@hanscees @MarloesdeKoning @ShadowJonathan
The post was written in a context, targeting people interested to implement ActivityPub API. A (long!) intro that precedes that writing is https://coding.social/blog/grassroots-evolution
There are particular anti-patterns at work in how fediverse evolves. One is well-known in IT, called "Big ball of mud". The other I coined "Whack-a-mole programming": maintaining app-by-app interoperability against an ever growing number of moving release targets.
Both anti-patterns introduce and increase tech debt and protocol decay, and are caused by a) the incompleteness / flexibility of ActivityPub, b) accepted work method of post-facto "follow the leader" interoperability, and c) lack of good grassroots standardization process to evolve healthily.
ActivityPub API offers the chance to address these points. Fedi goes from app development to solution development, where you interoperate based on common well-understood business domains, not on the basis of arbitrary app features.