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2023-03-11.log
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<humanetech>I posted about technology adoption strategy to spritely forum some time ago, though I knew there wouldn't be much discussion on such "soft topics" in a group with such hard tech focus :) <humanetech>There's a [thread](https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swicg/2023Mar/0053.html) started at the SWICG about Meta coming to the fediverse. It is somewhat amusing, yet also bitter observation. Points brought up I've been saying for years. And cwebber and others were very vocal on as well. "We must do something now, before it is too late!" .. well, it is richly late and years were wasted where preparation for just this kind of event <humanetech>I wonder what spritely's thoughts are on setting up a "soft track" in parallel to technical deep-diving. <msavoritias>the thing that people are missing imo is not that meta is starting to move for that and we havent. Its that we have absolutely no protection for corporate capture in w3 afaik <lagash>Question: I've been looking around for offline-first, optionally collaborative calendaring and scheduling software, and can't find what I'm looking for. CalDAV is the closest I've found, but it's old and quite fragmented, and still would only solve part of the problem, so I was thinking, what about something like an E2EE P2P "blockchain" calendar? I was thinking, maybe in a few years, after the Guile to WASM project has matured, perhaps <lagash>Goblins / other Spritely stuff could be a base? I see there's already an iCal parser in Guile that could be useful.. <humanetech>msavoritias: Yes, I agree. I also observe how in general FOSS movement is strong on individual project levels and on technical matters, and very weak in almost all other areas. Especially in forging and upholding, evolving an ecosystem where it can thrive. <msavoritias>its deeply ironic how the foss community is political for licenses but completely apolitical/ignorant on everything else <lagash>The OCapN project would be interesting to use for, say, delegating certain permissions to a secretary or maybe to family. <humanetech>Yes. So often before major subjects are touched on, the discussion devolves around licensing.. as if that offers anything more than just the tiniest amount of protection. And that is only for delivered end results. Meanwhile all along the way all research and insights are just for the taking as "free beer" for any corporate entity, while they do their internal things for the money. <Zarutian_iPad>talking about ‘licenses’ is often quite the waste of time, imnho <Zarutian_iPad>a lot of folks are under the misconception they work the same way everywhere <msavoritias>yep. or they have more power than they actually have <humanetech>As mod of SocialHub I've come to the insight that big Community of Action around big topics / visions won't ever come about. And that an ecosystem where the value system of FOSS / Commons minded folks prevails in the long term, requires different approaches that go beyond protecting the 4 Freedoms the FSF prescribes. <Zarutian_iPad>the additional clause in AGPL over GPL is moot in the juristiction I live yet GPL works here. <humanetech>Though in the case of Spritely it might help if there are finances to get 'community animators' full time involved. But it is not the best approach. <Zarutian_iPad>an perhaps unhelpful advice is for ‘community animators’ and even devs to have patreon, kofi and cybercoin addresses for donations and support. Nothing afaict that prevents the Spritely Institute to chip in a few bucks via those. <Zarutian_iPad>ACTION notes that EULAs are meaningless here whilist TOS are not. <humanetech>Yes, maybe. Money can be an incentive. I believe that the grassroots dynamics in FOSS and Fediverse requires to trigger intrinsic motivations in people, which provide the incentives for them to become active participants. With that idea in mind, special attention can be given to provide these incentives to the right people. <humanetech>People want to do their own thing, be independent, follow their passions. <humanetech>And that should match where Spritely leads the way. <Zarutian_iPad>in GPL case one can download or obtain GPLed software and make modifications and keep those modifications private to oneself. But if you distribute those modified softwares then the GPL applies as the GPL are the authors giving permission to distribute deravtive works from the original. <Zarutian_iPad>but there is nothing preventing one to release a software patch (a diff program) under MIT for GPL software, wierd as that is. <Zarutian_iPad>(there used to be grilles for books to say change a characters name, and those grilles are their own work) <humanetech>Yes. Working in Public is a good thing. But real-time radical transparency may not be smart, if things are strategic. I am for thinking about Gradual exposure, i.e. becoming "eventually transparent". <humanetech>(Eventual transparency may also be what I as outside observer are withheld from in plans that are ripening within Spritely Institute ;) <Zarutian_iPad>humanetech: if a spec is not enough for interoperability then that spec is well, underspecified. <msavoritias>Note also on the thread above: we also have a huge problem educating people in the tech community <msavoritias>Which is gonna be a big