"The perfect can never be allowed to obstruct the good. Ideological purity is next to impossible. The important thing is to build something that’s better than what we have today, and continue iterating towards greatness."
@ben, 2025
https://werd.io/2025/if-i-started-fresh
This reminds me of;
"Here’s the bit that might make open social web purists upset: all of this would be built by a for-profit public benefit company and run as a hosted service. At launch, there would be no open source component."
@ben, 2025
https://werd.io/2025/if-i-started-fresh
If it connects over open protocols, and if all user data can be exported in formats that can be ingested by an equivalent service, fine. Having the source code for software running on other people's computers is less important than a usable exit.
Having said that, let's remember to always ask "who does that server really serve?"
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html
... and that the importance of liberating source code for web services is the ease of standing up an equivalent service, so we have somewhere to exit to. Which is why the Franklin Street Statement pointed proposes libre licensing for "network services";
https://freedomdefined.org/Franklin_Street_Statement_on_Freedom_and_Network_Services
Just out of curiosity @ben, did anyone ever take up that bounty and implement AP in Known?
https://werd.io/2021/building-activitypub-into-known
Would be cool to see Known publications start turning up in Ghost, along with Ghost and WP ones : )
Also, there was some talk of an AP plugin for Elgg. Did that ever eventuate?
Having said that, let's remember to always ask "who does that server really serve?"
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html
... and that the Franklin Street Statement pointed out the importance of source code for web services is the ease of standing up an equivalent service, so we have somewhere to exit *to*;
https://freedomdefined.org/Franklin_Street_Statement_on_Freedom_and_Network_Services
