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We need a federation of forges

blog.tangled.org

251–260 of 424 posts

Re: We need a federation of forges

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see it. I used JJ for a bit, but I personally really, really dislike the anonymous branch approach it forces you into. Branches are just useful conceptually, at least to me. For the same reason I like my documents grouped into folders. Frankly - I think JJ just ended up taking up far more mental bandwidth than git. Simple operations need generated ids, commands require complicated input (ex - the entir…

If you cherry pick complicated commands, and remove all context, sure, they look cryptic. I wrote that tutorial, and literally only one of those is relevant to my day to day work: jj new o, which means “make a new change on top of the change named o”. Yes, if you remove the context that “o” is on your screen and highlighted, it looks complex. It’s the same with the other “jj new” command: you’re producing a merge by…

> If you cherry pick complicated commands, and remove all context, sure, they look cryptic.

Sure I'm definitely not playing fair, but I am cherry picking from the intro tutorial you put together, so I'm not going crazy either :P

I think my primary issue is that jj feels like it wants to control how I work more than git does.

Mentally - I just don't want to have to think about changes as often as jj seems to want to think about them. And maybe it's an intro phase, or a thing you eventually build past (I only played with it for a week or two) - but it felt like a lot of focus went intro structuring my work, instead of doing my work.

Basically - the vibe I got from it was: if you're a person who really likes making checklists, or complex tickets with subtasks and groupings and labels - jj is something you're going to like. If you're just interested in writing code and not so interested in source control outside of the ability to occasionally "snapshot this folder"... it's probably not going to be your thing.

> The other two are showing off the power of the revset language; you’re not typing this stuff in yourself more than once, and if you are, you use an alias so that it’s shorter and easier to use.

This is exactly my point. I use git every day on the command line. I have ZERO aliases for it (seriously). If my source control tool has reached the complexity where I feel like I need an alias for commands in it... it's gotten too powerful. And git is definitely not "off the hook" here, it's absolutely got the same deep end, and if you live in that space, sure - jj might be really nice. But I strive to avoid living in that space.

basically: I don't want to do jujitsu, I want to do the occasional somersault and call it a day.

Re: We need a federation of forges

#252
post #226

Looks really cool but ATProto means I won't be using it. I'm not going to invest in another network when we already have an open one. We already have the web. The web already has OAuth. OAuth is already widely supported. IndieAuth already offers a very simple and standard approach to personal OAuth servers, if people really want to run their own identity server. "Feeds" are perfectly doable using the web. It's alread…

AT Protocol uses OAuth: https://atproto.com/specs/oauth

Re: We need a federation of forges

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing with VC-founded projects is that there's some kind of rug-pull, ads, privacy violation or "feature enhancing" subscription likely coming and as users we should know. I don't really like services that stress how idealistic they are when this is the upcoming reality. Better charge money for services or if you're truly idealistic start it as a non-profit. At the very least communicate what's the monetization p…

The big question is (and I don't know the answer, so not rhetorical) whether the protocol being open can be sufficient to prevent the rug-pull from being too bad...

Bluesky proves it can't. So does every proprietary blockchain, e.g. Terra.

Re: We need a federation of forges

#254
post #209

How will this end up going any better than Mastodon has? Near inevitabilities: - All the small instances defederating from the largest due to politics/spam/annoying noobs/whatever, effectively killing the easiest path to entry into the community - Pointless debates about whether it’s OK to federate with instances that host pirated content, disagreeable politics, furry VNs, etc., which everyone has to take a side (the…

> - Pointless debates about whether it’s OK to federate with instances that host pirated content, disagreeable politics, furry VNs, etc., which everyone has to take a side (the correct side) on

Why do you have to take a side / take the correct side? Can't you either just not take any side or take whatever side you feel like and go with that?

Re: We need a federation of forges

#255

I'm a huge supporter of federation, but I've never understood the use-case for a "federation of forges". What data are the forges exchanging? Why should the forge for Blender have any connection to the forge for Ubuntu? Most of the value I get from Github is having a single login that I can take from project to project. Independent forges can get the same value simply by supporting social login, without needing the c…

Git is decentralized by design. It can support federation, it just happens that GitHub solved the UI, issues, PR so that even new comer can come in and do git stuff and track issues on the screen. But centralized it. Federation would be closer to git, but not so decentralized that when one node goes offline you may not have any upstream to pull from, or not be able to find them. Git doesn't solve availability. Federa…

Not sure I understand, you're talking about mirroring git repo data between multiple different nodes? That seems unrelated to what's proposed in the OP--maybe you're seeing something I'm not?

Re: We need a federation of forges

#256

The problem I feel with federated solutions is basically the 'cold start' problem. When you are wanting to join a federated network, you have two choices: join a pre-existing server thereby creating the exact same problem you are escaping, ie: a giant server that holds you to its whims, BUT you do get a big network to begin with. Or you start your own server but your network is zero, discoverability is zero, your fee…

For Mastodon, follow some tags through fedibuzz relay to populate your feed.

Re: We need a federation of forges

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ATProto simply ignores the need for decentralizing incentives on a human/community level. What we get is a sort of a "top-down" federation rather than a grass-roots one. Whoever invests in the infra ends up running a domain. I mean, practically no one is aware of any other ATPROTO provider other than Bluesky whereas the issue with AP is merely the lack of better implementations, so mastodon.social got the most attent…

There’s no such thing as “running a domain” or “atproto provider” in atproto. You’re approaching it with a Mastodon/AP mindset and it doesn’t match that. In atproto, there’s two axes. One is hosting. Bluesky offers hosting but some people host on their own (it’s just a Docker container with sqlite), some on Cloudflare, some on community-hosted nodes like https://npmx.dev and https://selfhosted.social . From app persp…

How does a new server discover other servers?

Re: We need a federation of forges

#258
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atproto isn’t “many servers sending messages to each other”. It’s structured more like RSS: 1) there’s an app-agnostic hosting layer (and anyone can run a host, a bit like personal site with RSS) 2) then there’s apps, which aggregate over data from all hosts (a bit like Google Reader or Feedly) So there’s no such thing as “defederating”. You don’t have many copies of Tangled beefing with each other. It’s more like yo…

The web is already structured like this. You can poll a URL for updates. You can host your own data. Anyone can build an app that aggregates from everyone's data.

Yes, all of those things are possible. Now imagine a protocol built from the ground up for those purposes, not just possible, but the entire community and ecosystem embracing those things.

Re: We need a federation of forges

#259

Why? I really don't see the purpose of a federation of git repos. Git is already totally decentralized. 99% of projects only have a small list of committers. Tangled just doesn't solve an actual problem. Github was used because it was an easy to set up, free, place to store code and share it, and it had source viewing which was a step up from sourceforge. With multiple solutions available that makes this easy, its ju…

Discoverability. Without federation, people are pretty much dependant on GitHub to make sure their software gets out there.

How do you discover new software using GitHub? Let's say I want an RSS reader for Linux - how does GitHub help me find one? I must have never used this part of GitHub.

Re: We need a federation of forges

#260
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man I really want to like this thing but this jargon is so stupid.

The jargon is just naming the free-standing components after rope/string related things. i.e. tangle, knot, spindle, etc.

Just call them what they are. Federations/networks, servers, repositories...
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