Recently there has been a lot of discourse about ActivityPub and AT Protocol which has been quite dividing and heated.

[ikuturso@mastodon.social]

@thisismissem did they manage to get away from the did:plc dependency? Assuming not since there is no way to migrate those away from the PBC identity...

@mastodonmigration @breathOfLife @stefan

[thisismissem@hachyderm.io]

@ikuturso @mastodonmigration @breathOfLife @stefan there's plenty of DID methods that have been developed; There are some people using did:web, there's also did:webvh — but there's definitely still more work to do in this space.

I think ActivityPub could theoretically adopt did:web or did:webvh as an alternative to webfinger.

[Guest]

@mirabilos @thisismissem @ahltorp And even without that, the choice of a copyright license also doesn't means anything about the ecosystem and it's architecture.
BlueSky is built for massive silos with technically allowing communication between them but that's an admin setting.

[jakeyounglol@mstdn.social]

@thisismissem turn off federation, and force everyone else back onto bluesky-owned PDSes. facebook did the same thing before. facebook messenger used to be part of XMPP, a decentralized instant messaging protocol, allowing people on FB messenger to message people who didn't use FB messenger. but one day, facebook just turned off federation (source: https://fedi.tips/its-a-really-bad-idea-to-join-a-big-server/#:~:text=There%20is%20also%20a%20precedent,Facebook%20to%20switch%20off%20federation), cutting off people from outside messenger, and making it so messenger users could only chat with other messenger users(2/3)

[breathoflife@mastodon.social]

@mastodonmigration @thisismissem @ikuturso @stefan

my comrade in christ

the reason that blacksky have their own relay implementation is because bluesky NEVER RELEASED THEIRS IN THE FIRST PLACE.

they left half the protocol unfinished in a deliberate attempt to centralize control.

then rudy fraser decided "fuck that" and proceeded to build atproto.africa, severely fucking that attempt six ways until sunday and putting atproto on the map as a serious protocol as opposed to a complete joke.

[thisismissem@hachyderm.io]

@lanodan @mirabilos @ahltorp you mean MIT / Apache 2.0 license? https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/blob/main/LICENSE.txt

The social-app repository is also under what appears to be a MIT license except where explicitly noted otherwise.

And Blacksky's rsky is under Apache license: https://github.com/blacksky-algorithms/rsky/blob/main/LICENSE

[mat@friendica.exon.name]

@thisismissem @j12t It follows that AP is best suited to talking to friends, while AT is best suited to talking to strangers. And there is a far larger demand for the former than the latter. So I'd predict a future where AT evolves into a high-performance enclave embedded inside AP.

[thisismissem@hachyderm.io]

@jakeyounglol there's multiple archiving relays, and you can always point your domain somewhere else (if you bring your own domain). The protocol is designed to resist such a hostile takeover though.

[j12t@j12t.social]

@mat “AP is best suited to talking to friends, while AT is best suited to talking to strangers”. That is great framing, I’m going to steal this! (with credit!)

@thisismissem

[skarnio@social.alquimidia.org]

@thisismissem
I've always thought the most important and strategic difference between the two protocols is governance. AT is maintained by a company, and Activitypub by a non-profit organization.

[thisismissem@hachyderm.io]

@skarnio AT Protocol is moving to being maintained by community, though they're just starting this process

[mastodonmigration@mastodon.online]

@breathOfLife @thisismissem @ikuturso @stefan

Interesting. Did not know this.

[fontenot@mastodon.social]

@stefan @mastodonmigration @thisismissem

This is interesting, but the only parts of the network that look decentralized on this graph are feeds and labelers - and almost every feed and almost every labeler I hovered over is exclusively connected to Bluesky PBC relays (and no others) and exclusively consumed by the PBC's AppView (and no others).

So the graph does show that anybody can provide *metadata* for AT, but the large scale structure of the network still looks quite centralized to me.

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@fontenot Yes, you are absolutely correct, of course!

@mastodonmigration @thisismissem

[thisismissem@hachyderm.io]

@stefan @fontenot @mastodonmigration I'm certain in time this graph will change, just as that of ActivityPub adoption and distribution has changed over the years.

AP has a 5 year head start at least here compared to AT Protocol, and I think the efforts ongoing at promising.

[mackuba@martianbase.net]

@mastodonmigration @breathOfLife @thisismissem @ikuturso @stefan That's because it's not true, it's completely normal to not know things that aren't real

[mackuba@martianbase.net]

@mastodonmigration @breathOfLife @thisismissem @ikuturso @stefan The relay (formerly "BGS") code has been open source since at least April 2023: https://bsky.app/profile/dholms.xyz/post/3jt33v44njk26

[mastodonmigration@mastodon.online]

@thisismissem @stefan @fontenot

Hope you are right. And hope the community puts pressure on Bluesky PBC to help facilitate this shift.

[mastodonmigration@mastodon.online]

@mackuba @breathOfLife @thisismissem @ikuturso @stefan

No knowledge of any of this. Kuba has been a good source of information on all things Bluesky to us over here in the Fediverse.

[breathoflife@mastodon.social]

@mackuba @mastodonmigration @thisismissem @ikuturso @stefan

huh

then i guess the hoo-hah about atproto not being decentralized came simply from bluesky being a for-profit company.

which, fair enough, profit DOES incentivize enshittification and lock-in, and activitypub is mostly built as a service anyway in reaction to that.

suffice to say, there's always been a general vibe here that atproto was just a bluesky thing.

it took community effort to give atproto legs.