Let’s take back control of our events! #JoinMobilizon

[Pouhiou]

@how

It seems that you missed @marcel, the developer of Demosphere. And I didn’t see a mention of @ekes, the developer of Radar.

It’s not a miss: we talked with the demosphere community. With all due respect to @marcel, we don’t think the developers’ position as the alpha and omega of a free software existance, so we didn’t feel the need to talk together. We took a look at the code, talked with some members, and thought that Demosphere’s code wasn’t the right fit for Mobilizon.

And yes, when we have already started on our development, we don’t usually go and start a conversation (except when we come and look for information) because we already are overwhelmed by things to do and people wanting to talk with us. I’m not saying this is ideal, but this is usually how it goes in free-libre project: we all seldom have time to spare contacting other just to get to know each-other and making collective decisions (you know how it goes!).

You are hosting such a conversation (and thank you again for that), and we are open to talk, within the time and energy that we have.

@how

there’s room for improvement in the communication among teams who are serving communities to help them organize their events together.

Indeed! That’s why I think this should be an open conversation: I see a lot of teams missing (just in my first post: OpenAgenda[1], GetTogether, Communecter, Nexxo, La Ligne Jaune, Transiscope, plus L’Agenda du Libre, System-d[1], and the platform under construction by La Nef, Enercoop and Mobicoop).

[1] Not Free-Libre softwares, but with open data and values that can fit, depending on how open you want this collective conversation to be.

@how

a standardized way of exchanging event data over ActivityPub , which is what Thomas is working on: here, this step is important to make collectively

Please note that GetTogether is also working on this exact issue.

BTW, Framasoft is not creating a new standard, not event de facto, it would be presumptuous to say otherwise (plus, there is an XKCD strip about that ).

@how

with the experience of PeerTube, we already know that Mobilizon will impose a standard on the rest of us, and will de facto define what is an event and how it is shared.

This is where I strongly disagree. You give Framasoft way more importance than what we really have (part of my job is to watch and assess our impact, and be sure that we happily eat humble pie every day).

Mobilizon still have the ability to spectacularly fail.

We will not impose a standard, we won’t even pioneer it alone (again : GetTogether was working on it before we started ).

I still agree that it’s better if our way of using standards comes from a collective exchange, of course! But please, let’s calm down on the stakes, there is plenty of room for experimentation, mistakes, and changing minds.

And you know Framasoft, you know that if we go a way and launch Mobilizon with choices that proves to be unsatisfying, we will be open to change and rectify them. Nothing is being set in stone here!

@how

To be clear: multiple identities is not the topic of our conversation, although I would certainly feel better if the term was changed to something less critical that actually describes the intent rather than the appearance.

OK! If the term is the problem, it’s an easy fix, we will see if we can change it and how (I, for one, wanted to call them masks as in “social masks”).

And I understand, now, this was not the topic that was of importance to you. Thank you for your explanations.

@how

One important thing to realize is that the opinionated choices made by Framasoft for Mobilizon have potential consequences on how other developers perceive what an Event is and how it is encoded.

I understand and I do agree, really.

Do you agree that those consequences will not be dramatic for one (Framasoft is not going to influence the future of the web with its opiniated choices), and that in any case they will be reversible?

Do you also agree that Framasoft is entitled to have its opinions about software making? (keeping in mind, of course, that we care about others, too)

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@natacha

I am sorry if you feel accused of anything, this is not the goal here,

I do not, it’s really OK, I’m fine, actually (but thanks for your concern) and I’m really sorry if my post made you feel I was under stress because I’m not.

I just wanted to straighten the facts:

1. Framasoft was and is already in touch with many structures and at least aware of their code ;
2. Mobilizon is one of our 60+ ongoing projects, we are a small group, we can’t be treated as if we were a big software company

@natacha

As said already, every project invited here have their own community

I knew and I respect that. That wasn’t my point.

My point was even though you have a community, as a lead-dev, did you take time to know them? To learn about their needs, their uses? Did you stop and thought about who you would like to see using your software what you could do to ease their use and their life?

I have been in the free-software community long enough to know very few devs make such an effort. And I get it, really: it is hard enough to code and create a software, having a vision for it is a hole other job (a Designers’ one, actually).

But it’s one of Contributopia’s topics: we believe that Free Software needs to be less technical and more user-centric, hence easing collaborations between designers and devs for a real vision behind software.

I am starting to feel that our user-centric approach might be part of the problem here. If that is the case, we may have to agree to disagree. If at one point the situation forces us to choose between users or the devs community, we will choose users.

Please note that our users (who are, in a nutshell, ̷̑͜F̸͛̿͜á̴̜͍k̶̡̺̃̈́e̵̲̬̎b̶̹̄̏o̵̖̾͘o̶͘ͅz̴͉̺̈́̀ users) are really different from Demosphere’s or Radar’s.

@natacha

the goal here is to use the possibilities of activity pub, in a way that can help exchange between different projects so that existing projects do not become isolated.

We do agree on this goal, and that’s a great point! (see below)

I think we also need to agree on how we share the pressure, the mental load the workload.

@natacha

In this case the only way to go is to converse with others, collaboration is the only antidote to power accumulation.

This is exactly why we (@pyg, @tcit and me) are here, and why we think it is important to take long hours from our work-week to have this conversation together, in english, so that all the other devs who are not here yet can keep up with it.

I really want to be clear on that. The point of my first post here wasn’t to wriggle us out of this conversation. My goal was to get us all on the same conversation , to weed out assumptions, bias and misunderstandings so when it’s time to talk technical points, all devs (@tcit included) can be efficient.

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@ekes

The most strong of these is that the individuals aren’t visible, it’s groups that organise things, and generally the last thing they want to do is present individuals.

@tcit might be able to expand on that if needed, but to be clear, right now, groups aren’t coded nor implemented into Mobilizon, and we plan to work on that in 1st half of 2020.

That’s why right now “identities” (social masks, if you prefer) are, litteraly by default, the creators of events. Those “masks” are translated into persons in ActivityPub, so it’s persons who are marked as the actors of the event.

Our goal is for events to be mostly created by groups. Through guiding users by the design we’ll mainly have groups marked as actors of the events in Mobilizon’s ActivityPub.

But we also need persons to be able to me marked as actors of en event: my cousin won’t create the event “My Nieces’ Birthday Party” with a group, but with her mask/identity. And this is a use case that must be covered by Mobilizon.

As fas as I understand, having both persons and groups being possible actors of events won’t be a problem with Radar: it’s just that Mobilizon’s events whose actors are persons won’t appear on Radar, and that’s OK!

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What I conclude

Once again, it is great to see you are hosting a conversation we couldn’t organize ourselves. We are all for a better way to standardize Events in ActivityPub so that it betters interoperability. What we expect from this conversation is:

• not to be pressured nor mentally loaded by overstating the stakes and our importance ;

• not to be derailed from our promises and user-centric choice ;

• for it to be open to a significative number of actors (and not just the 3 of us -Demosphere, Radar and Mobilizon- however brillant and beautifull we are !)

• some linency if we don’t abide by the collective decisions on the spot and implement them from the get-go: we need to work at our own pace.

And maybe there lies a starting point that would reassure everybody here, if we went very matter-of-factly, and gave a practical answer to the question:

What do y’all expect from Framasoft?