Libervia progress note 2022-W45
Hello, it's time for a long overdue progress note. I'll talk here about the work made on ActivityPub (AP) gateway and on end-to-end encryption around pubsub. Oh, and if everything goes well, this blog post should be accessible from XMPP and ActivityPub (and HTTP and ATOM feed), using the same identifier goffi@goffi.org. Forewords The work made on the AP gateway has been possible thanks to a NLnet/NGI0 grant (with financial support from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme). I especially appreciated that the team was really there to help bring the ideas to life, and not once did they get in the way: little paperwork, no unnecessary pressure, caring, contacts when help was needed, etc. I wish there were more organizations like this one that really help develop libre projects for the common good. So once again I want to thank them for all that. XMPP ⬌ ActivityPub Gateway There is probably no need to explain here what is ActivityPub, we can simply write that it is an open protocol that allows to do things that XMPP also allows doing, and that until now these 2 protocols could not communicate together. The work on the ActivityPub gateway aims to allow software implementing one of these 2 protocols to communicate as easily as possible. I firmly believe that all open protocols should be able to communicate which each other, to avoid creating more silos, proprietary software is already good enough at that. To be useful, a gateway must use the full potential of both protocols. A simple bot transcribing messages as we see too often, using unsuitable features (such as instant messaging for blog posts), or using a very limited set of features to ensure compatibility are flaws that I have tried to avoid. Building a good gateway is a difficult and time-consuming task. If done right, the gateway should be as invisible as possible to the end user. XMPP is featuring blogging since long before AP, however the set of features is not exactly the same. Current use of AP is clearly inspired from commercial "social" networks, and metadata such as subscribers/subscribed nodes (or followers/following in AP terms) are highlighted, feature such as like/favourite were missing in XMPP, and some implementation such as Pleroma do implement reactions. To integrate that in the gateway, I've been working on new specifications: Pubsub Public Subscriptions: a way to publicly announce subscriptions, in an opt-in way. With this it's possible to implement followers/following features in a way respectful of privacy. Pubsub Attachments: a generic way to attach any kind of data to a pubsub item. It's notably used to implements noticed/favourite button (see
people goffi
24 November, 2022
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