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2024-12-15 21:03:35

reiver@mastodon.social

Where does a story about Mastodon begin?

If you were telling a story about the history of Mastodon — where would you start telling that story?

(Assuming that the story starts BEFORE Mastodon was created.)

#Fediverse #Mastodon

2024-12-15 21:35:12

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@@reiver ⊼ (Charles) :batman: 2008. When @Evan Prodromou launched Identi.ca.

After all, Mastodon started out as an alternative frontend for GNU social. GNU social is a fork of StatusNet. StatusNet, in turn, was the software which Identi.ca used to run on until it was merged into GNU social in 2013. (Evan first launched Identi.ca, and then he open-sourced the technology under the name of Laconi.ca, later StatusNet.)

This also means that the OStatus protocol is part of Mastodon's history as well. OStatus is the protocol that GNU social was based on back in the day and probably still is, that later versions of StatusNet were based on, and that Mastodon was originally based on. It's the successor to OpenMicroBlogging, the protocol that Identi.ca was launched on, and that early StatusNet was based on. But it was gone when Mastodon was launched.

It's also fair to mention Friendica, the Facebook alternative launched by @Mike Macgirvin ?️ in 2010, and Hubzilla, the "federated social content management system" which, in 2015, emerged from something that Mike himself had forked off Friendica in 2012.

Both speak a whole lot of protocols. Hubzilla used to speak OStatus, Friendica still does. And so, when the very first Mastodon test release came out in early 2016, and the very first Mastodon instance was started up, it was immediately able to connect to GNU social, Friendica and Hubzilla.

It's an important part of Mastodon's history that Mastodon has never in its history been an isolated walled garden, that Mastodon has never in its history been connected to only itself.

Speaking of Hubzilla, it should be mentioned once again, namely in 2017.

The very first Fediverse project to implement ActivityPub was Hubzilla in July. Mastodon followed in September. These two were the only Fediverse projects that adopted ActivityPub before it was declared a standard. And so, for quite a while, it was only these two that could use ActivityPub to connect to each other (while still also being able to do so via OStatus, by the way). But since both have vastly different philosophies, actual compatibility was and still is limited.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Identi.ca #StatusNet #OStatus #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #ActivityPub #FediverseHistory

2024-12-18 16:41:42

@reiver ⊼ (Charles) :batman:

reiver@mastodon.social

@jupiter_rowland @mikedev

Regarding:
"After all, Mastodon started out as an alternative frontend for GNU social."

When you say "frontend", what do you mean?

(I understand the word "frontend" as a programmer does — with a "frontend" and a "backend", usually in an HTTP-based application context.)

Do you mean that Mastodon was originally using the GNU Social software as its backend?

2024-12-18 19:38:16

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@@reiver ⊼ (Charles) :batman: Mastodon did start out as a full-stack Web application AFAIK. It used the OStatus protocol, the same protocol as what GNU social was based on and what StatusNet was using prior to its merger with its own fork, GNU social.

However, at first, it was not positioned as a fully independent project of its own, much less a federated walled garden that allegedly only connected to itself. It was initially conceived and advertised as an alternative to GNU social proper with a different, "easier-to-use", more Twitter-like GUI being its main selling-point.

I guess it's pretty obvious that what was working underneath was not GNU social proper either. Two examples to prove this:

Neither Identi.ca nor StatusNet nor GNU social had a rigid, hard-coded character limit of 500 characters. Mastodon had it from the get-go.

Also, Identi.ca, StatusNet and GNU social had a summary field. It was part of the OpenMicroBlogging and OStatus protocols. Both Friendica and Hubzilla made use of this summary field as such. Mastodon did not have the summary field implemented because summaries were pointless if all you had was 500 characters.

Fast-forward to 2017. Mastodon had meanwhile repositioned itself on the "market" as a stand-alone microblogging platform, implying to be a "decentralised, federated walled garden" with its own exclusive technology that nothing else used, and that nothing else connected to. Something that just about every last Mastodon newbie takes Mastodon for still today.

At some point in 2017, a Mastodon user from the demo scene with some development experience submitted a pull request to Mastodon's GitHub repository which would repurpose this very same summary field as a content warning field. The pull request was accepted and merged. Ever since shortly afterwards, Mastodon users started believing that Mastodon's content warning field was invented by Eugen Rochko from scratch. And they still do.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Identi.ca #StatusNet #OStatus #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #FediverseHistory