Apple’s implementation of other PWA standards requires an app to be opened from the home screen. A user can’t access features of the app if they can’t add it to the homescreen.

This is exciting. I think code forges are one of the biggest opportunities for ActivityPub to really go mainstream and change the internet. Not only because it’ll make working with open source way easier since you can work with any compatible forge, but developers will be more exposed to ActivityPub just by working with the software and so more likely to participate in AP dev. It will be interesting to see what effect this has on the fediverse. There’s been a lot of talk from various organizations/companies but this will be the first large project adopting AP. I’m interested to see how development goes for them and for other fediverse projects.

I wonder what changes it will force on Mastodon. Masto won’t be the biggest project anymore and won’t be able to throw its weight around as much. Just like the recent influx of users forced the implementation of full text search and has reenergized conversations about quote posts, I think federated gitlab would force masto to rethink some things.

I don’t see it withering away anytime soon. My entire career has been enterprise web development (which is why I roll my eyes at all the web dev rants). Every company I’ve worked at has used Java on the backend and some JS framework for the frontend. Java has only been improving in that time and getting much easier to write. I don’t see companies taking an (in their view) unnecessary risk that makes it harder for them to hire and lose efficiency, at least in the short to medium term.

I think the only way that changes is if developers are interested enough to try Rust, or any other language, in their free time. If they like it enough, they’ll suggest it at work. If enough developers are doing that, it’ll slowly shift the local scene.

If Mozilla open sourced it years ago like they promised, it could be picked up by someone else.

Not really. There was a recent article that came out that said tumblr is still losing money. I don’t see them spending time and money on something that doesn’t have a direct monetization strategy, especially since their userbase isn’t actually asking for ActivityPub

But #1 is predicated on #2. If developers are aware of the risk of EEE, then they won’t try to remain compatible with Meta extensions, which means development of the open AP ecosystem will continue at the same pace.

Yes I read that and explained why I don’t think its relevant. Facebook can’t slow down progress on the fediverse because:

1. progress is already slow. The fediverse has been in development for 15 years and still is a clunky, niche network and likely will always be less polished than large corporate networks.
2. Every developer on the fediverse is aware of the EEE playbook and next to none of them will try to remain compatible with any corporate extensions.

I’ve never really understood the EEE argument here. XMPP was an open proptocol, Google embraced it and attracted users, then extended it and took those users away. But according to this article, Google didn’t extinguish XMPP. It’s still around and serving its niche community.

That’s already the situation the fediverse is in. This is a niche community and there are already existing social media companies that the majority of internet users are on. If Facebook joins the fediverse, it brings billions of new users to the fediverse. If they then leave the fediverse, ActivityPub will still be here and all of us on the real fediverse will still be here, in a niche community. Everyone here has already chosen the fediverse despite it being a clunky, unpolished, niche network. How is EEE a relevant fear for the fediverse?

The numbers for lemmy are probably way outdated. Take a look at https://lemmyverse.net/communities. It lists 636 instances but FediDB only has 302. And remember most of this growth has only come in the past week or two.

Also, mastodon only has 1.25 million active users according to FediDB, though that’s probably outdated too.

They abuse the subject field which I think lemmy ignores. name is a separate field that is used for the title

It’s not as common to push users to apps on desktop, but its a tried-and-true practice on mobile. I’m sure companies would do it if they could, but app stores and app lockin aren’t as strong on desktop as on mobile

Users can block those with extensions so the data isn’t as reliable

An extension could work, but some users won’t want to install an extension and other users can’t install them (work computer/mobile browser).