Repost of something I put on Twitter, in response to a post about "Shuttering Google Reader Killed Blogging" https://twitter.com/dustyweb/status/1299506666640211973
a repeat mistake: being excited about a decentralized system's success because a big player moves in, becoming reliant on it, not providing a better alternative, big player leaves, decentralized system dies from shock
see also xmpp and gtalk
hoping to do better...
"Providing a better alternative" also means more than just "make the UI nice and easy to use", though that's a critical step. What is required to become a participating node in the system? How hard is it to keep that software running?
And yes, before you point it out, I don't think ActivityPub is in a good place here. But I think we can do better (and if you look, you can tell how that's impacting my current research & development)
are you referring to DataShards ?
@AbbieNormal Datashards is one component, yes! And application towards the fediverse is a large motivator there.
The next big component is the CapTP work happening in Spritely Goblins.
Ludovic Cortes published a reference to a project made in Guile a few days ago
And that resembles some of what you are doing, it mentions "capabilites" explicitely
Do you know about that ?
@AbbieNormal Yes, I think you are referring to @pukkamustard's ERIS and openEngiadina systems https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/content-addressing-and-signatures/744
@pukkamustard has been in regular communication with the loose group of people defining Datashards at the moment (facilitated and organized by @emacsen) and we've definitely been in communication. We're hoping for convergence.
You're right, I overlooked distributed programming
That's because I don't understand what it is
Instead, I pretty well understand the opportunities of distributing structured information (semantic balh blah) in a NOT client/server fashion
I attempted to distribute a bunch of triples along the standards of the semantic web myself, some time ago
A server was lent to the project by a local unversity lab
But that didn't last, because managing servers is challenging
If I had the opportunity, I would have distributed the data myself !
@AbbieNormal @pukkamustard You're not alone. It'll be easier to understand once I have more demos available :)