@Gaming on the Fediverse That's quite a bit simplified. For one, four server applications and one protocol were lumped together. Besides, Zap is dead, and Forte isn't even mentioned.

So here's an attempt at telling the whole story (server applications are in bold type, protocols are in bold type and italics):

tl;dr:

2010:

• DFRN
• Mistpark/Friendika/Friendica
  (DFRN)

2011:

• Zot
• Free-Friendika
  (DFRN)
  (forked from Friendika)
• several other Friendika forks
  (DFRN)
  (forked from Friendika)
  (discontinued 2011)
• Red/Red Matrix
  (DFRN, from 2012 Zot)
  (forked from Free-Friendika)
  (rebuilt into Hubzilla 2015)

2015:

• Hubzilla
  (Zot, later Zot6)
  (rebuilt from the Red Matrix)

2018:

Zot6
• Osada
  (Zot6)
  (forked from Hubzilla)
  (discontinued in 2018)
• Zap
  (Zot6)
  (forked most likely from Osada, maybe from Hubzilla)
  (discontinued in 2022)
• Osada
  (Zot6)
  (forked from Zap)
  (discontinued in 2019)

2020:

Zot8
• Redmatrix 2020
  (Zot8)
  (forked from either Zap or Mistpark 2020 or (the third) Osada)
  (discontinued in 2022)
• Mistpark 2020 a.k.a. Misty
  (Zot8)
  (forked from either Zap or Redmatrix 2020 or (the third) Osada)
  (discontinued in 2022)
• Osada
  (Zot8)
  (forked from either Zap or Redmatrix 2020 or Mistpark 2020)
  (discontinued in 2022)

2022:

• Nomad
  (originally Zot11)
• Roadhouse
  (Nomad)
  (forked from either Redmatrix 2020 or Mistpark 2020 or (the third) Osada)
  (discontinued in 2022)
• (streams)
  (Nomad)
  (forked from Roadhouse)

2024:
Forte
(ActivityPub)
(forked from (streams))[/list]
So as far as Fediverse server applications go, he created Friendica, Free-Friendika, a few more Friendika forks, the Red Matrix, Hubzilla, three Osadas, Zap, Redmatrix 2020, Mistpark 2020, Roadhouse, (streams) and Forte. Depending on how you want to count them, that's at least 13 or 14 server applications. Four of these are still being maintained (Friendica by a new team, Hubzilla by another new team, (streams) and Forte by himself).

The long version:

In 2010, he created

• the DFRN protocol
• Mistpark (renamed first into Friendika later in 2010 and then into Friendica in 2011)

In 2011, he made several forks of Friendika. The reason was licensing: Friendika was getting quite some attention. As it was under the MIT license, chances were that it was tempting to fork it and turn the fork into a commercial, proprietary, closed-source monolith or something. On the other hand, the GPL in any shape or form would have hindered further development.

So Mike made a number of forks and relicensed all but one: Free-Friendika kept the MIT license and became the main development platform for Friendika. Friendika itself was relicensed under the AGPLv3.

Shortly afterwards, Mike discontinued all forks except Free-Friendika.

The same year, Mike needed something to keep people from losing everything whenever their Friendika home node was shut down. So he invented nomadic identity and created the Zot protocol.

Also the same year, Mike forked Free-Friendika into Red (spanish la red = the network). It would be renamed Red Matrix in late 2012 because "Red" is hard to Google.

In 2012, Mike rewrote Red almost completely. The whole backend was rebuilt against Zot.

However, the Red Matrix didn't take off. Most Friendica users were hosting their own private nodes. Nomadic identity made no sense for them. Besides, it seemed like many Friendica users didn't understand nomadic identity anyway, so they saw no advantage in the Red Matrix over Friendica, seeing as the features were almost identical otherwise. The Red Matrix had to be made more popular for hosting public servers.

So in 2015, the Red Matrix was rebuilt and greatly expanded into Hubzilla.

In 2018, Mike wanted to develop the Zot protocol further into Zot6. But this would have meant compatibility-breaking changes, also because what he wanted to do with nomadic identity over Zot6 was likely to not work with non-nomadic protocols anymore. So he couldn't do that on Hubzilla.

