blockprotocol VS solid

Relevant to this conversation, I saw Joel Spolsky giving a talk about his new big project/stab at addressing this problem The Block Protocol.

1) The spec says that a block package includes its source code, and the block hub seems to be a browser of block packages, but it doesn't give me the full view into said block packages. Is there a reason for this? Is it on the to-do list?

It's on the to-list indeed - we are going to add links to the source of blocks. The package for distribution will typically be minified and less illuminating, although we can look to expose that too (as well as making it available for request via the API).

2) What's going on with the type signatures here?

The type signatures on functions in the spec definitely need cleaning up to be consistent and more helpful. They are pseudo-code. There are TypeScript types for them (https://github.com/blockprotocol/blockprotocol/blob/main/pac...) which won't be much use to you, but I am including in case they are of someone else.

The schema you mention in the Hub is autogenerated from the TypeScript interface for the block, which can lead to weird artefacts of the sort you identify. We need to add custom codegen to better handle this. It should valid JSON Schema.

This doesn't support the various consumer cloud storage APIs, but you've just reminded me of a project I ran into years ago that seems to still be around: https://remotestorage.io/

There's also Solid which attempts to do something similar: https://solidproject.org/

It is surprising to me this is not talked about more. I see little to none online news, podcasts, YouTube videos or anything else where this is discussed. I only found out about it because of research I did on Tim Berners-Lee in preparation for a Career Day talk at my kids middle school. Otherwise I would have probably not known about it still today. And even after I found out and started watching YouTube videos on the topic, YouTube won't even suggest any related videos about it even after already watching multiple videos on the subject (Web 3.0, Solid Project, Decentralized Web...etc).. is Big Tech trying to keep the web from evolving into what Sir Tim Berners-Lee is proposing?

It's only an unreasonable amount of work if you assume that the user is managing a separate storage backend for each library. If you take the Tim Berners-Lee approach (re: https://solidproject.org/) then each user is only managing one storage backend: the one that stores their data. The marginal cost of hooking in one more library low.

We just have to get a little more fed up with all of these services and then the initial cost of setting it up in the first place will be worth it. Any day now...

Solid is a web native protocol to enable interoperable, read-write, collaborative, and decentralized web, truer to web's original vision.

Manas project(https://github.com/manomayam/manas/tree/main) aims to create a modular framework and ecosystem to create correct, robust storage servers adhering to Solid protocol in rust.

[Solid](https://solidproject.org/) is a web native protocol to enable interoperable, read-write, collaborative, and decentralized web, truer to web's original vision.

    Solid adds to existing Web standards to realise a space where individuals can maintain their autonomy, control their data and privacy, and choose applications and services to fulfil their needs.

You're describing Solid, not the Semantic Web. Granted, Solid uses Semantic technologies to achieve it. https://solidproject.org/

Tim Berners-Lee's Solid project is working on that. Put data in "pods" that are stored on pod servers, which are federated. You can self-host.

It could be a federated layer of identity & personal content decoupled from social platforms.

https://solidproject.org/

Check out https://solidproject.org (If you want a short intro I recently gave a ~30min talk about it: https://noeldemartin.com/fosdem)