A few days ago, at the Real Time Web Summit, we had a session about Salmon, a protocol for re-aggregated distributed conversations around web content. I was hoping for some feedback and to generate some interest, and I was overwhelmed by the positive reactions, especially after Louis Gray's post "Proposed Salmon Protocol aims to unify Conversations on the Web". Adina Levin's "Salmon - Re-assembling distributed conversations" is a good, insightful review as well. There's clearly a great deal of interest in this, and so I've gone ahead and expanded Salmon's home at salmon-protocol.org with an open source project, salmon-protocol.googlecode.com, and a mailing list, groups.google.com/group/salmon-protocol.The project is a home for all types of open source code related to Salmon, but particularly reference implementations and validators. At the moment, it contains the Python/Google AppEngine source code for the demo at salmon-playground.appspot.com. I also intend to host the actual spec text there for the moment, along with the reference implementation code, and develop both in parallel based on discussions on the mailing list. The list is for discussions about the Salmon Protocol and its implementations.
This is also a call to action. If you are interested in helping to define this new protocol, or work on a reference implementation or validator, please join the mailing list and introduce yourself.
I have not read the spec (yet) but I am wondering if there is anthing in the protocol to prevent spam. It seems like a protocol like this would make the thread vulnerable to spam from the least secured thread across the internet. Many message boards are already overwhelmed by spam and if you aggregate from anyone that wants to participate then you will have given spammers a very easy way to sindicate thier vile garbage.
ReplyDeleteYes, the difficult bits of the protocol are to help prevent spam and abuse. They're still in flux as there are a lot of trade-offs between deployability, openness, and security to be made.
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