Oscon 2008 Open Micro Blogging Presentation

Open Source Microblogging
Evan Prodromou
Control Yourself, Inc.
6 Thermidor CCXIV

What to expect
Rambling tangents
Inside jokes
Disjointed thoughts
Bad puns
Sly insinuations
Wild-eyed enthusiasm

About me
Longtime writer and programmer from San Francisco
Moved to Montreal in 2002
I ♥ Freedom
Stubborn as hell
Not really 100% “all there”
Dumb sense of humour

Ideas I've had
bearfight.com
Wikiclock
OpenID for MediaWiki
certifi.ca
vinismo.com
Burn All GIFs
JokeML

Ideas I've had, part two
Spock Mountain Research Labs
iDog
DeCSS
JOAP
kei.ki
Wikitravel
Identi.ca

I can't tell the difference
I probably have mental problems
I don't know what makes some of these things insanely popular and others not
You might want to take the rest of this discussion with a grain of salt

Being crazy gets you to cool parties
Invited to a “minisummit” at FSF in March 2008
Folks from OKF, FSF, CC, SFLC
I was in Buenos Aires at the time
Lucky me!
Discussed the problem of Freedom and Network services

Web 2.0 Open
You can use it. Usually.
You can write software that uses the API.
Rounded corners.
Look! A cute whale! Awwwww!

What problem?
We're supposed to have freedom
Four freedoms: use, study and adapt, distribute, improve
I count five.
Using software on someone else's computer makes these freedoms hard.

We know how to fix that
Free Software.
Duh.

What problem? Page 2
“ Data is the Intel inside” - TO'R
“ Open Source licenses are irrelevant”
Terms of service
Privacy
Sociality
Social Web
Your freedom, my freedom
We've told ourselves it doesn't matter
Deep stacks
Intertwingly

What is the point?
autonomy

What is to be done?
Agreed to become a ragtag band of superheroes fighting for autonomy
autonomo.us blog and wiki
autono.my was 10x more expensive
Franklin Street Statement

Open Software Service Definition
http://opendefinition.org/ossd
Data is Open Data .
But personal stuff is yours to manage.
Software is Free Software .
Code must be shared.
Open formats.
Open APIs.

Franklin Street Statement
This matters.
Developers should make software for Free services.
Service providers should use it.
Users should hold them to it.
http://autonomo.us/2008/07/franklin-street-statement/

Now, back to me
What was I gonna do to make this happen?

Twitter. Duh.
Very popular.
Web 2.0 “open”.
Beloved by Web people.
I used it all the time.
Seemed pretty easy to implement.
Losing its edge.
Ripe for conquest.

What is Microblogging ?
Posting itty-bitty status messages.
They go out to your friends and fans.
You read your friends' messages.
Yay.

But also
Multiple channels
SMS
IM
RSS
API + clients

What is Microblogging? part two
Universal teeny-weeny message router
Multicast, moved up about 3 layers on the stack, and made to work.

Why does it matter?
It's really addictive
Smooths over rough edges of communication
Most meaningful social network

So I got cracking
PHP + MySQL
Commodity hosting
DB_DataObject
XMPPHP
XMLWriter
RDF

Semantic Web
Open standard(s) for meaning
Easy as hell to implement
Easy to create data for
Lowers the barrier for writing smart software
Make Free Software more relevant and user autonomy more realizable

The name
CIRA is awesome
Stoi.ca
Laconi.ca
Identi.ca

Realistic Autonomy
How to move to a new server and still keep your friends and followers?
Start a new server and keep the network
Autonomy requires federated microblogging .

OpenMicroBlogging
http://openmicroblogging.org/
OAuth-based
Subscriptions
Posting notices (including rich media)
Sharing profile

The Social Web Should Work Like the Document Web
Distributed
Open standards
Easy linking
Ubiquitous
Multiple implementations
Identity -- OpenID

Releasing the code
Started mid-May at RCC
Beta release in June
autonomo.us people
Friends in Montreal tech community
No public links
Worked out some kinks

Launching
July 2, 2008
Twitter goes down
Send out an email to launch
CC, RWW, TechCrunch, Slashdot, Mashable, Winer
10K users in 36 hours

Hosed
Not enough servers
DNS not ready to move
PHP bug made Jabber not work

Features missing
Replies
User search
Clients
Mobile

We got those going

What's next?
AIM
Better federation
XMPP-PubSub
UI tweaks (delete, edit, hide replies)
Track
Easy moving from server to server
Twitter interop
Multiple licenses
Pownce-like multimedia
I18n

Will this work?
Identi.ca is a business.
Open Source is disruptive.
Shifts the value proposition from features to relationships .
Burns out the underbrush.
See: wordpress.com, livejournal.com, Wikia

What can you do?
Use Identi.ca
Invite your friends
Write code
Help with translations
Link to us
Make themes
Make new OSSD-compliant services

What needs doing
Calendaring
Email
Social bookmarks
Social news
Storage
Photo sharing
Video sharing

What needs doing, pt. 2
Mapping
Web search
Homepage
Cloud computing
Distributed commenting
Social networking... maybe.

Other utopian beliefs I espouse
Esperanto
Sona
French Revolutionary Calendar
Stopping at crosswalks
Burning Man
Ecotopia and car-free cities

Do you have to share my tinfoil hat beliefs?
No. But if you share some , you should help out.
I ♥ Twitter Quitters.
Dual-post if you must.
Moving now will earn my thanks and appreciation.
You may dislike Twitter's reliability.
You may just want to be on the winning side.

This is Web 3.0.
Just in case you were wondering why you were excited about it.

Tonight
Free Network Services BOF
Open Microblogging BOF

Questions?

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Oscon 2008 Open Micro Blogging Presentation

by Evan Prodromou on Jul 24, 2008

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Oscon 2008 Open Micro Blogging Presentation — Presentation Transcript