The protocol spec links on the OStatus site seem to be dead.

The spec has now been posted: http://ostatus.org/sites/default/files/ostatus-1.0-draft-1-s...

I find this new Web 2.0 flavor of spec mashup as hard to follow as a Twitter conversation. I wish people would provide a complete spec (if only as an "informative" adjunct to the real spec) rather than including-by-reference ten different sub-specs, none of which make sense in isolation.

What's the difference/relationship between OStatus and OpenMicroBlogging? Are they the same thing or something?

I tried looking into OMB for a side project about a year ago and had a very hard time finding any clear documentation, and just looking again now it doesn't seem any easier.

There seems to have been a mass renaming; Laconica/Identica became StatusNet and OMB became OStatus.

Laconica -> StatusNet

OMB -> OStatus

Identica -> Identica