Instead, he made two new forks:

• first Osada, forked from Hubzilla, which was the original Zot6 development platform and then evolved into a non-nomadic "gateway" between Zot6 and everything else
• then Zap, forked most likely from Osada or maybe from Hubzilla, which got the whole Zot6 feature set, including nomadic identity, but which lost support for any and all non-nomadic protocols

A bit later, Zot6 became compatible enough with non-nomadic protocols. Forwarding content from Zap via Osada to the rest of the Fediverse was clunky anyway, forwarding content from the rest of the Fediverse via Osada to Zap even more so. So Osada was discontinued.

Instead, a new Osada was forked from Zap and got ActivityPub support. This and the branding were the only differences between Osada and Zap.

In 2019, when both Osada and Zap had become stable, Zap got ActivityPub support itself. The only difference between the two was now that Osada servers had ActivityPub turned on by default, and Zap servers had it turned off by default. It simply didn't make much sense to keep both alive, so Osada was discontinued again.

I think it was also in 2019 that Hubzilla was upgraded to Zot6.

In 2020, Mike made three more forks to develop Zot8, at least one of which was forked from Zap, and those that weren't were forked from one another: Redmatrix 2020, Mistpark 2020 a.k.a. Misty and Osada.

There was a rumour that Zap was the stable one, Misty was a bit more up-to-date, but potentially less stable, Osada was experimental with ActivityPub support on by default, and Redmatrix 2020 was experimental with ActivityPub support off by default. In fact, however, Misty, Osada and Redmatrix 2020 were absolutely identical in all but branding. Mike kept four server applications around to mess with brand fetishists.

In 2022, Mike forked one of the three into Roadhouse to develop Zot11. But Zot11 was no longer compatible with Zot6 as implemented on Hubzilla and Zap, so he declared it a new protocol named Nomad. Roadhouse got additional support for Zot6.

Now Mike had five server applications, still in order to mess with brand fetishists.

Later the same year, Mike forked Roadhouse into something intentionally nameless and brandless. Again, this was done to troll brand fetishists, this time also to facilitate forking and make people think up their own individual names for the fork rather than keeping the existing one. However, the code repository absolutely required a name, so Mike called it streams.

The community needed something to name this nameless thing by, so they took the name of the repository and wrapped it in parentheses to make sure that this is not actually the name. Ever since, it is colloquially being called (streams). By the way, (streams) is running on what would be Zot12 if it wasn't Nomad now.

On New Year's Eve 2022, Mike discontinued Zap, Redmatrix 2020, Misty, Osada and Roadhouse. (streams) was stable enough, and the other five could be upgraded not only to each other by rebasing the server code, but also to (streams). He asked all admins of Zap, Redmatrix 2020, Misty, Osada and Roadhouse servers to upgrade to (streams).

In 2024, (streams) got bogged down by some identity confusion after the stable release branch introduced decentralised IDs as per FEP-ef61, a part of the development of nomadic identity via ActivityPub. Partially in order to be able to sort this out, partially because the time seemed to have come for this to actually work, Mike forked the streams repository into Forte and removed all support for any protocols other than ActivityPub while still keeping it nomadic. And so Forte became the very first Fediverse server application that establishes nomadic identity via ActivityPub.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #DFRN #Zot #Zot6 #Zot8 #Nomad #Mistpark #Friendika #FreeFriendika #Friendica #Red #RedMatrix #Hubzilla #Osada #Zap #Redmatrix2020 #Mistpark2020 #Misty #Roadhouse #Streams #(streams) #Forte

@cy The people who wrote the Fediverse
There were no "people who wrote the Fediverse". These was no committee who laid down the standards.

The Fediverse was invented by @Evan Prodromou. In 2008. By first creating a centralised Twitter alternative silo named Identi.ca.

And then open-sourcing the underlying technology as Laconi.ca, later StatusNet (merged into GNU social in 2013).

And then laying the protocol open as OpenMicroBlogging, later superseded by OStatus.

Then, in 2010, @Mike Macgirvin ?️ decided that the world needs a free, open-source, decentralised, secure alternative to Facebook that's better than Facebook. And so he made Mistpark, today Friendica.

But the features he wanted Friendica to have were impossible to achieve with any existing protocol. OStatus wasn't even that good for microblogging, much less Mike's ambitious plans. Besides, he's an experienced protocol designer. So he created a whole new protocol, DFRN, and built Friendica on top of it. Friendica did adopt OStatus as an extra protocol, though, because Friendica's goal was and still is to federate with everything and then some.

