@smallcircles @z428 @mike @silverpill
And if you try and get it all right before you release then you end up like bluesky did, just arguing and not releasing anything for half a decade.
@z428 @mike @silverpill @smallcircles
Zot was first released like half a decade before the ActivityPub spec, but I think it'd be fair to call it a minority experimental system on Fedi at the time, even now really.
Not the kind of thing you could get unanimous consensus on without days of arguing about how the protocol should work and which crypto systems to use etc.
You mention half decade ago, and I'd reply by pointing out that concepts like PKI, Web of Trust, and other technologies that would enable nomadic identity have been around since the 80s at least.
These ideas were around for decades.
I really get the sense that ActivityPub developers were so focused on today's web technologies that they didn't go back and learn from past bodies of work that could have made a huge difference.
Regarding scalability, YES! when I read the spec for the first time I had the similar thought, that this system doesn't look like it had any thought about scalability.
I even commented to some developer friends about this, joking that it doesn't seem like anyone did a big-O analysis of this system, and one replied with a sigh that some schools don't even teach big-O anymore.
It just really reinforces my sense that ActivityPub was designed by people with a very superficial background, without much understanding of lessons learned long ago.
I don't mind being openly critical of it :)
@volkris @z428 @mike @silverpill @smallcircles
Still reckon it was likely more about time and the constraints of getting consensus than lack of technical knowledge by those involved.
Email servers never copy your message to your new email provider either FWIW. Switch account and you do indeed lose all the stuff in your inbox and any messages saved to the server's imap boxes. You can't transfer you handle there either like you can move your number on modern phone networks.
I just don't see any evidence that this was about compromising in the committee to reach consensus.
Everything I see is consistent with, and more simply explained by, a committee that didn't have a technical depth of knowledge and experience to see the problems that would arise from repurposing off-the-shelf components from web tech.
