OStatus interview with James Walker of StatusNet

Over the past month, we have been interviewing people that are implementing the OStatus standard. Someone that is very fond of the OStatus standard is James Walker. James is the Senior Services Architect at StatusNet Inc, and he is also one of the co-authors of OStatus.

James is very passionate about the OStatus standard, and he has therefore agreed to partake in the series of OStatus interviews. Let us begin.

James, can you give us an overview of your software, for example, what it is and what it does exactly?

James: StatusNet is a free and open source software for microblogging. It's available for download so you can run it on your own servers (with PHP and MySQL) as well as being available for free on our hosted service at StatusNet. Our software allows you to connect with friends and colleagues in real-time while maintaining full control of your data as well as your brand and identity.

Why did you decide to implement social web federation?

James: Actually, social web federation is the main reason I came to work at StatusNet. StatusNet has had a notion of federation for as long as I've been aware of the project. Evan Prodromou (CEO and founder of StatusNet) and his team previously wrote and implemented a spec known as OpenMicroBlogging which provided federated status updates, but had some severe limitations. The redesign of OMB became what we now call OStatus.

Why did you choose OStatus James?

James: Well actually, I helped create it! StatusNet - both as a company and a software project - believes in the power of federation. OStatus is a very important piece of the puzzle. It's the way that we, as a social web, are able to maintain control of our data and identity while still communicating with the largest possible network. I don't believe that large, monolithic social networks are the right approach. Not because the incumbents are somehow evil, but they'll just never be sufficient for "everyone" - be it for language, cultural or just personal preference reasons.

Right now, people congregate on services "where their friends are" and often split themselves across a few networks in order to reach everyone. Companies relinquish control of their brand and their data in order to participate in the networks with the most users. OStatus is our attempt to do for the social web what SMTP did for email. Rather than having people congregate around a service because that's "where people are", they can select services based on features, ease of use, language support, design aesthetics, etc. without risk being walled off from people they want to reach.

What parts of the OStatus suite have you implemented?

James: All of it (with a little help from my friends Evan Prodromou, Brion Vibber and Zach Copley).

What problems did you have?

James: I think the biggest problems implementing OStatus so far has been the emergent nature of some of the specs it depends on. We've had to fill a few gaps and adjust to changes in the specs. This is by no means a "solved" problem. There is still a lot of active work happening across several communities to bring this stuff together.

How can users try out OStatus in your software?

James: Head over to StatusNet and click either Download now to run it yourself or Sign up for a cloud account and you'll be up and running in seconds!

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Thank you James for taking the time to partake in this interview. We look forward to seeing more from you in the future!

If you or someone you know is implementing the OStatus standard, and you would like to talk about how you are implementing it and what you like and dislike, please feel free to contact me at dderouin@status.net and I would happily arrange an interview.