The Block Protocol is building on a pretty large history of similar ideas, but none have really succeeded. Joel's interest in this project is some cause for hope as is the embrace of existing standards like react, webcomponents, and HTML.
Historically, OpenDoc is pretty relevant. So is OLE. More recently Notion, Coda, Microsoft Loop [1], Anytype.io, etc lean on the same concepts to allow you to break documents into independent & reassemble-able components. There hasn't been a large ecosystem here, although the componentized approach has more traction now as we move away from skeuomorphism.
On the data side, Solid is the most relevant. The models are often the same, users give applications very granular data permissions and progressively authorize data access as required for additional functionality. Developers seem to dislike the model... You don't really know what you're going to be rendering and key features are not really used.
From a pure schema perspective, you have schema.org. It's a pretty comprehensive attempt to catalog structured data for most use cases. It's nice that this project can kinda build on the semantic web, but most people ignore it! That being said, adoption would go a long way towards interoperability between OSS projects.
I'd like to live in a world where everything works together? But I'm not so hopeful at this point because the ecosystem has very weird economics. Ultimately the "Block Developer" needs to be compensated, but the host is the one getting the SaaS or advertising payment. Obviously simple components can be free, but very complex ones may need micropayments, licensing fees, etc.
[1] I helped start Fluid Framework, which is the underlying tech for Microsoft Loop. These are just my opinions and I no longer work for Microsoft.
Presumably no more than a dozen HN readers will understand that comparison, but now that I know he is involved, I wonder if Blocks are basically meant to be a reincarnation of ActiveX controls for the modern web.
The earliest call for something like this that I am aware of is Douglas McIlroy’s 1968 paper calling for “Mass Produced Software Components” which he delivered at the NATO Science Committee, Garmisch, Germany.
It is not exactly what Block Protocol is all about, but it is good reading nonetheless, and most of it still holds true over 50 years later and it does provide additional perspective on how Blocks could be used: https://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/components.txt
Historically, OpenDoc is pretty relevant. So is OLE. More recently Notion, Coda, Microsoft Loop [1], Anytype.io, etc lean on the same concepts to allow you to break documents into independent & reassemble-able components. There hasn't been a large ecosystem here, although the componentized approach has more traction now as we move away from skeuomorphism.
On the data side, Solid is the most relevant. The models are often the same, users give applications very granular data permissions and progressively authorize data access as required for additional functionality. Developers seem to dislike the model... You don't really know what you're going to be rendering and key features are not really used.
From a pure schema perspective, you have schema.org. It's a pretty comprehensive attempt to catalog structured data for most use cases. It's nice that this project can kinda build on the semantic web, but most people ignore it! That being said, adoption would go a long way towards interoperability between OSS projects.
I'd like to live in a world where everything works together? But I'm not so hopeful at this point because the ecosystem has very weird economics. Ultimately the "Block Developer" needs to be compensated, but the host is the one getting the SaaS or advertising payment. Obviously simple components can be free, but very complex ones may need micropayments, licensing fees, etc.
[1] I helped start Fluid Framework, which is the underlying tech for Microsoft Loop. These are just my opinions and I no longer work for Microsoft.