I don't love the current approach to the Fediverse but there's so little substance to this article. It starts out by insulting software engineers who build free OSS: "ActivityPub looks like it was written by an idiot who just won second prize in idiots' contest."

It's easy to insult people, but I don't see many clear technical arguments here (other than "well STMP already did this so why bother reinventing it" or that the docs suck).

I wanted to read this, I really did, but I found the author's tone so unbearable, I gave up. I got that he is experience and very very very smart - and that appeared to be the main point of the piece.

"Even worst, the scenario is boring: there are very few functional and 'complete' applications. The usual Mastodon, Pleroma, Misskey, Mobilizon, etc.... everything else is aborted in development."

Pixelfed - Federated photo sharing https://pixelfed.org/ In active development.

PeerTube - Free software to take back control of your videos, a free and decentralised alternative to video platforms https://joinpeertube.org/ In active development.

Funkwhale - A social platform to enjoy and share music within an open and decentralised network https://funkwhale.audio/ In active development.

Alright so they're not complete but they're certainly not boring or aborted and the modern extensions and implementations of SMTP, BGP, or DNS are still not complete. Our messengers are only recently enjoying E2E. Just dismissing these three, as examples, does a disservice to the Fediverse.

Meh, I learned ActivityPub and wrote an implementation (less than MILLIONS of lines) in a weekend. It's not that hard, unless you're dumb.

Yes, finding the right ratio between centralization/decentralization is hard

Two problems: (1) People hear "Fed" and they think it has to do with the Federal Reserve, (2) "verse" is marketing speak for "move along folks, nothing to see here". Anything -verse comes across as something grandiose that was intended for somebody else, see "metaverse."

If the technical flaws are as bad the author says the right thing to do is just start a new name for a new protocol and know so long as it doesn't start in "Fed" or end in "Verse" you can say the name of it without driving away possible users.