Comment by xrisk
3 days ago
What reason does Bluesky give for not opening up their AppView code?
Another notable component that is closed source is the discovery feed generator, where at least there is some reason.
3 days ago
What reason does Bluesky give for not opening up their AppView code?
Another notable component that is closed source is the discovery feed generator, where at least there is some reason.
I asked this and got
> We did a backend rewrite from postgres to scylla and it has a bunch of deployment specific stuff, but is functionally identical to the open source postgres version. Its not really a "v2" in terms of new features, we just made it make use of our hardware really well[1]
[1]: https://bsky.app/profile/iame.li/post/3l7e3jfqit22s
Thanks, so are both the Postgres and Scylla versions maintained in terms of new features?
I wasn't aware that AppView v1 was open source, and the most recent info I'm aware of on the topic is https://alice.bsky.sh/post/3laega7icmi2q, https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/discussions/2961 and https://docs.bsky.app/docs/advanced-guides/federation-archit..., and everything I've heard about Bluesky was that open source appview is "still coming".
It's not coming, it never went away… As I understand it, the "business layer" with all the logic is above the data later, shared by the Postgres and Scylla versions, and the data layer just makes queries to the database. I think they are using the Postgres version locally for development.
The App View frontend is open source: https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app
Much of the backend is open source as well: https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/tree/main/packages
What is not are the extra services they run to provide a better and faster UX. Even if it was open source, it likely costs 10s of thousands to run per month (they have moved largely to "onprem" hardware instead of the cloud aiui)
That's the frontend code, it doesn't include the backend API services, which are closed source.
the backend (the AppView) can be found here:
https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/tree/main/packages...
there are various supporting services written in Go as well
https://github.com/bluesky-social/indigo
Which is what I said in the second sentence
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that's not the appview, that's the client
App View is a bit fuzzy of a term. To me it seems like a combination of frontend, backend, custom lexicon, and supporting services. There isn't really another place in the spec or design where clients or browsers fit in, which do in fact provide a view of the network via an app.
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when I read the spec it seemed like the operator of an AppView & Relay would be most in need of compensation for their hosting costs due to the amount of demand on those components so I believe the spec allows an operator to implement their own AppView & monetize it as that operator sees fit, so that they can afford to operate the service and maybe even make money off of it so that they can make it their full time jobs.
It seems this way to me as well. ATProto fundamentally changes how monetization works in social media by removing lockin. It's going to be interesting to see what emerges from this design decision.
Another interesting way to view ATProto is that it could be a collection of headless features and network browsers that leverage those feature providers.
what else? profit by means of doing work that benefits first and foremost the private proprietors of the closed source
if they gave it away (which used to be unfeasible until the digital era) they feel they’re loosing their valuable effort which they’re wont on concentrating, not diluting.