Loomio
Sat 1 Sep 2012 9:54PM

Change the federation protocol

F Flaburgan Public Seen by 44
F

Poll Created Sat 1 Sep 2012 9:54PM

Change the federation protocol Closed Wed 12 Sep 2012 11:45AM

There are really too many problems with federation. I didn't look at how it works for the moment, but what I understood after a conversation with Raven/Florian is that every posts, images etc are copied on the other pods. That means that a pod with a single user who shares with 200 persons can have a very big size. The goal of Diaspora is to become really decentralized (a lot of pods with max 10 users), which means Diaspora has to be able to run on a really small config (max 1go hard disk). There is a problem here.

I don't know who wrote the protocol and his knowledge about networks, but maybe we should do a big announcement and ask if some people with a big experience in networks want to help us. We should ask and listen to suggestions of developers all around the world.

Another possibility is to take a look on how Identi.ca, Friendica, etc... work.

Results

Results Option % of points Voters
Agree 0.0% 0  
Abstain 71.4% 5 ST FS S BO JR
Disagree 28.6% 2 JH DY
Block 0.0% 0  
Undecided 0% 45 MS TS AA CB HF DM GC JH F M EG G AX PP BB T SH RF DM DS

7 of 52 people have participated (13%)

ST

Sean Tilley
Abstain
Sat 1 Sep 2012 10:53PM

We need to address platform specific concerns before changing up how pods communicate.

S

SleepyDaddySoftware
Abstain
Sun 2 Sep 2012 4:08AM

This proposal is really about the API, and not the federation protocol. The protocol should ideally know very little if anything about user profiles, activity streams, messages, etc... Those are just services implemented on top of the protocol.

JH

Jonne Haß
Disagree
Tue 11 Sep 2012 9:25AM

Not voting against dev on the protocol but against such opaque proposals. The federation is a vital part of Diaspora, to stop developing on it is like to stop breathing for a human, it's no question. Come back with concrete stuff on what to change.

DY

Dave Yingling
Disagree
Tue 11 Sep 2012 11:28PM

I know federation is not perfect, but it is really important to decide where we are headed and our goals/priorities as a community first, then implement code to support that.

JH

Jonne Haß Sat 1 Sep 2012 9:56PM

I'd say we look what comes out of http://tent.io/ before we decide about this.

ST

Sean Tilley Sat 1 Sep 2012 9:58PM

While I agree that federation needs work, and have been talking to devs from other decentralized socnets, I think we have more pressing issues to be concerned about first. A rewrite will take a lot of effort to get going initially.

Before we start working on federation, I think we need to first get it into a layer.

JH

Jonne Haß Sat 1 Sep 2012 10:00PM

Definitely +1 on the layer issue, that might actually allow us to (easier) run a alternative protocol simultaneously.

F

Flaburgan Sat 1 Sep 2012 10:02PM

I think we should choose or make a protocol which works properly. After that, we have to build an API on it. And we will put the website on the API, so federation and the website will be separate.

For the moment, we can start by make the API on the current protocol, and interface the website with the API. This will really help to switch if we choose another protocol in the future.

ST

Sean Tilley Sat 1 Sep 2012 10:06PM

@Fla: I'm pretty sure the API and federation are two separate things. Federation is not affected by the API, and vice versa. The API is how third-party clients talk to a server and use exposed functionality, federation is how different servers talk to one another to give the impression of seamless communication.

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