In 2011, Mike had seen many public Friendica nodes shut down with or without warning and people always losing everything and having to start over from scratch. So he decided to do something against it.

He invented nomadic identity. And built a new protocol around it, Zot, because there was no way DFRN could take care of this, let alone OStatus.

In 2012, he forked Friendica into Red and rewrote the whole backend against Zot, which, however, required the creation of yet another identity scheme.

For one, one login could now have multiple fully separate and independent identities on it. For example, my Hubzilla channel URL is https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/channel/jupiter_rowland.

Besides, one identity could now reside on multiple server instances which is what nomadic identity means.

Red was later renamed Red Matrix and, in 2015, refactored, redesigned and renamed into Hubzilla.

Mastodon and Pleroma started in 2016 as OStatus-based alternative UIs for GNU social. Mastodon was the first to be turned into a stand-alone project with not much interest in connecting to anything outside, all in spite of already being federated with Pleroma, GNU social, Friendica and Hubzilla via OStatus.

ActivityPub came out in 2017. No, not 2018. It was standardised in 2018. But it came out in 2017.

In July, 2017, Hubzilla was the first Fediverse project to integrate ActivityPub. Next to its own Zot, next to diaspora*, next to OStatus etc. On the one hand, Hubzilla tried to stay as close to the ActivityPub spec as possible and feasible. On the other hand, Hubzilla had to make its ActivityPub integration, which has always been an optional add-on, compatible to its own technology, to its own Zot protocol, to the way it works.

In September, Mastodon was the second Fediverse project to adopt ActivityPub. But Mastodon was more interested in doing its own thing and being as close to Twitter as it could than in sticking to a protocol spec, much less connecting to non-Mastodon stuff such as Hubzilla with which it already shared two protocols now.

Mastodon was the one that added Webfinger. ActivityPub doesn't even require Webfinger. The ActivityPub spec doesn't contain Webfinger. But Mastodon requires Webfinger. It can't live without Webfinger. So everything that wants to properly federate with Mastodon needs to implement Webfinger.

After ActivityPub had become a standard, more projects adopted it. But as lax a specification as ActivityPub is, it allowed for a lot of liberties.

Some devs looked at how Mastodon had integrated ActivityPub, decided it was rubbish and did it their own way.

Some devs looked at how Mastodon had integrated ActivityPub, decided they couldn't do it the same way because what they did was too different from Mastodon and did it their own way.

Some devs didn't look at what anyone else did and did it their own way.

Probably none of them looked at how Hubzilla had integrated ActivityPub because none of them even knew that Hubzilla existed. Except for those who were maintaining Friendica now. And Friendica had to make it compatible with DFRN and with the way it had been working since 2010.

Fast-forward to 2023. Mike's current piece of work was the streams repository which contains an intentionally nameless fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork) of Hubzilla, slimmed down from Hubzilla, but modernised and technologically even more advanced.

It was then that @silverpill, creator and maintainer of Mitra, got into contact with him because he wanted to add nomadic identity to Mitra. Something that's built on ActivityPub and only supports ActivityPub. A first. No-one had ever done nomadic identity with nothing but ActivityPub before.

So the two started working on how to implement nomadic identity using only ActivityPub. Mike had a vision of a Fediverse with nomadic identity all over and Fediverse identities cloned beyond server application borders. Like, a (streams) channel cloned to Mitra, Mastodon, PeerTube and Mobilizon, all with the same identity.

This, however, required another, brand-new way of identifying Fediverse actors. And so FEP-ef61 "Portable Objects" was created.

We're probably in the middle of xkcd 927 now.

Mike set up an experimental branch of (streams) to develop and test nomadic identity via ActivityPub, also since (streams) already had nomadic identity anyway.

Around summer, the "nomadic" branch (for nomadic identity via ActivityPub) seemed reliable enough to merge it into "dev". And in July, "dev" was merged into "release", complete with nomadic-identity-via-ActivityPub code.

