Look into supporting NodeInfo

[strugee]

NodeInfo is a standardized way for exposing information about distributed social network nodes. See http://nodeinfo.diaspora.software/.

I haven't read the spec so I'm not sure if this is even something we should do (note that our protocol stack looks very different from the other current implementors), but we should at least look into it.

[wobbol]

Here's the spec digested from pump.io's POV

A JRD must be served at example.org/.well-known/nodeinfo . It should link the diaspora nodeinfo schema with a URI on example.com that returns the nodeinfo JSON document.

comments on nodeinfo schema 1.0

• software - pump.io is not in the enum here. An update to the schema is required.
• protocols - if this list could be changed by configuration, some restructuring needs to take place
• services - dito
• usage - looks like this member will need to be computed on request or at some interval.
• map - this is probably useless for pump.io purposes unless, nodeinfo became heavily used in the pumpverse.

If pump.io serves JSON on a regular basis like I think it does, I think adding this as a feature would require:

• reading the
  • current configuration
  • version
  • FQDN
• computing use statistics
• shoving it all in a nodeinfo URI
• writing example.org/.well-known/nodeinfo

Other federated services that could integrate with pump.io would benefit, because it provides a uniform interface to check server capabilities. I think something like this is needed for the federated web, but I think using diaspora's schema without having a dialog with them first would be misguided.

[strugee]

@wobbol noted, thanks. That's a useful starting point for looking into this. (Which FYI probably won't happen for a while.)

[strugee]

If anyone really wants this speak up but I don't think there's a compelling usecase for it and it adds complexity. Plus it seems like it's mostly used in the diaspora* world?

[strypey]

It would be great if pump.io devs could take another look at supporting NodeInfo as part of the work of adding ActivityPub support. It's used by a number of instance monitoring sites to gather stats. See: https://github.com/thefederationinfo/the-federation.info/issues/106#issuecomment-446339479

[strugee]

I've no time to look into this right now since it's finals season for me, but I'll at least link to #1241 so that this doesn't drop off our radar whenever the rest of the ActivityPub stuff lands.

[ghost]

I'd like to suggest reopening this issue, at least if pump.io is still alive as a project. Here's another fediverse directory that uses nodeinfo: https://fediverse.network

My own project, https://www.fediverse.space, does too. I'd like to include pump.io on this site but there's currently no way to get any details about a server -- e.g. it's name, user count, and so on. Nodeinfo is becoming pretty popular outside diaspora, and there's a schema version 2.0 that allows any string as the server type: http://nodeinfo.diaspora.software/ns/schema/2.0

[jaywink]

@strugee maybe you would be interested in taking a look at this proposal for a more flexible and future proof alternative to NodeInfo?