This strongly de-emphasizes IPLD in the specs. It isn't entirely removed: the data model page now has an explicit section discussion the history and connection between atproto data and IPLD.
The motivation here is two-fold: IPLD can be confusing to devs digging in to atproto for the first time, and there is some potential standards body baggage/history.
In terms of dev understanding: IPLD is conceptually complex, and has a bunch of features/ecosystem we don't use. atproto early adopter devs may have been already familiar with IPLD so the reference was an asset, but now it is probably more confusing. Keeping some reference is helpful in case folks want to re-use IPLD implementation libraries or storage projects.
In terms of standards: we want to pare down our standards "dependency tree" as much as possible. IPLD has not (yet) been formalized in an established multi-stakeholder body like the W3C, IETF, or ISO, and that can be friction when taking standards to such bodies. For our use of DAG-CBOR, we can reference the relevant normalization rules discussed in the CBOR RFCs themselves.
This strongly de-emphasizes IPLD in the specs. It isn't entirely removed: the data model page now has an explicit section discussion the history and connection between atproto data and IPLD.
The motivation here is two-fold: IPLD can be confusing to devs digging in to atproto for the first time, and there is some potential standards body baggage/history.
In terms of dev understanding: IPLD is conceptually complex, and has a bunch of features/ecosystem we don't use. atproto early adopter devs may have been already familiar with IPLD so the reference was an asset, but now it is probably more confusing. Keeping some reference is helpful in case folks want to re-use IPLD implementation libraries or storage projects.
In terms of standards: we want to pare down our standards "dependency tree" as much as possible. IPLD has not (yet) been formalized in an established multi-stakeholder body like the W3C, IETF, or ISO, and that can be friction when taking standards to such bodies. For our use of DAG-CBOR, we can reference the relevant normalization rules discussed in the CBOR RFCs themselves.