Grassroots open standards for fediverse evolution

[aschrijver]

@trwnh

It’s a hard problem to get people to agree. I’m not entirely sure how silverpill saw it as “an attempt to discredit FEP process”, but this reaction seems to mostly be spurred by Arnold concluding in the blog post that it is “unsustainable”

Herding of cats chaotic grassroots environment, with very specific social dynamics. Organizing things in this complex developer/fedizen ecosystem is the theme of my lengthy blog post. And, as I tried to explain above and on 🫂 Commons custodians. Help increase FEP Sustainability and progress, which I spun off from this topic, SX defines “sustainability” in utter holistic fashion. I am a bit disappointed in the impatient and defensive reaction of Silverpill, and the distrust in accepting me on my word. If anything that constitutes a sustainability risk, the ability to communicate well with ecosystem participants. But once again, the subject is not on operational things, but vision, strategy and future of fediverse and direction, and also perhaps divergence from original power + promise of AP. Only praise for Silverpill, zero blame.

And that is a concept of SX itself: You can’t blame people for their contribution and how they go about their work as volunteers, and should be thankful of each 2 cents of value someone adds. If shortcomings are perceived one can offer kind advice, help and support. And jump into the fray yourself and proactively be the change, by your own efforts.

Also: You can’t expect anything from FOSS other than software code and an open license. The rest is social coding and must be either mutually well-understood, or are implied and perhaps unwarranted expectations. The ones that lead to all the drama between devs and “users” re: privilege, entitlement, and (BDFL) governance + ownership.

Under SX there’s zero blame to Mastodon, for instance, for de-facto turning fediverse in a microblogging-based social network. Their FOSS project. Their app. Their choice. It is the role of a healthy Grassroots standardization process to avoid that from happening, if that is not aligned to shared (technology) vision.

@trwnh

I think Arnold alludes to this in the “trigger” discussion, although perhaps more pessimistically (and I assume this is borne out of frustration at the intractability of the problem more than anything).

Not at all. This too is explained in my blog post, which I can’t blame anyone from not reading in full, given its length I describe this at the start of the Fediverse tomorrow section.

Thanks for your feedback. It’s exactly all these things that SX is seeking solutions for, and come up in various ways throughout the article. I hope to be able to sustain myself, so I can continue to give more shape and form to my applied research, which now happens on Hobby track, lacking sustenance / income.