@{Natureshadow@floss.social} hat ein neues Modell wie das Fediverse in Zukunft funktionieren könnte entworfen.
https://codeberg.org/Vocata/vocataClients und Server werden (so wie wir heute z.B. Emails nutzen) in zwei verschiedenen Applikationen aufgeteilt.
Ein Server übernimmt das Speichern und Transportieren und ein davon unabhängig Client übernimmt das Darstellen und Präsentieren des Contents.
Mit einer Identität (die nach meinem Verständnis an den "Vocata" Server gebunden ist ?? ) könnte man also allen möglichen Content mit verschiedenen Clients darstellen - mit einer Identität ohne weiteres Login also gleichzeitig das was Masto, Pixelfed oder Funkwhale kann im Netzwerk mit verschiedenen Clients erledigen. Das wäre super und würde ein "Konstruktionsfehler" des Fedi lösen.
Bleibt das Problem dass dabei eine Identität an EINEN Server gebunden ist :-(
Wie käme ich von einem Vocata Server zu einem anderen?
Vocata – Vocabulary-Agnostic Transport Agent
About Vocata and the Fediverse
Vocata is a vocabulary-agnostic ActivityPub server. That means that, in contrast to other server software on the Fediverse, Vocata does not limit what types of content can be handled by it, and how it is presented to users.
As a transport agent, Vocata merely stores and forwards content, and leaves any presentational decisions to a client.
The principle of a transport agent is not new:
In e-mail, an MTA (Mail transport Agent) is responsible for storing and forwarding e-mail, and users use a MUA (Mail User Agent, colloquially: an e-mail program, or webmail) to send and receive mailIn Matrix, a homeserver is responsible for handling the rooms and events of users, and users use any Matrix client to log in to their homeserver
Benefits of separating client and server
The Fediverse, at the time of writing, is build on platforms that blend the ActivityPub protocol with an opinionated presentational layer:
Mastodon offers a micro-blogging platformPixelfed offers a photo community platformPeerTube offers a video hosting and streaming platform…and many more…
All these platforms are, to some extent, interoperable, because they all rely on the ActivityPub protocol. However, they all have a baked-in concept, dictating how content is presented to users, and this unification implies some limitations:
An identity on the Fediverse is inextricably linked with the platform. Identities (e.g. accounts) cannot be ported between platforms. So, if a user wants a microblog-style presentation and a gallery-style presentation, they are forced to use two identities.Client-server interoperability is very limited, because each platform implements its own client-server protocol, considering the presentational concept of the platform
By shifting the Fediverse towards a separation between servers and clients, or transport agents and user agents in e-mail terms, it can overcome these limitations.
Conclusion: What is Vocata?
Vocata implements an ActivityPub server, and nothing more. It offers an interface for clients to send and receive content to and from the Fediverse with an identity, and handles federation with other servers on behalf of users.
With an account on a Vocata server, a user gains access to the Fediverse with a chosen identity, and can then use any client to act with that identity.
Technical: What the Fediverse really is
The network that is colloquially called the Fediverse, or more precisely, the network of servers using the ActivityPub protocol, builds on a very well-established foundation.
ActivityStreams: The social graph
The content on the Fediverse, technically defined by the ActivityStreams vocabulary, comprises the social graph.
This social graph is, from an information science perspective, a directed graph, consisting of triple statements describing the relations between its nodes. The concept, as well as the technical implementation employed by ActivityPub, is anything but new: it is the well-known RDF (Resource Description Framework) graph model, which is also the foundation of some established standards and tools on the web:
RSS and Atom for blog and podcast feedsOpenGraph meta-data for websitesOntological databases like WikiData…and many more…
In ActivityStreams, this graph structure is used to model relationships between Actors (users, groups, anyone who does something), Activities (create, update, delete, follow,…) and Objects (notes, attachments, events,…), all of which have unique IRIs (web addresses, colloquially speaking).
If we got hold of all information from all instances on the Fediverse at once, it could be put together in one big, consistend graph.
ActivityPub: Sub-graphs and federation
As the name suggests, the Fediverse is a federated system, which means that it is comprised of several instances that handle parts of it.
Relating this to the concept of the social graph, the implication is that every instance handles a sub-graph of the global social graph.
The role of ActivityPub is to ensure that the sub-graph an insance sees includes all nodes that are relevant for the actors on the instance. For that purpose, objects (actors and activities) can be pulled from other instances (using an HTTP GET request to the URI of the desired node), and pushed (using an HTTP POST request to a special node (an inbox) on another instance).
In every pull and push, an even smaller sub-graph is transferred between instances, containing exactly the nodes and statements relevant to merge the desired object with the other instance's sub-graph (technically, what is transferred is the CBD (Concise Bounded Description) of the object).
To conclude, ActivityPub servers keep pushing and pulling sub-graphs, so-called Concise Bounded Descriptions, of objects that are relevant for their users.
Implementation details of Vocata
Assuming the graph structure of the Fediverse, Vocata uses rdflib to store its sub-graph. In contrast to other ActivityPub servers, it does not derive its own data structures from the objects it handles, but plainly processes the graph operations defined by the protocol to traverse and transform its sub-graph of the Fediverse.
https://codeberg.org/Vocata/vocata
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