problems if facebook federates <humanetech>Zarutian_iPad: Well, cwebber is the best person to give a response to that, but I think the idea was always that that would be picked up in vNext iterations of the spec. Which never happened due to aforementioned grassroots dynamics. <humanetech>Everyone going their ad-hoc way, and happily coding. <Zarutian_iPad>humanetech: oh, think cwebber will agree somewhat with me on that <humanetech>Zarutian_iPad: Yes, fully with you. If somehow delivering a federated service would mean that the specs came bundled in the implementation, and you had capability discovery (not meaning ocap here, btw).. then they'd not be chores but essential and always available to 3rd parties that wanna interoperate. <humanetech>Now you have to dive into different codebases and reverse engineer. <Zarutian_iPad>most good rfcs and specs I have seen are often put to paper by one person after quite some community discussion <humanetech>Yea. Guess so. Then you still get the moment where big players come in and you need to be able to handle that in the interest of the entire ecosystem and not those dominant forces. <humanetech>So need to have reached a good level of self-sustainability.. good organization in place. <humanetech>These are things Spritely would have to think about. Would there be a jumping of joy once e.g. a Meta joins the effort? Would there be capability to handle that well enough? Etc. <Zarutian_iPad>”here is the spec in excruciating detail, implement it” should just work as well <humanetech>To maintains said specs, give the community a voice, weigh their voices. The reasons why we have steering committees like W3C. If you do not have that, there should be something that can grow sustainably in completely decentralized fashion. <humanetech>Zarutian_iPad: Yes, that would work in theory, if you could get things at that level first. <Zarutian_iPad>you can get to that level by having one small spec as a base and the build ontop of it with others <msavoritias>In the sense that facebook coming to facebook is a social problem <humanetech>For the current Fediverse I am all in favor of seeing numerous decentralized hubs of activity where people focus on a particular business domain. E.g. like there exists for Podcasting and also emerging for forge federation. Then there should be a similar hub that dedicates to core protocol concerns, but only those. <msavoritias>What can help is good organization that resists corporate infuence and a culture of educated people using said software <msavoritias>That said i wonder how much ap can be improved for what is needed. <isd>Frankly I think standards-body capture is basically irrelevant, because the standards bodies don't actually matter -- they're a meeting place but ultimately it's perfectly possible to just go off and talk to people and write a spec without some formal standards body around it. Especially if you're random online hackers who don't hold patents and thus don't need the w3c's patent agreements. What matters is what implementers do. I'm actually a little <isd>against bringing ocapn to a standards body, just because it seems like busywork; we've already got an issue tracker and the stakeholder projects are talking to each other. That's all we actually need. <isd>I'll caveat that standards-body capture is relevant only insofar as we recognize "standards" as a source of legitimacy. <humanetech>Yes, I agree with that as well. I am not really in favor (in the I used to be long ago) about W3C standards, or even IETF. It doesn't change the equations though. Same risks exists, and similar dynamics. Solid Project is an example where they are (for now) having their own standards track.. which much copy/paste from W3C formalities, btw. <humanetech>What I expect to happen on the Fediverse pretty soon is that someone picks up the glove and starts a real solid effort to bring order to chaos. Whom that party is and whom else is involved remains to be seen. But it may well be a big corporate entity that starts to 'take care' of things. <humanetech><msavoritias> "What can help is good organizati..." <- I am very interested in investigating new forms of organization and collaboration in grassroots ecosystems that take cultural dynamics into account and address sustainability criteria more holistically. Quite a challenge, but an inspiring one. <humanetech>Right now my new saying is that "The Four Freedoms of FOSS enable The Freedom to Corrupt by Hypercapitaism", i.e. FOSS is royal free beer provider to corporate players. <jfred>lagash: I've often wanted similar and I do think Goblins could be a good base for that. Calendaring is a case where fine-grained delegation is very valuable and most tools don't do it well <Zarutian_iPad>how can we tell the matrix irc bridge to just put the whole message over? <Zarutian_iPad>> As far as object capabilities go, I think the rubber has really met the <Zarutian_iPad>road in terms of reply approval and the pressing need for that today as a <Zarutian_iPad>social interaction tool. So I encourage everybody to go check out the reply <Zarutian_iPad>approval FEP conversation and contribute to it, because I think it's going <Zarutian_iPad>to end up significantly shaping what object capabilities look like on the <humanetech>Yes, I am not sure how things appear on IRC. On matrix you have markdown support, and can edit sent comments (which I know repeats them on irc).