Notices by cj 🇺🇸🇨🇭 (cj@mastodon.technology)

Alright, https://test.activitypub.dev/ is up for y'all and not looking like Times New Roman font on a white background. If you poke around responsibly, please file bugs.

There's still a lot of work that needs to happen. I accept PRs!

If you are a developer, know #golang, and have been wanting to make a #FLOSS #ActivityPub application for the betterment of the #Fediverse, please consider go-fed.

I will happily consult with you for free (gratis) to help you determine if go-fed is even the right choice for your needs, and would like to help ensure you feel you're on a good path.

I'd like to see more ActivityPub apps out there!

If you're not a developer, or don't know golang, and would like to, check out https://tour.golang.org

My blog (cjslep.com/c/blog) is written on top of go-fed and is on the #fediverse. Not only are blog posts shown as native content (ActivityStreams type "Article") but comments ("Notes") on Mastodon/Pleroma show up on my blog as well.

If I could restart the FLOSS philosophy from first principles, and re-derive everything, I would start by separating the existing concept of "user", which currently means both "one afforded the means of software development" and "one without the means of software development", and rethink the rights that fall out.

For instance, the existing pillar of "freedom to modify" is no longer equitable.

I have no answers now, but identifying the problem is a good step, I think.

Anyone in #NYC next week that wants to meet up and discuss #Fediverse or #ActivityPub things?

It's clear that "technologically neutral" can lead to abuses: Tusky being "neutral because the tech permits it" could have led to more hate speech like "kill all Jews", Mozilla doing "nothing because certs are technically designed to work this way" lets the digital rights of Kazakhs be eroded.

It is clear that technology serves a human purpose, technology doesn't serve itself, so I believe we shouldn't let our human morals be a slave to technology, we should make technology reflect our humanism

Alright, apcore (#golang #ActivityPub #FLOSS server framework) now has a first draft roadmap/milestone defined:

https://github.com/go-fed/apcore/milestone/1

...and in time-honored Fediverse tradition, since the code isn't finished yet, I should tag this whole thread with #soon.

In my quest to build an #ActivityPub based simple, no-frills bulletin board / forum system, I've gone ahead and pushed up my work-in-progress #golang ActivityPub single server framework: apcore. It has no README (yet) and still has a lot left TODO.

https://github.com/go-fed/apcore

I hope to use it in the future to launch multiple small ActivityPub applications leveraging common serving, storing, and moderation features. But new #ActivityStreams vocabulary can be readily innovated upon.

So trying to argue the 0th pillar "freedom of use" is about specific software capabilities is mistaken. It's a gateway to the un-reconcilable "well N users demand my software have feature X, and an equal number also demand an incompatible feature Y." How could one ever satisfy the 0th pillar under this condition, and why would RMS never discuss this situation?

Perhaps because it is the wrong interpretation. :) RMS spends time at the "licensing level", not at the "what does your software do exactly" level.

Because that is the core of Software Freedom/Liberty: the right for a Person to take a software that expresses a [political] view they disagree with, obtain a copy of that software with equal capability as the distributor, modify that [political] view to be more amenable, and then redistribute it without any additional licensing burdens.

It's never about what specific views or capabilities are in the software itself. Heck, you could fork and purposefully add bugs and it is still no less Freedom respecting.

I find it incredibly surprising that many #FOSS or #FLOSS folk take the 0th pillar's "freedom of use" to mistakenly mean "freedom of usage by creating a software feature" instead of the true intended meaning: "freedom of usage under the license conditions".

Because that's what RMS has always been about: the software licenses being symmetrical in power between the distributor of software and receiver of software. It creates a level playing field in terms of what "politics" are contained in the software.

#Tusky still does not violate the #FLOSS 0th pillar, yet another explanation:

https://forum.f-droid.org/t/tusky-is-nonfree/6448/36

@fedilab The choice is yours.

If you ever decide to change your mind, my blog post defending Tusky's choice could easily apply to your app too:

https://cjslep.com/c/blog/on-tusky-rickrolling

The #Tusky drama stirred up again with the typical FLOSS-bros of "it's not free software", people who just want to code saying "it's a bug not a feature", and free speech extremists "screw developer speech my unprincipled take is user speech all the way".

Butt his time I can't point to the thread that I debated ALL these points because the thread owner is gone, and so is the thread.

TL;DR: It is still Free Software, it's a feature to prevent extremism growth, and developers have free speech.

Im still writing a blog post about ethics in software, and how that relates to Open Source Software and Free Software.

One thing I am stuck on is how Free Software's ethics implicitly relies on the assumption that "all users have the technical literacy to modify and run software". And I use literacy to truly mean a fundamental capability that should be taught to everyone, because Free Software assumes "the user" can "modify" said software in order to satisfy it's ethics.

I don't like this flaw

Do you believe the statement "Git and software development in general is largely not social communication" to be true or false?

Took the time to get the go-fed section at socialhub.network set up. Added a couple posts too.

Check it out!

https://socialhub.network/c/go-fed

@Gargron Using your social capital to post and self-boost this to make fun of other software is incredibly discouraging, as another person interested in developing more software on the Fediverse.

Watch out #Fediverse. #ActivityPub has brought some new kid on the block.