Hi Christian, Thanks so much for the clear (and quick) answers! They were very helpful. If I may, I have a couple of extra things to ask based on these answers.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ On Thursday, 13 Jun 2019 12:45 AM, Christian Grothoff wrote: > > ### 3: How might I make use of my "ego"s and GNS zones from > > multiple machines? > We don't have a convenient way to do this, but if you are a competent > sysadmin you can just copy the files from > $HOME/.local/share/gnunet/identity/egos/ from one system to the other > (that's where the private keys are) and restart the peer to have the > identity subsystem rescan the directory. That makes sense, so to do that I'd probably be writing some form of simple sync script to automatically sync between the machines when reachable. Is some means of using an ego across multiple peers a planned feature to come up in the future? Or is the idea of having a different ego or set of egos for each device the intended usage? If it is, then what's the intended/planned means of having coherency between different devices? > > If not, then would it be > > reasonable to run most if not all of my GNUnet content from my > > VPS which will be on all the time? > > Yes, indeed. Same for the GNS zones. Right! I understand that better now. So if I store my content and GNS records (and maybe also egos) on my VPS, would I need to be copying it to the devices I'd be using to directly interact with GNUnet (as with above)? Or would it be possible to have GNS zones on each device that I can directly delegate to my VPS' GNS? I think what I'm trying to understand here is - from a user perspective - what the intended way of using GNUnet is for a user that has multiple devices and - at least with a legacy internet mindset (for now) - is after some form of coherence between these devices, as it's very rare that someone with multiple devices uses each only for very specific and distinct tasks where having distinct GNS and egos for each would be fine. You asked about suggestions for the documentation, I think having some explanation of the relation between peers, GNS zones, and egos could be very useful - in particular explaining what depends on what, what things can be moved between others, and especially in the more usage-oriented sections, what the expected approach is. Describing an ideal mindset towards GNUnet would make it much easier to be approaching it in a way where the user isn't trying to "translate" the legacy internet into the GNUnet. For example, a section named "Publishing public content" could describe the best approach for people that would want to do the equivalent of host a personal website or closest analogue to that. Another section might be titled "Managing multiple peers" and could explain the specific purpose of egos and GNS zones from a user's perspective and what the intended approach is for a user with multiple devices, such as pointing out the specific directories to copy between machines but also what usability implications that might have and how best to work with egos across multiple devices. I think there are already very good sections that cover actually using GNUnet - the ones for using the GTK programs for instance made things much clearer for me to understand - so having more of such sections to cover more aspects of using GNUnet would be incredibly helpful. > > ### 6: How might an organisation manage a presence on GNUnet? > While GNS's "VPN" records in combination with our IP-over-GNUnet > subsystem allow this, this kind of client-server deployment is more of a > backwards-compatibility thing. We have started very early work on a > secure multiparty auction protocol (ebay-like), and I would imagine we > might similarly eventually have something like a decentralized shopping > protocol, where you effectively would specify the product you are > looking for and get offers from all shops offering the particular > product. So at that point, someone running an online shop would post the > catalog of their products with prices, and wouldn't have to bother with > JS/CSS and styling & marketing. But YMMV, that's at this point just my > totally crazy and very, very long-term vision (which I have no plans to > work on this decade, much more pressing issues out there first ;-)). I don't have any follow-up questions to this, I just wanted to say that when that clicked in my head it was very satisfying. I think it's a truly brilliant system because it just benefits everyone massively. Very excited to see such a system in action when it eventually happens. > Great, you're welcome. And concrete suggestions for improving our > documentation to make these questions obsolete for the next person would > be particularly welcome ;-) As I mentioned before, I think the most helpful additions for me and people like me would be sections describing a variety of use-cases and how they'd be approach using GNUnet. Making the ideal mindset clear and going over the most common things people do on the legacy internet, explaining how they're different/not needed with GNUnet, and explaining how to achieve the fundamental goal of that activity using GNUnet would mean that I and others can very quickly get connected and start actively participating in GNUnet, publishing content for others to read, doing research and browsing entertainment content (maybe more so later than now with the current scale of GNUnet), communicating with friends and family, and shopping (again, more so later than now). Some of this is already covered of course. I'd be thinking what would almost amount to a "GNUnet for dummies". To be more sure of what I think would be most useful, I'll need to get GNUnet installed and running on one of my machines, which I'm planning on doing today to see how far I can get. Thanks again for all the wonderful explanations! Olie. _______________________________________________ GNUnet-developers mailing list GNUnet-developers@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnunet-developers