Re: [Social-discuss] What should GNU social be?

[cal]

> Looks pretty cool.  I think it's also worth looking at http://elgg.org/ which
> is getting quite mature has qutie a bit of functionality, the RESTful API 
> makes
> it extensible, and they have plugins for things like realtime chat, 

hi,

we are working with several elgg instances [0], and with a roadmap to federate
activity streams among them. we have polished openID support, and have enabled 
a javascript xmpp client based on strophe. 

We have ongoing tasks about enabling openmicrobloggin support for statusnet 
compatibility (and maybe extend it to other kind of notifications), and 
forwarding media 
hosting to a tahoe [1] grid. 

Other experiments we are doing are encrypted mailing list integration, and an 
experimental
psyc and xmpp pubsub backend for notifications.

It is also pending to enhance the current semantic publishing of data: the foaf 
export
is minimal, and sioc would be also desirable to start with some fancy
inferences.

i'm not a fan of php, but it is pretty easy to get up running with elgg. The
plugin-based api make it quick to choose and install your components. just to
point what is nice with it.

> but I'm not
> sure you want to be locked in to their paradigm ( I think dasiycha.in should
> embrace a Web Scale Architecture compatible with Linked Datafrom the start ),

Can you develop a little more about this kind of architecture? (although I guess
you have in mind something like this graph [2] )

I often find myself locked into the dilemma of chosing between delivering 
(nearly-)
working applications for social collectives I work with -doing it quick with 
frameworks 
everybody can work with-, or keeping with investigations and proofs of concept.

we have been collecting some ideas and state of the art [2] in the
search for secure, distributed and semantic social networking software, perhaps
a bit biased towards python-based stuff, and something I realised in the process
is that semweb tools are very mature, but indeed require some time to get
started with (maybe only that a little shift of paradigm is still needed, but
most people I try to explain rdf goodies end by considering it "too complex"
after a while, or just "inefficient" for some purposes).

My personal view is that triplestores are still a bit tricky for being widely
adopted (i.e., heavy, or poorly packaged or documented), and maybe what is 
needed 
is more software that abstracts from the ontology internals and allow to use it 
comfortably from a web application framework, or event a desktop client.

It's not a trivial task, but having a mapper that translates ontologies to your 
native 
type of object, and able to build optimised sparql queries, could make semweb 
development 
as easy as changing your relational backend for a triplestore.

Or maybe is not a problem at all to assume duplication and expose a
triplified version of your tables. But I like the fact that access control can
be somehow embedded into your data.


> it's certainly a project worth learning from and perhaps it would be
> advantageous to set up a liaison to crabgrass and elgg.  

yep, I agree. If we find a not-too-complex and generic enough protocol for 
representing
and consulting our "social aggregation stack" (identity, presence, 
relationships, groups,
conversations/media), there shouldn't be any problem in interconnecting 
instances 
written on different languages/frameworks (there is also pinax, for the 
python lovers :p)

[0] http://lorea.cc (mostly spanish, sorry).
[1] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe-lafs
[2] http://melvincarvalho.com/blog/architecture-of-web-30/
[3] http://rhizomatik.net

-- 
e pur si muove...

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