It was shortly after that merge that I created my two (streams) channels. The channel URL of my channel for Fediverse memes is https://streams.elsmussols.net/channel/fedimemes_on_streams. But its DID, which all channels created on accounts registered after that merge got, is https://streams.elsmussols.net/.well-known/apgateway/did:⁠key:z6Mkf2dhUa65zBYCNVqs3AHyt8uPixauZ7bPzEJn15LJANsd/actor. And that's only two IDs of the same channel. There are also others for (streams)' native Nomad protocol, Hubzilla's Zot6 protocol, ActivityPub, OAuth, OAuth2 and probably also OpenWebAuth magic single sign-on, another one of Mike's creations. Not to mention that (streams) channels, like Hubzilla channels and Friendica accounts, can also optionally be group actors.

In fact, this blew up into (streams) users' faces because (streams) confused the various IDs to such degrees that it wouldn't federate at all anymore. It took Mike a whole lot of work to iron this out again, so much that he officially retired from Fediverse development on August 31st.

And in the middle of this, he even created yet another fork, Forte, which is (streams) minus Nomad, minus Zot6, based on and supporting only ActivityPub. My guess is still that one of the reasons to create Forte at that point was to get rid of the Nomad and Zot6 IDs to sort the ID mess out.

Even if nomadic identity via ActivityPub should ever become stable and start spreading, I don't expect DIDs to become the one norm in the Fediverse. Not with all those barely or unmaintained projects and those devs who refuse to acknowledge that devs of other projects do great stuff, too.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #OStatus #DFRN #Zot #ActivityPub #Nomad #Laconi.ca #Identi.ca #StatusNet #GNUsocial #Friendica #Hubzilla #Mastodon #Pleroma #Streams #(streams) #Forte #FEP_ef61

@David Lohner Nein.

Denn Hubzilla basiert nicht auf ActivityPub. Es basiert auf Zot. ActivityPub ist zwar seit Juli 2017 verfügbar. Hubzilla hatte es zuerst, zwei Monate vor Mastodon. Aber es ist ein Add-on, es ist optional, standardmäßig ist es auf Nutzerseite sogar deaktiviert, und es kann für ganze Hubs (= Serverinstanzen) deaktiviert werden. Und selbst mit deaktiviertem ActivityPub wäre Hubzilla immer noch föderiert.

Wenn Hubzilla qua Basisprotokoll nicht Teil des Fediverse wäre, würde ich dir jetzt von außerhalb des Fediverse antworten.

Auch (streams) basiert nicht auf ActivityPub, sondern auf Nomad, einer Weiterentwicklung von Zot, nur daß hier ActivityPub in den Kern eingebaut und standardmäßig aktiviert ist. Aber es kann im Gegensatz zu Nomad abgeschaltet werden.

Und soweit ich das mitbekommen habe, hat auch Friendica erst 2023 von seinem eigenen DFRN als Basisprotokoll auf ActivityPub umgestellt, das es schon seit 2019 unterstützt.

Gemäß der Definition "Fediverse = ActivityPub als Basisprotokoll" gehört Friendica also erst seit der Umstellung auf ActivityPub dazu und nicht schon seit 2010, und Hubzilla und (streams) gehören gar nicht dazu. Gemäß dieser Definition fing das Fediverse erst an zu existieren, als das erste Projekt direkt auf ActivityPub aufgesetzt wurde.

Darüber wird aber nirgendwo diskutiert und auf Mastodon schon gar nicht. 75% der Fediverse-Nutzer haben von Hubzilla noch nie auch nur gehört, von (streams) haben noch weniger gehört. Und daß diese drei nicht schon immer auf ActivityPub basiert haben, wissen noch viel weniger Leute.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #ActivityPub #DFRN #Friendica #Zot #Hubzilla #Nomad #Streams #(streams)

tl;dr: Hubzilla has had at least some of this for over a decade now. And it won't replace any of it with a new standard tailor-made for Mastodon.

@silverpill If you look past projects based on ActivityPub and at projects that have ActivityPub as an additional protocol, some of this already exists.

- Data portability. In my opinion, this is the most important problem. I'm in favor of FEP-ef61, which also solves identity portability and unlocks many new features.
Exists in the shape of nomadic identity. Invented by @Mike Macgirvin 🖥️ in 2011 with his Zot protocol and first deplayed in 2012 with the Red Matrix, nowadays known as Hubzilla. Also available on (streams), Mike's current project at the end of a string of forks from Hubzilla, now based on the Nomad protocol.

