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Okay, I *think* I finally have it straight in my head:

OStatus: A collection of open protocols/standards (Activity Streams, PSHB, Salmon, etc.) which together can be used to make a federated microblogging (i.e. Twitter-style) network

GNU Social: Combination client+server written in PHP; implements OStatus, OpenID, XMPP

Mastodon: Combination client+server written in RoR + JS; implements OStatus, OAuth2; designed for GNU Social compatibility

... and I was reading up on the above simply to answer the question: What do we call This Big Network That We Are Part Of, now that there are already multiple clients and servers?

See, I *assume* that we need consensus around a single name so that we can quickly refer to what we, or our software, are plugging into.

So, an obvious name would be OStatus, because it describes the protocols rather than an implementation. So, for example, Amaroq and Tusky are OStatus clients, right?

But, no...

... because Tusky and Amaroq depend on Mastodon's use of OAuth2 to authenticate. If they were talking to GNU Social, they'd be using OpenID.

This is what makes them Mastodon clients; or rather, clients that implement the Mastodon superset of protocols. OStatus isn't enough. And (AFAIK - please correct me) they can't talk to GNU Social.

At this point, your heart may be sinking. It sounds like we could have a glorious interconnected fediverse, but the compatibility is being splintered.

But I'm optimistic, because the underlying protocols aren't forking. Sure, the supersets aren't identical, but they strongly overlap. More importantly, all the protocols in question are open and most implementations are FOSS too. So implementing super-super-sets for better cross-compatibility is fairly reachable.

What's more important is that we're upgrading the web with new layers of component protocols. These protocols are now quite old, but we finally see decent applications for them.

Remember that The World-Wide Web is the name given to a constantly growing set of protocols & APIs: TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML, CSS, JS, DOM, WebSockets, etc. Modern clients have to implement all of it. Sometimes one client will add one (IndexedDB) and another client will add a competing one (WebSQL) but because cross-compatibility has returned as the ultimate goal, these things settle.

I'm excited to see the Fediverse evolve this way.

I'm more excited to see these protocols move into the Web stack.

Because what THAT means is that the protocol set doesn't have the hard borders defined by proprietary services. It makes for a much gentler and more flexible palette of functionality.

It means integrations are things your web site just makes available (like RSS feeds) rather than having to make API agreements and proprietary SPOF dependencies (like Twitter).

It means your web app can gradually add more features that make it part of The Social Web. (Thank you, Rusty. Perfect.)

Yoz

So yeah, finishing the topic of What To Call It: darksocial.party/users/rustyk5

@rustyk5 's suggestion of The Social Web is a million times better than Fediverse, OStatus network etc, and a billion times better than anything with "GNU" in it

@yoz @rustyk5 IT's the United Federation of Toots, and there's nothing any of us can do about it.

(but yeah, the social web is a great name.)

@yoz @rustyk5 @jb55 I've always been partial to The Federation, or The Free Network. Social Web is a little too general, in the sense that it almost inherently implies walled garden networks as being a part of it.

Alternatively, I'd call the whole thing "The Wakefield", "MetaNet", or "HyperForum". Maybe a bit too cyberpunk, though.

@deadsuperhero @rustyk5 @yoz I don't see what's wrong with Fediverse!

@sonya @yoz @deadsuperhero @rustyk5 I think fediverse is the current most popular term

@yoz @rustyk5 When you think about it, it is a network of many names, in many tongues, built by many groups.

@rustyk5 @yoz

I need to reread Vernor Vinge before naming this thing.