OpenMicroblogging and Federation

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

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

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)