Mike would like to see nomadic identity and other special features of the Zot and Nomad protocols included in the ActivityPub protocol. He has actually submitted a number of proposals for this. They were all rejected. Even though he is a protocol developer first and foremost, and he has both created and worked on more Fediverse protocols than anyone else, so he should be considered competent.

Nomadic identity with ActivityPub won't come unless either Evan Prodromou and the W3C commission cave in and allow Mike's suggestions, or someone re-invents the wheel from scratch in a way that's utterly incompatible to Hubzilla and (streams). And it won't come to Mastodon unless Eugen Rochko can imply that Mastodon has had it first.

And there will never be a nomadic identity standard that meets Mike's requirements as well as Eugen's wishes.

- End-to-end encryption. MLS has become a standard, and it would be wise to adopt it. Issue 3 at fediverse-ideas provides a good overview of what we have at the moment (not much). Some variation of FEP-ae97 is likely needed to make end-to-end encryption work.
AFAIK, all three of Mike's still existing projects, Friendica from 2010, Hubzilla from 2012/2015 and (streams) from 2021, have it. Optionally, but still. I think Friendica actually advertises military-grade encryption.

- Plugins. Something like Pleroma MRF, but cross-platform (e.g. Wasm-based). Also, pluggable timeline algorithms.
Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) have had support for add-ons, including third-party add-ons, plus a number of official add-ons since their respective inceptions. If you want a cross-platform add-on standard, I hope you don't expect these three to throw their own standards over board in favour of the new standard. Otherwise, good luck developing a replacement for Pubcrawl that makes Zot-based Hubzilla compatible with ActivityPub while working on ActivityPub-based Mastodon just the same. Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) rely on add-ons for all federation beyond their respective base protocols (DFRN, Zot, Nomad).

- Groups. We have several competing standards for groups: FEP-1b12, FEP-400e, Mastodon developers are working on their own standard. It would be nice to converge on a single standard, that also supports private groups.
Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) have had support for discussion groups/forums since their respective inception. On Friendica, a group is a user account with special settings; on Hubzilla and (streams), it's a channel with special settings. In addition, especially Hubzilla and (streams) have access permission control on a level that most people for whom the Fediverse is only ActivityPub couldn't imagine in their wildest dreams. All three can be used by users from all over the Fediverse already now.

Good luck forcing Friendica to give up its 13-year-old standard that's used by Fediverse News, just to name one, and Hubzilla to give up its 11-year-old standard that blows everything else but what (streams) does out of the water. Good luck forcing them to adopt something inferior.

On the other hand, good luck forcing Lemmy and /kbin to switch to a wholly different standard. Don't forget that these two exist as well. And good luck having the Fediverse outside of Hubzilla and (streams) adopt both server-side and client-side OpenWebAuth.

And I'm not even talking about how different Fediverse projects handle threads differently. Mastodon has a Twitter-like thread structure: many posts, tied together with mentiones. Just about everything that's built on ActivityPub has taken this over. Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) have a Facebook/blog/Tumblr-like thread structure: one post, the start post, and many comments which aren't posts. It's similar on Lemmy and /kbin which are Reddit clones, only that they don't allow thread starters to moderate their own threads.

- Quoting. FEP-e232 is a proposed standard, but most fediverse applications still use non-standard properties. Mastodon developers are trying to invent something completely different.
This is something that almost the whole Fediverse has implemented, save for Mastodon.

And again, Friendica has had quotes since its inception in 2010, almost six years before Mastodon was launched (which, by the way, federated with Friendica and Hubzilla on the spot). Hubzilla has had quotes since 2012, inherited from Friendica. Their way of quoting is dead-simple: BBcode. [quote][/quote] (streams) supports Markdown and HTML in addition to BBcode, but otherwise it's the same.

Oh, and by the way: Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) have also supported quote-posts a.k.a. quote-tweets a.k.a. quote-toots a.k.a. quote-boosts from their very beginnings.

- Markets. So far there's only one server implementation capable of processing payments.
At least two. Hubzilla has a payment add-on, too. It isn't installed on all hubs, but it's there.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CWFedisplaining #Fediverse #Mastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #NotOnlyMastodon #ActivityPub #Friendica #DFRN #Hubzilla #Zot #Streams #(streams) #Nomad #Lemmy #kbin #/kbin #NomadicIdentity #OpenWebAuth #Group #Groups #Forum #Forums #Quote #Quotes #Encryption #E2EE #E2EEncryption