the Fediverse (all protocols, not the SWF definition). And Evan uses this as evidence of ActivityPub's success? I think Mastodon has thrived despite ActivityPub problems, not because of it.

@nik @evan I'll let you and @evan discuss that. He's made it clear to me that plain JSON (no JSON-LD processing) has primacy over JSON-LD/RDF. That's one reason this thread is so interesting to me, given the recommendation to use the OWL ontology.

@evan @nik Using the OWL Ontology for validation is not ideal for multiple reasons. 1) It's not maintained, 2) it's not complete (only AS2, no AP), 3) it's not fully consistent with normative AS2, 4) it requires RDF, which requires JSON-LD processing of AP messages, 5) if you want message validation, you'll need write code to do something that already exists (SHACL, ShEx). I recommend JSON Schema for plain JSON applications.

@nik What's this well-defined RDFS vocabulary (vs the normative JSON-LD context)? Do you mean the non-normative (and non-maintained) AS2 OWL ontology? A JSON Schema definition could define constraints that can be used for plain JSON message validation (and developer documentation) for specific AP interoperability domains (microblogging, forums, online markets, etc.). And it would be useful for non-RDF (plain JSON) consumers given AP is primarily intended to be used in that context (per @evan ).

@evan Right, the RDF differs because the Collection's JSON-LD serialization is different in the paged serialization. I'd prefer that the Collection representation wouldn't change for paging, but I know that's another aspect of AS2 that will not change. Linked Data Platform (LDP) Paging describes a different way that doesn't couple the Collection and page representations so tightly. IIRC, they use Link headers for page refs and transient objects (in AP terms) for pages. https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/ldpwg/raw-file/default/ldp-paging.html

@evan Yes, that’s essentially it. The AS2 Collection paging is a whole other discussion. The RDF triples are accurately representing what’s in the page-related JSON-LD, but the JSON-LD isn’t literally serializing one item in a Collection. It’s serializing a Collection referencing a CollectionPage (via `first`) that references one item (which is consistent with the RDF triples).

@evan JSON-LD is a Linked Data (RDF) serialization. I think it's a stretch to call it a schema language in the same genre as JSON Schema. The JSON-LD AP context can only be compared to a schema language in very limited ways. I'd expect one would use RDF Schema (RDFS) or SHACLE or Shape Expressions (ShEx), maybe OWL, *with* JSON-LD for that purpose. Given that, would you personally still choose JSON-LD today, since the focus is on plain JSON? I'm not asking about what Snell chose a decade ago.

@evan I'm not exactly clear about the analogy, but maybe someday we'll say that's how it worked in ActivityPub up until version 2.0! 😉

@evan There's no need to "cast" me in that light. However, intentional pact or not... it would be like selecting RDF/XML as the AP/AS2 representation but saying it should be treated as generic XML and has no relationship to RDF. Or using Turtle and suggesting that it be interpreted as just lines of text with no relation to RDF. I think it's a very confusing position. If you had to make that decision (to use JSON-LD) today, would you make the same decision? Why?

@evan Some AP advocates/activities like @smallcircles have been proposing something similar to this for a while now (discussed on SocialHub).

@evan We're back in the circular reasoning since JSON-LD *has* a well-defined data model. It's RDF and graph-based (Chapt 10. JSON-LD 1.1 spec.). The statement that AP uses "JSON-LD" but is not an RDF data model doesn't make sense to me given how JSON-LD is specified. I don't think JSON-LD provides much extensibility benefit to plain JSON apps. Maybe there should be a variant of #ActivityPub that is unambiguously plain JSON with a plain JSON extensibility design? Maybe less confusing for devs?