cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/24748390
https://bsky.app/profile/freeourfeeds.com/post/3lfmvqip7zk2v
tldr, it’s a new foundation launching with an open letter signed by:
Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia
Shoshana Zuboff, Professor Emerita, Harvard Business School and author of ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’
Mark Ruffalo, Actor
Alex Winter, Actor and filmmaker
Audrey Tang, Former Minister of Digital Affairs, Taiwan
Roger McNamee, Businessman and author of ‘Zucked’
Brian Eno, Musician
Carole Cadwalladr, Investigative journalist
Cory Doctorow, Blogger and journalist
Akilah Hughes, Writer and comedian
Sebastian Soriano, Former Chairman, Arcep
Rosie Boycott, Member, UK House of Lords
Alexandra Geese, Member of the European Parliament, Greens/EFA
…
Bluesky has expressed a clear interest in public governance of the protocol they have developed. We are establishing a Foundation to help steward this process, to ensure that the AT Protocol remains capture-resistant and is instead governed in line with a thriving public interest and open community.
The $4m would be better invested in the Fediverse. ATproto is designed with a winner takes all philosophy and Bluesky has the headstart and more funds, so this is a wasted effort most likely.
Would it though? I really don’t care about AT, but from their perspective, any € spent on AT will matter incredibly more than on AP. AP is a mature ecosystem, with a lot of complex interests, endless dialects and a lot of mess to grapple with. AT is basically not a protocol yet and can be shaped a lot more.
Well, obviously the $4m wouldn’t have to be spend on ActivityPub protocol development, meaning it could be spend way more effectively to on specific gaps in the network and software.
But even that aside, ATproto is a funnel towards Bluesky the company. It’s fundamentally designed to have a winner takes all situation, so yes maybe these $4m could be effectively used to improve it, but the only one that will ultimatly benefit from that is Bluesky.
Edit: I guess I am just repeating myself. But I recommend reading up on the ATproto design. It’s not necessarily bad if your goal is to create a single global town-square (i.e. Twitter like) microblogging website, but given this design goal, it will always be dominated by a single entity controlling the app view, and that is likely to be Bluesky itself.