I certainly don't see FA being on board with a federated model, since they have proven resistant to change and would suffer most from having their walled garden torn down.
I imagine it's the smaller sites like ArtSpots, InkBunny and SoFurry who have more to gain and would probably be where the project would have to start. The technology and know-how exists in the form of XML, JSON, oAuth, xAuth, OpenID and XMPP, I don't know much about the technical side but it is feasible if someone had the right vision on how it would tie together and how it would clearly benefit everyone.
If the likes of ArtSpots, InkBunny, SoFurry and other small players were onboard for such an ambitious project, the next thing would be to create a kind of CMS system or a protocol an existing CMS can plugin which would enable outsiders, who don't want their art hosted on any of the existing galleries, to be able to enable it on their own art portfolio website. Like how Status.net works where people can be a member of Identi.ca, but you can host your own microblog on your own server and still be connected to Identi.ca. An artist could have his own art site which is decorated exactly how he wants it, but still have the benefit of social connectivity... what a pipe dream...
But it's only a dream at the end of the day.
The sad reality is for as much as people like to think furs are good with technical stuff, they're not that great. They have always been followers and never trend setters. The likes of FurAffinity, Furryne.ws and FurBook (defunct) do impersonations of the likes of DeviantArt, Reddit/digg and FaceBook respectively.
I certainly don't see FA being on board with a federated model, since they have proven resistant to change and would suffer most from having their walled garden torn down.
I imagine it's the smaller sites like ArtSpots, InkBunny and SoFurry who have more to gain and would probably be where the project would have to start. The technology and know-how exists in the form of XML, JSON, oAuth, xAuth, OpenID and XMPP, I don't know much about the technical side but it is feasible if someone had the right vision on how it would tie together and how it would clearly benefit everyone.
If the likes of ArtSpots, InkBunny, SoFurry and other small players were onboard for such an ambitious project, the next thing would be to create a kind of CMS system or a protocol an existing CMS can plugin which would enable outsiders, who don't want their art hosted on any of the existing galleries, to be able to enable it on their own art portfolio website. Like how Status.net works where people can be a member of Identi.ca, but you can host your own microblog on your own server and still be connected to Identi.ca. An artist could have his own art site which is decorated exactly how he wants it, but still have the benefit of social connectivity... what a pipe dream...
But it's only a dream at the end of the day.
The sad reality is for as much as people like to think furs are good with technical stuff, they're not that great. They have always been followers and never trend setters. The likes of FurAffinity, Furryne.ws and FurBook (defunct) do impersonations of the likes of DeviantArt, Reddit/digg and FaceBook respectively.