kubaurbanowicz

@Der Pepe (Hubzilla) ⁂
I have submitted my registration and received confirmation by e-mail.

@Der Pepe (Hubzilla) ⁂ Yeah, as @Jupiter Rowland noticed above, these accounts have an option to register without actually providing open registration. Looks like a Forte glitch.
Thank you for letting me squat awhile.

@Der Pepe (Hubzilla) ⁂
I just searched for some words and phrases from the login page, like "remote authentication"+forte or you can look up URLs with site:forte.* .
The following instances have their registrations open:
https://forte.diablocanyon2.com/
https://forte.blurstoftimes.org/
https://forte.eenoog.org/
https://forteclone.raitisoja.cloud/
https://f.morphtown.de/
https://forte.spectraltheorem.be/
Would you mind if I registered at your instance and experimented a little before I set up mine?

@Jupiter Rowland
I was hoping for more history up to the present…
So it feels like Forte is still not ready to serve as a work-horse in heavy-use scenarios.

@Der Pepe (Hubzilla) ⁂
bluenomad@forte.hubzilla.net – is that you? I have found about a dozen streams/forte instances using Google search including https://forte.hubzilla.net
I remote-logged on them and read some posts. The post on installing Forte from Yunohost was quite interesting to me, because that's what I was planning to do.
On thing threw me: after remote login you are presented with a list of applications. Strange.

@Jupiter Rowland
Trouble is, things that are technically capable, are socially difficult to deploy.

@Jupiter Rowland
As far as I understand it, Forte should not be viewed as "(streams) without Nomad". It is better understood as an attempt to reimplement the capabilities of Nomad on top of ActivityPub, using a collection of emerging Fediverse Enhancement Proposals (FEPs) and a few project-specific mechanisms.

1. Nomadic identity

This is clearly the primary goal.

Historically:

• Hubzilla → Zot6
• (streams) → Nomad
• Forte → ActivityPub

The OpenNomad project explicitly states that the long-term objective is to bring technologies such as:

• nomadic identity,
• portable identity,
• identity proofs,
• access control,
• conversation containers,

into the ActivityPub ecosystem rather than keeping them exclusive to the Nomad protocol.

2. FEP-ef61 (Portable Objects)

This appears to be one of the key building blocks.

The idea is simple:

Instead of identifying an actor solely by

https://server.example/users/alice

the actor receives a portable identity based on a cryptographic identifier (conceptually similar to DID).

The URL becomes just one representation of that identity.

Isn't it exactly the direction Mike has wanted for many years?

FEP-ef61 is still a draft, but Forte is frequently mentioned in discussions around its implementation.

3. Object integrity proofs

Another major piece.

Nomad always relied heavily on cryptographic identity.

ActivityPub originally did not.

Several FEPs now introduce:

• cryptographic signatures,
• proof of ownership,
• object integrity.

Without these, portable identities are difficult to secure.

4. Client-side signing

This is another important change.

Traditionally:

User
  ↓
Server signs everything

The proposed direction is:

User signs
Server relays

That makes identity independent of the server.

Again, this is very much aligned with Nomad's philosophy.

5. OpenWebAuth

This one is already much more concrete.

OpenWebAuth (formerly Magic Sign-On) has now been documented as its own FEP.

It provides federated login between independent sites without relying on OAuth providers such as Google.

The specification explicitly mentions compatibility with Hubzilla, (streams), Forte and ActivityPub-based deployments.

6. Conversation containers

This one is interesting.

One weakness of ActivityPub is that conversations are reconstructed heuristically.

Nomad had a much richer conversation model.

There are now proposals for "conversation containers" intended to preserve discussion context much more reliably across servers.

These are still evolving.

7. Channel cloning

This is the part that is not yet solved.

Today:

Hubzilla can clone Hubzilla channels.

(streams) can clone (streams) channels.

But ActivityPub software generally cannot.

The Hubzilla documentation still explicitly says that AP contacts cannot participate fully in Nomad cloning because ActivityPub lacks the necessary concepts.

So this remains one of the major gaps.

8. Cross-platform nomadic identity

The "holy grail", IMHO.

Today

Hubzilla  <--> Hubzilla

Streams   <--> Streams

Mastodon  <--> Mastodon

The goal becomes:

Hubzilla
     \
      \
       Forte
      /
     /
Mastodon
     \
      \
     Friendica

with a single portable identity moving between all of them.

That is what several of the current FEP discussions are trying to enable.

So, the effort appears to be:

"Let's teach ActivityPub how to do what Nomad already does."

@Der Pepe (Hubzilla) ⁂ @Ema エマ
Trying to make one answer to all those in my conversation.
Thank you folks, I'm so pleased to have met you. Let me follow you from my personal account on Hubzilla, which I haven't used for years, but hope to revive now.
Well, there is food for thought now and I don't think I will reach satisfactory conclusions without a good deal of experimentation.
Maybe Hubzilla is not so obsolete as I thought. I think I will experiment here on Zotum and then perhaps move an entire channel to my site.
Cheers,
Jacob

@{billstatler@forum.statler.ws ema@utasansh.in pepecyb@hub.hubzilla.hu}
Trying to make one answer to all those in my conversation.
Thank you folks, I'm so pleased to have met you. Let me follow you from my personal account on Hubzilla, which I haven't used for years, but hope to revive now.
Well, there is food for thought now and I don't think I will reach satisfactory conclusions without a good deal of experimentation.
Maybe Hubzilla is not so obsolete as I thought. I think I will experiment here on Zotum and then perhaps move an entire channel to my site.
Cheers,
Jacob