OpenMicroblogging and Federation

From StatusNet

[edit] Overview of OMB history and where it's going

• History:
  • Motivation: network effect
  • Value of making a closed silo is low
    • Make a fair and open system
  • Create a way to cross-subscribe from one server to another
  • There was no protocol for this (if you don't count xmpp)
    • xmpp had too much overhead to setup and run
    • wanted the system to work on crappy cheapo web hosting
  • OMB 0.1 was relatively simple
  • Based on OAuth
    • Push notices (plain text) into inboxes using access tokens
    • also profile update (avatar, location, name, etc.)
  • OMB 0.1 turned out to be pretty popular (worked well with the rest of the web)
  • OMB 0.1 publisher -> subscriber but soon we found need subscriber -> publisher
  • Need more than plain text... huge amount of metadata was pushed over plain text (@replies, #tags, etc., addressing--where does @rejon go?)
  • Need to include some structured data and HTML (is a reply, is a repeat, context, metadata)
  • Actions people take in mublogging network (favoriting, subscriptions) aren't transmitted
• Future
  • Meanwhile, a lot of work went on in the software (integration)
    • We lost our focus on federation
  • The rest of the web did not
    • New protocols getting traction: PuSH, Salmon, WebFinger, activitystrea.ms (atom based stuff)
  • We want to be involved
  • OMB 0.9 will be based on these cool new protocols
    • Decorated atom entries
    • PuSH (subs) Salmon (replies) WebFinger (addressing), Activity Streams (actions)
    • We're going to put out a guerilla spec ... "We're gonna do this; stop us if we're going over a cliff."
  • Hoping to have working code to mess around with in January

[edit] Questions

• Are we going to support other means/protocols of federation?
  • good question
  • rssCloud (Dave Weiner - creator of RSS and a lot of stuff)
    • rssCloud insufficient as a base for mublogging federation
    • we'll support it for real time updates (as much as we can)
    • if there's more functionality added to rssCloud / and/or other protocols that we can use, we'll support and adapt to new protocols as they evolve
  • xmpp pubsub
    • it's heavy (need server, etc.)
    • we'd like to have it, maybe we should implement, but not a high priority right now
• What's going to happen with SMS (with these new protocols/OMB 0.9)?
  • Getting to the client / "the last mile" is up to the server implementation
    • we'll strip out a lot of the metadata and send out plain text (probably)
• How will we handle cross-server addressing?
  • WebFinger

[edit] Other cool things

• Wasn't possible to subscribe to things like groups, timelines across servers
  • These things are now possible
• Search engines can do some neat things (rebroadcast notices themselves)
• @walkah coming on board with StatusNet, Inc. to help out with this (spearheading the effort)