@ValorZard No dice.

First of all, implementing nomadic identity would drastically alter the way how Mastodon works. It would make Mastodon, something that's supposed to be dead-simple, a great deal more complex.

I mean, in order to really pull this through all the way (as in Hubzilla/(streams)/Forte-level nomadic identity), your identity, your posts, your followers, your followed, your settings, your filters, your everything, all this must no longer directly reside in your account. It must be containerised in something that Hubzilla calls "channel", and that container would then reside in your account and be able to reside in multiple accounts on multiple independent servers.

Next, when Mastodon introduces a new feature, they tend to try to market it as their own original pioneering invention. They can't do that with nomadic identity. There are already enough people who know that nomadic identity was actually pioneered by Hubzilla before Mastodon even existed.

Furthermore, before Gargron implements something invented by Mike Macgirvin, hell will freeze over. Even if he tried to sell it as a unique feature of Mastodon, he'd still secretly have to admit that there's something that Mike did right. And quite a few eyes would be on him in hope of Mastodon getting more features from stuff created by Mike.

Ever heard of OpenWebAuth magic sign-on? Invented by Mike for Osada and Zap in the late 2010s, then backported to Hubzilla.

It was proposed for Mastodon, even if it was only client-side (as in, Mastodon logins would be detected by Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, but Mastodon wouldn't be able to detect OpenWebAuth logins itself). This went as far as a merge request on GitHub. It could have been built into Mastodon. The code was literally there.

The merge request was silently rejected. And that would have been a fairly small change in comparison to the complete rebuild that'd be necessary for a full-blown, Forte-level, server-side implementation of nomadic identity.

I mean, @silverpill had to implement nomadic identity on Mitra client-side. That wouldn't be possible on Mastodon, what with every other Fediverse app being a Mastodon client. Mastodon would require a server-side implementation.

Seriously, it'd be easier to strap Mastodon's Web UI to Forte or Hubzilla with the necessary changes to adapt it to a vastly different backend.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Mitra #FEP_ef61 #NomadicIdentity

@jandi (Hubzilla seems fascinating btw!)
It's a monster that can be a challenge to tackle if you expect something that works like Mastodon. But on the plus side, it may have the best built-in documentation of all Fediverse server applications, and it has got its own support forum.

Oh, and nomadic identity works as advertised.

CC: @silverpill @Holos Social

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hubzilla #NomadicIdentity

@silverpill Would be interesting to add Hubzilla's Zot6 and (streams)' Nomad (which would be Zot12 if it wasn't incompatible with Zot6) to the list.

By the way: Forte doesn't require a gateway to communicate with non-nomadic ActivityPub. A fully cloned Forte channel can communicate with a Mastodon account without jumping through hoops. Remember that Forte has almost fully-featured Hubzilla-level nomadic identity (i.e. everything except real-time syncing between channel instances; unlike Hubzilla and (streams) which do sync in real time, it needs a cronjob for that) directly built into its core.

(streams) does support nomadic identity via ActivityPub. But internally, it uses and relies upon Nomad for its nomadic identity. It only supports nomadic identity via ActivityPub a) because it was used as a development platform for just this and b) in order to be able to understand cloned nomadic ActivityPub actors elsewhere. This is also why it isn't possible to move from (streams) to Forte, to move from Forte to (streams) or to clone between (streams) and Forte.

(streams) itself doesn't require gateways to communicate with Mastodon & Co. either. It speaks three protocols natively: its own Nomad, Hubzilla's Zot6 and (optionally, but on by default) standard ActivityPub.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #ActivityPub #Zot #Zot6 #Nomad #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #NomadicIdentity

@洪 民憙 (Hong Minhee) :nonbinary: Two people you may consider consulting in this case:

• @Mike Macgirvin ?️. He invented nomadic identity in 2011. He was the first to implement it in Red (which became Hubzilla in 2015) in 2012.
  His streams repository, a fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork?) of Hubzilla, is the place where he laid the foundations of FEP-ef61 out of necessity because he was working on nomadic identity via ActivityPub (Hubzilla and (streams) use their own protocols for that), and it was the first nomadic server software that had it implemented.
  Also, his Forte, itself a fork of the streams repository, is the only Fediverse server software that uses nothing but ActivityPub to establish nomadic identity and relies on FEP-ef61 to do that. Basically, it's (streams) with no Nomad and Zot6 support, and syncing between clones is triggered by a cronjob because, unlike Zot6 and Nomad, ActivityPub doesn't provide any ways to trigger immediate, near-real-time syncs.
  Mike hasn't been caught online for quite a while, though, although he's still working on both (streams) and Forte.
• @silverpill is gradually turning Mitra from a typical non-nomadic, account/login-equals-identity, one-identity-per-account Fediverse software into something that's every bit as nomadic as Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte while casting everything necessary for this process into FEPs.
  I'm not sure whether this will include containerising identities like the channels on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte and allowing multiple fully independent identities on the same account, just like the same identity (channel) would be able to exist on independent accounts on different servers.

That said, is your goal only to use FEP-ef61 for identities that are tied to their accounts and their servers? Or is your goal fully-fledged nomadic identity on the same level as on Forte?

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Mitra #NomadicIdentity #FEP_ef61

@Strypey That's a pretty major UX fail right there.

Any progress on finalising an FEP for using nomadic identity with AP?
I think it'll take more than that one FEP (FEP-ef61 Portable Objects) to do that. I expect @silverpill to whip up more FEPs in the on-going process of turning Mitra from something like most Fediverse software (non-nomadic, account equals identity) into something that's every bit as nomadic as Forte.

Thing is, Mitra still has a long way to go, also because it aims to have an implementation of nomadic identity that's entirely covered by FEPs. Forte has nomadic identity via ActivityPub, but that's technology adopted from Zot/Nomad that needed to be made to work first and foremost with no regards for FEPs.

Besides, the existence of FEPs doesn't matter as long as Mastodon refuses to adopt them. And Mastodon has already silently rejected client-side support for OpenWebAuth magic sign-on by refusing to merge an existing, ready-to-merge pull request that would have implemented it immediately.

This means we'll probably never even see Mastodon become capable of recognising nomadic channels. And I'm not talking about Mastodon going nomadic itself (which, by the way, would also give Mastodon the easy account moving that its users have been craving for for so long).

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Mitra #Forte #NomadicIdentity #FEP_ef61

@Strypey Groups are tied permanently to the originating server.
Not true for Hubzilla forums as well as (streams) and Forte groups.

I could set up a Hubzilla forum channel that simultaneously resides on half a dozen or more fully independent servers. All instances of the channel will incrementally back themselves up to all other instances of the channel in near-real-time, bidirectionally.

One server goes down, I still have 100% identical living copies on all the other servers.

The miracle of nomadic identity. Established in 2012, daily-driven on production channels for longer than Mastodon itself.

Literally the only disadvantage is that the non-nomadic parts of the Fediverse, including Mastodon, will perceive each clone as its own separate Fediverse account.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #NomadicIdentity