How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse) écrit par Ploum, Lionel Dricot, ingénieur, écrivain de science-fiction, développeur de logiciels libres.
A warning and a perspective from an insider who has been through this before.
When a large company takes an open protocol, embraces it using adding users to the network through heir platform, then extends it using proprietary means, they have full control over how the protocol runs in the network.
When the open standards are forced to make changes to be functional with the dominant proprietary app that is poorly (and sometimes incorrectly) documented, open source groups are constantly on the backfoot in order to maintain compatibility, and that makes it harder to compete on their own right.
A second example given is LibreOffice, whose documents are made to fit the XML standard by Microsoft, but there are quirks in their documented standard that if you follow it too closely it isn’t formatted quite the same as the document produced in Microsoft Office, so they were pressured to effectively copy MS and deviate from the standards MS claims to follow.
then extends it using proprietary means, they have full control over how the protocol runs in the network.
No, they don’t. Everybody on the fediverse has chosen the fediverse despite facebook/instagram/twiiter already existing. If Meta launches a product on the fediverse, the people (users and developers) already here will most likely block/ignore it. The above statement is only true if people try to remain compatible with those extensions, which nearly everybody on the fediverse has said they’re not interested in doing.
The Office example is a much better one because the end user doesn’t have the choice of which software to use, their employer (and sometimes the wider industry) does. But on the fediverse, we can ignore any corporate extensions.
It’s in the article but to paraphrase it:
When a large company takes an open protocol, embraces it using adding users to the network through heir platform, then extends it using proprietary means, they have full control over how the protocol runs in the network.
When the open standards are forced to make changes to be functional with the dominant proprietary app that is poorly (and sometimes incorrectly) documented, open source groups are constantly on the backfoot in order to maintain compatibility, and that makes it harder to compete on their own right.
A second example given is LibreOffice, whose documents are made to fit the XML standard by Microsoft, but there are quirks in their documented standard that if you follow it too closely it isn’t formatted quite the same as the document produced in Microsoft Office, so they were pressured to effectively copy MS and deviate from the standards MS claims to follow.
Ironically XMPP is a counterexample to your argument. They made the switch to mandatory TLS even though GChat didn’t.
That’s a neat fact!
No, they don’t. Everybody on the fediverse has chosen the fediverse despite facebook/instagram/twiiter already existing. If Meta launches a product on the fediverse, the people (users and developers) already here will most likely block/ignore it. The above statement is only true if people try to remain compatible with those extensions, which nearly everybody on the fediverse has said they’re not interested in doing.
The Office example is a much better one because the end user doesn’t have the choice of which software to use, their employer (and sometimes the wider industry) does. But on the fediverse, we can ignore any corporate extensions.