Choice of protocol for federation

[DamitusThyYeetus123]

Problem

As federation moves closer to implementation, significant thought needs to be placed into which federation protocol(s) are used and how they are implemented.

Proposed solution

Possible protocols:

• Activitypub:
  Pros:

  • Most common modern federated protocol
  • Lots of users and existing services

  Cons:

  • Very focused around blogging and public posting
  • Monolithic

• AT Proto
  Pros:

  • Seperation between accounts and services
  • More versatile protocol

  Cons:

  • Less users and adoption

• Dedicated fluxer protocol:
  Pros:

  • Specific for fluxer/built for fluxer

  Cons:

  • Another account for users to manage
  • Protocol design requires a lot of work

Notes (optional)

No response

Checks

• I searched for existing discussions and didn't find a duplicate.

[Haplo164]

Federation is a big plus in my book, I don't know much about the various protocols. The way matrix does it is less than fun for long term maintenance, I think its really important to consider long term maintenance, and balance a users control over their data and a server admins ability to keep a long running instance running well. I'd also like to throw in a users ability to transfer their account would be very nice, even if it can't move everything, being able to update friends and memberships with the new "home" server would be a very attractive to fans of federation.

[Haplo164]

It is the main reason I'm following this project, hopefully after things have calmed down a bit and self hosting is officially supported we can get some motion on this. I haven't even been able to get a good handle on the project yet so all I can do right now is think about what I want.

[Haplo164]

How important do you think it is for there to be interoperability between Fluxer and other platforms? I've been mostly thinking in terms of Fluxer to Fluxer but that may be limiting my dreams.

[DamitusThyYeetus123]

In a perfect world, there would be open discussion surrounding interoperability with other projects like spacebar and stoat, to ensure that where possible interoperability can be achieved, because when you're trying to get potentially millions of people to migrate off discord, you need all the options to be usable with each other to reduce friction and fragmentation. I'd argue that's a bigger benefit than self hosting, being able to openly communicate between multiple different projects and pieces of software.

[Haplo164]

Identity is probably the most important part of that, being able to share contacts and have a consistent handle would be the core component. For text and voice chat I wonder if per platform bridges would be the way to go. I think trying to standardize anything else would limit any single service too much, or require everyone to agree on a constantly expanding standard. I would love to see a true single federated standard but based on how wayland protocol discussions go I don't know how well that would work out in practice.

[Haplo164]

@DamitusThyYeetus123 I mentioned you in #703 so maybe those with federation in mind can connect and build some momentum.