Re: [projectvrm] App.net has exceeded $500k, 10k users goal

[Brian Behlendorf < >]

On Mon, 20 Aug 2012, Craig Burton wrote:
> There are around 6,600 published Open APIs. It is estimated that there 
> as many as 5x the number of Dark APIs.

I think that's the future we fear.  A great decentralized social network 
system is not going to be made up of lots of different vendor-specific 
APIs that require N different integrations - and we should hesitate to 
embrace any vendor-specific APIs that become de-facto standards, as 
Facebook has.

You seem to dismiss "protocols" as if they were part of some old bad way 
of doing things, but I don't think you can call a system properly 
decentralized until you've got APIs that look more like shared interface 
definitions collaboratively defined and built, with more than one 
implementation, and that to me sounds like a protocol.

As Joe noted, it's not by accident that app.net's API is not likely to 
grow up one day and become a proper protocol suitable for use by other 
instances.  That's in line with the goals and philosophies of its founder. 
It's also not anything new.

And, by the way, I don't think we need to call each other "utterly 
clueless" on this list to make our points.

Brian