On 03/17/2010 04:19 PM, Blaine Cook wrote: > Extending secure interaction models, especially those encoding group > dynamics, to a pure p2p environment would be challenging at best.
Yeah, I totally agree. However, there is some middle ground, but I think it is probably easier to bridge the divide from the p2p side rather than the website side. You do not necessarily need a website to provide persistent presence, and you do not need to trust the provider of your persistence. Two examples: mozilla weave and wuala. In both cases, your data is encrypted on the client and stored in the cloud (by mozilla in the former case, and by wuala + distributed clients in the latter case). Wuala has two basic ways of sharing: (1) with other users via the wuala client (2) with other users via the website (either publicly or via unique url) So, wuala has a hybrid model. In case #1, the sharing uses a distributed hash table of client-side encrypted segments. In case #2, the files are decrypted and pushed to the wuala website. This allows the user a nice range of choices in the security versus sharing continuum. It also provides persistence that you can pay for (by buying quota from wuala) or persistence that you can earn (by keeping your client open and hosting other user's data). So, eventually, I think the wuala model is the future, but it will be hard to get there. My primary point is that it would be impossible to achieve this model by starting with a website. You must first start with a p2p client and then build a way to sacrifice security for sharing later. But a project like this would take a long time to bear fruit. So, I still think it makes sense to talk of two projects, gnu-social-website, and gnu-social-client. I agree with what Blaine says about gnu-social-website and gnu-social-protocol. It is also the more realistic project and it is an important project. In the long term, however, there is a clear technological choice that is most compatible with a free society and the goals of the FSF: decentralized p2p clients. Liberty demands nothing less! -elijah
