The difference is abstract & ehether that makes a difference for users or not depends on what we do with it.
Mastadon is a one-off custom protocol. It latter grew some ActivityPub interop but Im not sure how deep that goes.
Solid is a layered set of more general protocols. Its good for building vastly unimaginably wider sets of online systems with. We could go reimplement a Mastadon & stop there. But those same layers could/should also give us a strong interoperable basis to do a bajillion other connected online things, & have a wide variety of clients sites & servers possibly interoperate well. The layer cake alsp means its more likely we could reuse part of the stack while improving or retrofitting other parts.
There's always a difficult battle, describing to people why architecture matters. It may not. But to a programmer, the architecture bounds the space, shapes what is possible. Some people just care about end user experience, but for the person engaged in bringing out the future- developers- architecture is abstract, but means a lot.
I think Solid has very good groundwork & could easily reshape developing online systems quickly. If there is continued push to refine & advance the libraries, toolkits & frameworks available. Having more competition within the solid exosystem would be a good ineicator to me, that there is sufficienct diversity so that the niche can explore & expand & grow effectively. Places where multiple ideas are playing out win, and open source can be great for that.
What about Mastodon isn't interoperable with other ActivityPub services? IIRC Pleroma and other ActivityPub implementations play nice together with Mastodon in a fully federated manner. Its been like this for half a decade already.
Mastadon is a one-off custom protocol. It latter grew some ActivityPub interop but Im not sure how deep that goes.
Solid is a layered set of more general protocols. Its good for building vastly unimaginably wider sets of online systems with. We could go reimplement a Mastadon & stop there. But those same layers could/should also give us a strong interoperable basis to do a bajillion other connected online things, & have a wide variety of clients sites & servers possibly interoperate well. The layer cake alsp means its more likely we could reuse part of the stack while improving or retrofitting other parts.
There's always a difficult battle, describing to people why architecture matters. It may not. But to a programmer, the architecture bounds the space, shapes what is possible. Some people just care about end user experience, but for the person engaged in bringing out the future- developers- architecture is abstract, but means a lot.
I think Solid has very good groundwork & could easily reshape developing online systems quickly. If there is continued push to refine & advance the libraries, toolkits & frameworks available. Having more competition within the solid exosystem would be a good ineicator to me, that there is sufficienct diversity so that the niche can explore & expand & grow effectively. Places where multiple ideas are playing out win, and open source can be great for that.