Christopher Lemmer Webber is a user on octodon.social. You can follow them or interact with them if you have an account anywhere in the fediverse. If you don't, you can sign up here.
Wack Playstation Sup! 🙊 🇮🇸 🍏 @HerraBRE@mastodon.xyz

Someone should create a (dynamic) DNS provider (ideally a non-profit) whose only stated mission is to help people take ownership of their Fediverse, e-mail and XMPP identities.

If my identity were herrabre.mastodon.xyz (a subdomain instead of user-@), I could move to another instance by requesting a DNS record change, and my social graph would remain intact.

A trustable social contract would be needed so I kept effective ownership of the subdomain; the non-profit would be responsible for that.

Wack Playstation Sup! 🙊 🇮🇸 🍏 @HerraBRE@mastodon.xyz

... I'm busy, but if anyone else is interested in working on this, I'd make time to advise and help out.

I've been sitting on this idea for years and I just have too much else going on to make it happen on my own.

Any ideas on how this could move forward? Who to work with? @cwebber ? @fsfe ?

Christopher Lemmer Webber @cwebber

@HerraBRE @fsfe It's a good idea, and if it succeeded it would be of much help.

Though! I think DNS in general is a poor way to handle naming today and it would be good to move past it. But so much infrastructure is invested in it that that's not exactly a trivial proposal.

Wack Playstation Sup! 🙊 🇮🇸 🍏 @HerraBRE@mastodon.xyz

@cwebber Perfect is the enemy of good, right?

DNS is full of warts, but it's what we have today.

Giving people more autonomy within the systems we have today motivates me; I'm tired of waiting for the flawless replacements from the future.

But I'm not sure how to get this particular idea off the ground.

Christopher Lemmer Webber @cwebber

@HerraBRE Sure! DNS and SSL certificate authorities are the centralized systems that plague our decentralized systems and make them not very decentralized after all, but given that it's difficult to move people off them, providing improved spaces within them is still good. SSL CAs are an awful design, but at least Let's Encrypt has reduced the awfulness level a lot, and that's nothing to sneeze at. Doing so for DNS likewise could be very good.

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Frankie Saxx @frankiesaxx@social.tchncs.de

@cwebber
This conversation is giving me vague OpenID flashbacks. Does anyone even use that anymore?
@HerraBRE

Wack Playstation Sup! 🙊 🇮🇸 🍏 @HerraBRE@mastodon.xyz

@frankiesaxx @cwebber I loved the ideals behind OpenID! Today all that is left is "sign in with Facebook/Titter/Google".

AFAIK, nobody bothers to support anything else.

Frankie Saxx @frankiesaxx@social.tchncs.de

@HerraBRE
Me too. I even had it!
@cwebber

Frankie Saxx @frankiesaxx@social.tchncs.de

@HerraBRE
You know what would be neat? An implementation that lets you have a global identifier that you can point to the server of your choice *and* syncing so you can switch to a different server without loss of account data and history.
@cwebber

Not Claes Wallin @notclacke@pleroma.soykaf.com
@frankiesaxx @cwebber @HerraBRE It took me a long time to realize that the reason WhatsApp et al were successful was that they solved identity.

We may not like the solution, but the consumer does. Kontalk (XMPP) and down the road also Matrix are trying to also use phone numbers, but the sad news is it's intrinsically not really something you can do in a decentralized way.
Not Claes Wallin @notclacke@pleroma.soykaf.com
@frankiesaxx @HerraBRE @cwebber StackOverflow won't anymore. I've been using it with them (but also have a password login these days), originally with my identi.ca user, then with ClaimID (I think it was), and then with Launchpad. An era is ending. :'(

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/307647/support-for-openid-ends-on-july-1-2018

Bonus meme link:

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/207388/why-is-the-handlesuccess-method-such-a-terrible-one
Jeff Allen @profoundlynerdy@mastodon.technology

@cwebber @HerraBRE Agreed. Too bad Namecoin kind of flopped. It would have made a great DNS replacement, especially on Tor / I2P.

Christopher Lemmer Webber @cwebber

@profoundlynerdy @HerraBRE No need for namecoin... a petnames system is better (but can include a namecoin-like system as an equal participant)

Jeff Allen @profoundlynerdy@mastodon.technology

@cwebber @HerraBRE So, you think Namecoin itself is DOA as a means of name resolution?

Christopher Lemmer Webber @cwebber

@profoundlynerdy @HerraBRE I think Namecoin is really too much like DNS to be the *root* naming system. However that doesn't mean Namecoin, something Namecoin-like, or even DNS are entities that should not exist... to the contrary, we will always want naming hubs, but in a petnames system dns and namecoin are equal participants among many.

m0n5t3r @m0n5t3r@gs.m0n5t3r.info
@cwebber @herrabre @profoundlynerdy I looked into namecoin a few years ago, and everything was already colonized by squatters, so it's already useless; much like DNS, indeed
Jeff Allen @profoundlynerdy@mastodon.technology

@m0n5t3r @HerraBRE @cwebber I had the same experience.

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