Are E-mail, XMPP, and Matrix part of the Fediverse?
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Fediverse should mean that of the ActivityPub network and only the ActivityPub network, and this poll, like many others, sets this precedent.
Otherwise, we risk diluting the meaning of this word. The Fediverse is growing, and it won’t take long before some profit-motivated company comes along and starts providing trojan horse “Fediverse compatible” service with “mostly not really interoperable ActivityPub extensions”. Law makers won’t tell the difference.
I get what you mean, @torresjrjr, but Fediverse is certainly not the ActivityPub network. It is well agreeable upon that protocols predating and inspiring ActivityPub like Diaspora or OStatus.
It is also important to keep in mind that Fediverse is not a technical term, so personally I’m in favor of it’s literal meaning, i.e. federated universe. I have been holding gauge of generic words with actual meanings being hijacked with little consideration, like fork in the case of GitHub or Metaverse.
TBH from an user standpoint, being federated through ActivityPub or Matrix doesn’t really make a difference, since you can build the same functionality with either. I don’t buy argument of potential dishonest advertisement because (1) as said above Fediverse is not technical and (2) it’s not like that can stop them. Even if all of us call it ActivityPub network, they’ll just go with an active pub for communication just like how corporations has been abusing the word open. Bad actors don’t magically turn good because of the meaning of some word.
(BTW please don’t associate profit with malware, it is perfectly possible to make free software commercial, e.g. in the case of sr.ht)