Re: [Social-discuss] The Case for Branching Elgg?

[Story Henry]

On 3 Apr 2010, at 15:58, Samuel Rose wrote:

> Hello GNU Socialites.
> 
> On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 11:27 AM, Sean Corbett <address@hidden> wrote:
>> It certainly seems doable and the code base is very nice and
>> straightforward; Ian and I have actually been spending time with it trying
>> to figure out a way to get two Elgg instances we've installed on our school
>> network to "talk to each other."  Of course I think there would need to be a
>> lot more work done on it to attain all the goals that we've established, but
>> it would provide a useful basis for development.
>> 
>> I'd personally rather write something completely new, but would be agreeable
>> to it if that were the path we took.

> I am having trouble figuring out why there is a desire to build
> anything new, settle on one protocol, settle on website or desktop
> application, reject existing standards, and in general create
> either/or decisions around any of the approaches discussed so far.

The only reason is that everyone has to start somewhere. The best way is to
start with something easy. When you start you need to make some more or less
arbitrary decisions: php, java, blah blah....

Of course as far as I see there is no point making something that only 
interoperates among itself. We should be thinking of something that ends up 
working with all the tools out there: bug databases, wikis, meeting software, 
....

If I told you the semantic web is designed at the abstraction you are looking 
for, you won't believe me - or at least most people won't - or if they do they 
will then argue that it is way too complicated. Of course it's too complicated, 
because people always try to solve all problems at once! As a result they never 
get going making the first simple step. So the idea here is just to get a few 
simple steps going here to launch the rest. 

But we need to make these steps as a community. We should be making Elgg and 
gnu social work together, and all these other tools too. So since we have a lot 
of different pieces we need to keep things simple. In my opinion everyone can 
participate with every language to work together with gnu social.

This is what we are doing at foaf+ssl. We have pieces interact in java, python, 
perl, php and C. We are still looking for ruby. Every time someone adds a piece 
the community as a whole gets richer.

  Btw, I just updated the foaf+ssl FAQ.

    http://esw.w3.org/Foaf%2Bssl/FAQ


  Perhaps that helps.  


        Henry