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diff --git a/doc/history.md b/doc/history.md index 7b15bc45d..b2cec32bf 100644 --- a/doc/history.md +++ b/doc/history.md @@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ In late 2010, the name was changed to "Friendika". The name Friendika had some s The software also took on a new role - cross-service federation; which was first introduced in August and September 2010. Federation allowed the software to "behave as" a StatusNet site and friends and messages could communicate to the other service from their own platforms. It was also hoped to provide federation with Diaspora - a project with similar scope being developed in secret in New York and first released in November of that year. Over the course of the next year, the federation ability was extended to provide integrated communications from RSS feeds, to and from email, StatusNet, Facebook, Twitter, and the emerging Diaspora project. The software provided a single "view" of your entire social space no matter what provider you or your friends used. StatusNet and Diaspora were supported natively so that one account could access any of these services. Facebook and Twitter used "API federation" which required the person to have an account on those services with which to link. -By July 2012, Twitter and Facebook had both changed their terms of service and essentially outlawed "API federation" in the way Friendica was using it. Diaspora announced they were changing their protocol and would not maintain compatibility nor provide any warning when compatibility would break (or documentation on the proposed changes). The creator of StatusNet was also leaving his project to create something new (pump.io). As the software's primary visible feature was "federation", this created a bit of a crisis. The federated social web was crumbling. Also of concern was that independent and decentralised social websites shut down frequently leaving all their members to have to start over again on another site. Mike realsied he did not want to be held hostage to the decisions that other projects and companies and independent websites make. +By July 2012, Twitter and Facebook had both changed their terms of service and essentially outlawed "API federation" in the way Friendica was using it. Diaspora announced they were changing their protocol and would not maintain compatibility nor provide any warning when compatibility would break (or documentation on the proposed changes). The creator of StatusNet was also leaving his project to create something new (pump.io). As the software's primary visible feature was "federation", this created a bit of a crisis. The federated social web was crumbling. Also of concern was that independent and decentralised social websites shut down frequently leaving all their members to have to start over again on another site. Mike realised he did not want to be held hostage to the decisions that other projects and companies and independent websites make. Friendica lacked autonomy and the ability to stand on its own. Mike had been working on this project for some time and there were a number of things which needed re-writing, including the base communication protocol protocol which Friendica used (DFRN or the "Distributed Friends and Relations Network" protocol). These ideas were starting to emerge as a different method of communication he called "zot". Zot began as a way to create a common language for federated websites, but there was no interest in this ability and as mentioned, the federated web was crumbling. The first version was soon scrapped and zot was re-designed and re-ignited as a streamlined communication protocol which was location-independent; e.g. not tied to any website. This would allow people to carry on unaffected if their website operator shut down temporarily or permanently. They wouldn't have to make friends all over again, and permissions of everything on the system wouldn't have to be changed to allow bob@site1 to see something that was private to him, even though he was now bob@site2. This was a serious problem with decentralisation. People moved and their online identities were lost and had to be re-created from scratch and existing relationships destroyed and had to be created all over again. @@ -34,7 +34,7 @@ Mike had been working on this project for some time and there were a number of t In July 2012, Mike left the Friendica project and began "full-time" (he was and is still employed doing other work) development of "zot" and a new base project called "red". Red is Spanish for "network". It wasn't really a "social network" and especially not a "federated social network". It was just Red (technically "la red"), or "the network". Work began by removing all the "federation" components and going back to basics - communication and remote authentication. It was a major re-write and took roughly six months before even basic communication was re-established. It was also no longer compatible with Friendica - which had been given to the "Friendica community" and by this time was developing separately on its own track. -It became clear during this time that the single most compelling feature of the project wasn't the social network, but the authentication layer and decentralised access control mechanisms. Combined with zot's location independence it created a new model for software which had never existed previously - decentralised identity-aware web publishing and single sign-on to any compatible provider across the web. These weren't *evolutionary*, they were **revolutionary**. One of the biggest flaws of the modern web is the reliance on different passwords for every service you use, or reliance on a single provider if you were to tie them to - say your Facebook login. Facebook can remove your account at any time. Gone. If you rely on their authentication for all your websites, your entire online identity - gone. +It became clear during this time that the single most compelling feature of the project wasn't the social network, but the authentication layer and decentralised access control mechanisms. Combined with zot's location independence it created a new model for software which had never existed previously - decentralised identity-aware web publishing and single sign-on to any compatible provider across the web. These weren't *evolutionary*, they were **revolutionary**. One of the biggest flaws of the modern web is the reliance on different passwords for every service you use, or reliance on a single provider if you were to tie them to - say your Facebook login. Facebook can remove your account at any time. Gone. If you rely on their authentication for all your websites, your entire online identity - gone. This is what was missing from Friendica - a compelling software feature which could stand on its own, without requiring a social network and especially without requiring a federated social network with all the mentioned external dependencies. An early visitor to the project noted that he had some difficulty finding the project on Google because of the choice of name - "red". Yes, this was a poor decision in retrospect. We were buried on page 23,712 of the search results. The concept that was emerging around this identity-aware publishing was that of "a matrix of inter-connected thought streams", since we didn't have a concept of "people" and "friends". All were just connected "channels" with different ways to connect. So "Red Matrix" was chosen to give it a searchable name. It had nothing to do with the Matrix film and red and blue pills, though that is frequently cited (erronously); and in fact isn't a bad analogy. |