On 5. März 2010 08:32, Dan Brickley <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 3:03 AM, Ted Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Thu, 2010-03-04 at 20:45 -0500, Matt Lee wrote: >> > On 03/04/2010 08:38 PM, Ted Smith wrote: >> > >> > > I want to be able to point to GNU Social and daisycha.in as a drop-in >> > > replacement for non-free network services. >> > >> > I don't want anyone to create a monolithic service, where everyone uses >> > one big instance. Not for this. >> >> I'm not advocating for a monolithic or centralized system; just one that >> can solve existing problems, like identi.ca solves the twitter problem. >> > > I love identi.ca and what it stands for, but it doesn't "solve the twitter > problem". I am on both systems, but the vast majority of my friends, > colleagues and contacts are using Twitter, even if they have also set up an > Identi.ca account. What's worse is that interop across the two is weak; I > need to maintain a mental map of my friend's IDs on the two systems, because > my Identi.ca posts flow automatically to twitter. Since @-addressing isn't > automatically rewritten, sometimes the meaning of a message (eg. identica's > @maxf is twitter's @therealmaxf and not @maxf). These systematic and > standards aspects are more important imho to address than "building a big > site X that looks like site Y except for the source code license". >
smob attempts to solve the twitter problem, it's still new but actually is a working implementation, that you can run on your home page e.g. ( http://melvincarvalho.com/smob/ ) -- so pure smob messaging is webid to webid (global) however you can bridge to local systems such as twitter > > I'd also stress that the real control/freedom aspect with Facebook is not > that I can't get my data back out (I can); or that I can't customise the > software (many interesting pieces *are* free/opensource), but that my > account there is locked into running within the same instance as millions of > others, and is identified by a domain name I don't control ('facebook.com'). > Even though I can customise the sources behind identi.ca, the use of a > single domain means I have to run up a new instance elsewhere on my own > server if I want my ability to hack the source to affect my online > experience. > That's a grey area. I think facebook allows profile data out, but has restrictions on relationship data (cacheable for max 24h). Google does seems to allow a full export. identi.ca are good in that they export FOAF pretty well (but no edit yet, however I'm sure they will get there) > > This is new territory for GNU and it's worth treading carefully. There are > lots of different - intricately related - freedoms to value here, beyond the > freedom to hack on the source code. For me with the FOAF project, I've been > thinking of these four in particular lately: freedom of expression (ie. > never let the engineeering and product depts of some big company limit what > you can say about yourself); freedom of choice (to find the best > site/service that meets your needs); of association (to engage freely with > folk who made different choices and use different systems); freedom of > movement (to change your mind later and switch services without having to > beg; and to keep lifelong control of your data and online identity, without > being tied to the fate of someone's project or company). > Nice! Eben Moglen also talks about the 4 freedoms: free software, free hardware, free spectrum, free culture. http://www.archive.org/details/3_do_t1_11h_3-Moglen_a > > What I would value most from GNU is an effort to make sure the supporting > software libraries for standards-based social Web interop are solid, tested > and up to date, and that they are integrated throughout the GNU collection > of software packages and the wider software scene. Why doesn't Mailman do > oauth or openid? Why even today do my attempts to use my lhttps:// > mail.google.com/a/danbri.org/#inbox/1272674a65026194ocal Wordpress's > openid provision to log into my locally installed MediaWiki often fail? > GNU's reputation is in worldclass free software; I'd suggest sticking close > to that and focussing on asking ourselves what we can do to take this > massive network of free software installations, and integrate them to > improve people's social experience of the Web. > > We already have 'social networks' scattered across the entire Internet/Web, > and this is as it should be. The challenge isn't to move them all to one > giant replacement service or network, but to patch them together, the way > the Internet itself was patched together from its constituent ancestors. > Take IRC for example: the popular Freenode IRC network is apparently powered > by GNU software including it's ircd, http://dev.freenode.net/ircd-seven... > http://freenode.net/development.shtml ... now thousands of people happily > use IRC daily to socialise, share and communicate. Thousands of others use > GNU Mailman to do similar in email. Let's not get distracted by the > impossible dream of cloning the facebook experience in a 'free' way, when we > have real vibrant online communities already, thanks to GNU software. I look > to the GNU Social initiative not to add just another software package to the > mix, but to take a lead - by workshops, evangelism, free beers, code > reviews, whatever it takes - in getting more integration and standards > support across the existing suite of GNU social software. Why can't we > better integrate the IRC community on Freenode with the network of mailman > installations out there? Work on XMPP support in ircd to modernise the > underlying standards, or integrate IRC's notion of user identity (nickserv) > with that of the Web? > > Or let's take Wikis. I look in my MediaWiki source tree, and what do I see? > > GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE > > Wikipedia is hurting from the delete wars between deletionists and > cover-everythingists ( > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion) ie feeling > the pain of being a giant site which has to meet the needs of a huge and > diverse audience... meanwhile 1000s of smaller wikis running their same > GPL-licensed software are hurting or closing because each is under spam > attack, and we lack the federated trust systems that make it easy to > understand which comments/edits come from reliable members of the Web > community acting in good faith, and which come from spammers, bots and > suchlike. > > Consider blogs, both as another form of online social activity, and as > another GNU-facilitated thing threatened by spam and fragmented by lack of > integration. Download the popular blogging toolkit Wordpress for your site, > and look inside the zip file at license.zip: > > GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE > > Don't like Wordpress? Don't like PHP? Go grab > http://www.movabletype.org/instead and you'll find GPL software. Either has > support for many standards, > but offer potential for richer integration (discovery, search, > notifications,...). > I think GNU Social will be AGPL, which is slightly different from GPL 3.0 (or probably dual licence?) > > For me, this is the GNU Social project's core business. I picked on a > handful of well known projects that are using the GNU license. Some are > fully wholeheartedly GNU projects, some are social and GNU licensed but > really not engaging beyond the choice of licensing. GNU Social could be the > existing vast network of collaboration facilitated already by GNU free > software. I encourage folk here to figure out what's missing from that > world that will improve people's experience of the existing deployed social > Web. Maybe it's something as simple as integrating the RSS/Atom patch into > the Mailman core distribution, or providing standards-based views into > systems so that interface designers can experiment with innovative and > integrative interfaces to things that were previously clunky, geeky and > fragmented. Maybe there are entirely new software products to create that > will help bridge these sites to create a more integrated global network. I'd > suggest beginning with a survey of what's out there. It is often more > appealling to start a fresh project than to help patch up old ones; but with > GNU Social I think the tradeoffs are different. GNU as a project has the > authority, respect and attention to make hundreds of projects sit up and > take notice, and to attract the energy of thousands of brilliant-minded > developers. It just needs a clear message and a simple-enough, > detailed-enough roadmap... > Agree it might be a good idea survey / landscape analysis, maybe on a wiki page. Around June the SWXG will probably publish a draft of something similar. > imho etc., > > Dan > > > >
