@thoughtpunks and the ActivityPub and Mastodon developers work on making it better to make it better, not to turn a profit.

@Tim_Eagon In fairness to ATProto folks, neither are most of them. They're making toys and services, fiddling around fascinated with the ecosystem. Bluesky itself? Jay has been... well, Jay. Otherwise, my impression is they're nurturing the ecosystem to pivot toward SaaS and related silos, Automattic style (not exactly a compliment).

But even if it comes with a bunch of doubling down "explanations" I don't want, ActPub people will HELP and even make noble attempts to kludge (or suggest them).

@thoughtpunks I think if BS dies, it takes the protocol with it.

@Tim_Eagon I can't remember exactly what fiddly hashtag/post trigger type thing I was playing with before, but I can remember the interaction with the person who helped. While I got a We Do It The Right Way(tm) and It's Not Meant For That(tm) lecture, I also got actual collab advice on how to ugly (but effectively) kludge on both sides (how I was doing things, how I was approaching ActivityPub). I wasn't told my enviro was wrong or get the off-topic basics "explained" or anything silly like that

@Tim_Eagon most likely, tbh (without a pretty radical overhaul of the protocol). Though someone else might exploit the tech to squeeze those consulting/SaaS dollars, depending on when it goes under and how robust the ecosystem is by then.

But yeah, it's pretty much actively hostile at least 75% of the active web (PHP websites)? Which kinda defeats the point of federation and a decentralized web, imo. Even Ben Ramsay and Matthias Pfefferle threw their hands up on PHP outside basic client auth.

@Tim_Eagon the "cleanest" and "simplest" solution I can find for connecting a PHP website like you can for ActivityPub or IndieWeb is:
* Root access required
* Install Python
* Install Python ATProto library.
* Build a personal data server (PDS) with the library hooks.
* Run the PDS as a persistent auto-rebooting live service.
* Nasty kludge a bridge for your data, IDs, et al
* Duplicate all data in its specific encrypted ATProto PDS format

So yeah, nobody gonna be federating for real/at scale.

@Tim_Eagon How it went on Bluesky: Few ATProto boosters yelling PHP is garbage, just use an existing PDS, just run a separate server for it, and super trivial to write the sockets and REST for PHP, Ben and Matthias and all them are lying/don't know what they're talking about. FTR, I had one cover ALL those bases + then some.

Final post before I blocked them all: Oh how stupid you're being. You don't need root/server access to set things up! Here's a screenshot of me using Docker on a VPS.