Re: [Social-discuss] On the architecture of a GNU Social node

[Henry Litwhiler]

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On 04/25/2010 04:27 PM, Ted Smith wrote:
> Did you mean to send this to the list instead of just to me? Or did
> something happen with moderation/reply-all that I'm unaware of? CCing
> the list just in case.
> 
> On Sat, 2010-04-24 at 12:34 +0200, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
>>
>>
>> 2010/4/24 Ted Smith <address@hidden>
>>         I just posted this on libreplanet - it outlines in a more
>>         specific way
>>         how I think GNU Social nodes should be built.
>>         
>>         <http://groups.fsf.org/wiki/User:Teddks/Social>
>>         
>>         Note that this takes no stance on the whole web app vs.
>>         desktop app or
>>         PHP vs. not PHP issue - the document outlines the components
>>         involved in
>>         a GNU Social node and specifies, on a high level, how they
>>         work
>>         together. The design can be implemented in any language on any
>>         framework.
>>         
>>         Thoughts? Feedback? Scathing criticism?
>>
>> Looks good.  
>>
>> Like the idea of giving users a public key.
>>
>> I'm always cautious of the term API.  Because APIs more often than not
>> restrict freedom, rather than enabling it.  However if done at the
>> right level of abstraction, it can be flexible enough to be a
>> 'universal API' -- http is a great example of a universal API, which
>> has lead to a system as diverse as the web.
> 
> I mean 'API' in the sense of "the libgcrypt API," not so much in the
> sense of "the Twitter API." While I'm not entirely sure, one way of
> implementing this transport system is having a protocol (or "interface"
> in java-speak) that modules can implement, letting the core communicate
> with transports via standard function calls. (It should be noted that
> I'm envisioning this in C, but I'm sure it could be done in any other
> language).
> 
>> The next question that arises is, what will the first concrete
>> implementation of this framework look like?
> 
> Judging from the things said on this list, I think the first completed
> implementation will be a GLAMP-based web app implemented in pure PHP. I
> don't know if elijah's Ruby on Rails implementation will adhere to this
> model (and it doesn't need to -- this was just a proposal for what the
> GNU Social project should write, not what every GNU Social Protocol
> implementation would look like), but I'll bet that that will be finished
> before or next.
> 
> Since I'm useless at the web development game, I plan on implementing a
> node in some "traditional" language with whoever will join me - once the
> GLAMP version is far along enough for me to know I'm not hampering that
> effort. I'll do my best to make sure that components from the GLAMP
> version of GNU Social are interoperable with the desktop version
> (especially the GLAMP UI, which will be my first focus). Hopefully the
> GNU Social project will accept this implementation under the GNU aegis -
> I plan on licensing everything I write under the AGPL and assigning
> copyright to the FSF, if they'll have it.
> 
> All this is irrelevant until we get a protocol designed, however. That
> should be the first priority now.
> 
> 

While the web interface will be most familiar to most users of
"traditional" social networks, I think that a desktop application would
be more than welcome.

We do need to figure out some of the more technical aspects of GNU
Social, admittedly, but the protocol and general structure of the social
networks that GNU Social would enable should take priority.

- --
Henry L.
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