@bengo @evan @julian I do not agree with your analysis of the situation post, say, January 2025 when I started to get involved in things. Prior to that (esp regarding CG chair selection) I was not involved and can't make any claims. My goal here is to get the standard to a place where its current shortcomings are addressed, and it is more widely implemented. (I'm trying to stay neutral on what those shortcomings are. I want to the CG to figure that out and make proposals alongside the WG.)

@bengo @julian @darius @dmitri That doesn't ring a bell. Checking my email archives, I see your announcement of activitypub-testing on 15 Jan and you declined the AP issue triage on 17 Jan.

@bengo @julian @darius @dmitri I don't think private email is the right way to work on ActivityPub or Activity Streams, anyways. If you think something went wrong with one of the errata or the editors' draft, you should definitely open an issue on GitHub or post to the public-swicg mailing list. You've been active in those discussions, so that's probably a great way to talk about it.

@bengo @julian @darius @dmitri I also think backwards compatibility is important. It would be catastrophic to announce an incompatible next version that doesn't work with the existing millions of users and tens of thousands of servers. If we add new features, like LOLA, they'd have to be compatible with the network as it is now.

@evan @julian @darius @dmitri this isn't the first time you've claimed to not receive an email I sent from gmail and got no undeliverability notice for. You should fix your self hosted mail setup.

Beyond that, I'm finding it hard to reconcile your public position that private email is not the right way to work on these things when you have sent me so many private emails e.g. about how I should sign an NDA with Facebook to come work with you and them on ActivityPub and ActivityStreams.

@bengo I regret losing your email. It was clearly important. I'm sorry.

@bhaugen update: this is the best place for relevant information and to provide feedback. https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swicg/2026Jan/0016.html

@bengo @darius @julian I'm not sure the charter says that the Chair ever has to be elected. "Participants in this group choose their Chair(s) and can replace their Chair(s) at any time using whatever means they prefer." After adopting the charter, we never changed the Chair -- he just stayed in place. I agree that it's well past time for us to have an election, but I don't see where consensus can only be evaluated by an elected Chair. What am I missing?

@bengo @darius @julian I'm going to bring this up on the mailing list, by the way. I think it's time for us to hold an election.

@evan @darius @julian The misinfo and deception here is endless and exhausting. That was not in the charter that passed SWICG CFC after ~ Feb 21, 2025.

Intentional or not this whole this is effectively a 'gish galloping' which is against the code of ethics and professional behavior. https://www.w3.org/policies/code-of-conduct/

I'm so over this. I won't be replying more to correct your mistakes and inaccuracies any more.

@bengo @aburka As I’ve always said, just because it’s a specification it doesn’t mean you have to implement it. I’m more of an applied than pure developer, so I tend to prefer things from IETF than W3C (not that that is any kind of endorsement from me because IETF’s RFCs are not exactly immune from pay-to-play). I’m sure everybody involved has the best intentions, as always, but.

@omz13 @aburka it’s interesting you mention that because ActivityStreams 2 started at IETF not W3C, mostly authored/implemented well before Evan inherited it after the original authors left SocialWG. There was a strategic decision to also work on it at W3C WG for wide review and to consider the needs of social web industry (of the time).
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-snell-activitystreams-00

It’s not an either or thing. There are many applied developers at both. I’m a big IETF fan as well, where AS2 has roots.

@bengo @aburka I somehow missed it came via IETF. Nevertheless, I dislike AS2 with a passion. Being a big fan of strictly typed languages, it is a PITA to implement, as is all that LD, RDF, SOLID, and related stuff.

@omz13 @aburka do you consider RSS strongly typed?

@bengo

> It's a bad and unfair idea [to make class 3 and 4 changes] [...] Totally respect your position if you disagree

i'm not super familiar with the w3c process but from a pragmatic standpoint what do you do when userspace is already broken and nothing is class conformant?

activitystreams was intended to describe streams of activities, and activitypub was intended for publishing activities to those streams of activities. no one in fedi does this. they syndicate posts and discard activities

@bengo i'm genuinely curious to hear your thoughts on this matter, because it seems to me like activitypub and fedi were never really on the same page, and the w3c spec diverged from the mastodon network almost before it was ever published. is there a path to fixing this within w3c cg/wg structure? what does that look like? are there any other paths?