@noeldemartin @baldur @benwerd

But as I am saying this, I realize it is as someone who likes to monitor the project from a bit of a distance. It might well be that the vibrant community is in the chat channels and the many boards that exist.

I feel getting involved there is much higher barrier for newcomers and would love to see the forum more active, and with core team members interacting there. But I have given up on argumenting for that to happen. There's no interest or (more likely) time.

@noeldemartin @baldur @benwerd

Another dynamic that strikes me as odd, is the (seeming to me) lack of interest to engage with other open communities, and look for cross-pollination. For instance AFAIK the offer of @cwebber to discuss ACL vs. OCAP was quickly discarded.

If Linked Data is about anything, it is about creating links and relationships. That imho should go beyond techspecs imho.

Open community seeks collab, startups seek customers + killer products. Idk if that plays a role here.

@humanetech @baldur @benwerd Sure, I agree that those problems exist. And I agree that what happened with the web is very unlikely to happen with Solid. But anyone reading that article without any context may think that Tim's idea of Solid is a startup, and that he's given up on his public-minded ideals. But I don't think that's true.

The fact of how it's turning out is a different topic. If Tim created the web today with the same mindset, it wouldn't produce the same results either.

@noeldemartin @baldur @benwerd

Yes, the distinction should be clearly made, and there was a good chance for confusion.

OTOH, and why I'm reacting, is that to me it is really unknown how strong the boundary between startup and open project are.

For instance the community manager was working for Inrupt (but may not have been the solidproject community manager).

TBL himself drops in on the forum, posts something and then never checks in again to respond. Sure, he's a busy guy, but hey c'mon.

@noeldemartin @baldur @benwerd

Also the formal organization of the project AFAICS, and correct me if I am wrong, is a top-level BDFL hierarchy with TBL as Inrupt CTO & Co-founder / Director at the top.

Though it is not similar, it gives me a kind of feeling as if it were an "open core" initiative.

@noeldemartin @baldur @benwerd

Whether that is the case is unknow-able. Inside Inrupt or other commercial partners the specs may be further evolved, or the strategic direction is set such as to align with the killer products that are under development in parallel to that.

That's just my suspicious mind pondering, and I don't want to be like that, but there is VC money involved and that comes with all the strings attached, most likely.

@humanetech @baldur @benwerd I don't think Tim is acting as BDFL, and the spec is not driven by Inrupt. As far as I know, all the discussions regarding the spec are public and work like any other W3C standard. For example, this one recently happened and not everyone who participated is employed by Inrupt: https://github.com/solid/specification/issues/227

But yes, it's true that *most* people is involved with Inrupt. I think that's just because not enough people outside of Inrupt is interested to join.

@noeldemartin @baldur @benwerd

Thanks for enlightening me on this. It is just the impression I got from reading through the various board and other procedures, where TBL is always mentioned as final decision maker.

But I can't say anything on the actual spec writing day-to-day, as I am not following that process in any detail (or at all).

@noeldemartin @baldur @benwerd

All in all there's a lot of missed community-building opportunity.

Isn't there a grand project with the Belgium government going on? Just guessing it is grand, as you have to follow closely to be in the know. If I were Solid project I'd direct all the people that were exposed to it linea recta to the forum to share experiences together.

@humanetech @baldur @benwerd Yeah, I'm "following closely" the Solid project and I don't know much about that project either. I just know they are working with the government and plan to give PODs to each citizen. Just what I've read on Inrupt's blog and some announcements in Solid World.

The community part definitely has a lot of room for improvement. But I know that's not Inrupt's main goal. The problem is that nobody is taking care of that.

@noeldemartin @baldur @benwerd

That project may well be in a startup's hands, or handled by a consortium.

@humanetech @baldur @benwerd Yes I agree that the boundary between Inrupt and the Solid Community is fuzzy, and maybe there's not as much activity in the community as we would like. But I just wanted to clear up that it's definitely not 100% commercial. As to how much % is commercial or not, that's up for debate.