On 6 September 2012 02:18, Dr. Daniel Alexander Smith <[email protected]>wrote:
> On 14 Aug 2012, at 16:35, Nick M. Daly <[email protected]> wrote: > > > In short: we have several groups of folks working on problems of > > standardized, distributed, and data-centric applications. Why aren't we > > cooperating, or at least communicating, about our problems and > > observations? > > > > ---- > > > > Lionel Dricot [0], Dr. Daniel Smith [1, 2], Michiel de Jong [3], Mike > > Macgirvin [4], and Markus Sabadello [5] seem to have come to similar > > conclusions: having a bunch of semi-interoperable applications that do > > the same thing but don't share their data is wasted effort and added > > complexity (it's "silly"). When applications can share their data store > > and give the privilege, responsibility, and complexity of storing their > > data to a separate data layer, writing applications becomes a lot easier > > and the applications themselves become more reliable, flexible, and > > under the user's control. > > > > Here, we have several communities with at least a few dozen people > > working in this problem space, so we should try to communicate and > > cooperate on our shared goals. In this world of limited resources and > > volunteered time, there's no greater sin than duplicated effort. > > > > I believe that the Unhosted, WebBox, and Friendica projects are furthest > > along in their work, and it'd be interesting to hear which pieces > > they've completed. We could then start getting ideas of how everything > > can interact, cross project. Some FreedomBox tools, like Exmachnia [6] > > (and, to a lesser extent, FreedomBuddy [7]), might also be useful here. > > > > I'd love to hear any thoughts you folks have on this subject. > > > > Thanks for your time, > > Nick > > > > 0: http://ploum.net/post/freasy-future-for-gnome > > 1: https://github.com/danielsmith-eu/webbox > > 2: http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~mvk/webbox-pim.pdf > > 3: http://unhosted.org/manifesto.html > > 4: http://friendica.com/node/24 > > 5: http://projectdanube.org/ > > 6: Exmachnia is a tool to allow maintainable, system-wide automated > > configuration from any front-end. > > 7: FreedomBuddy is location-ignorant location tool: it lets friends keep > > communicating despite constant motion through both IP- and > > meat-space, without relying on third parties. > > Hi Nick, Everyone, > > I am indeed the main developer on WebBox. Since the original e-mail I've > looked into the other software, and have started on developing > compatibility with RemoteStorage. Specifically I've implemented WebDAV > (almost entirely, more than is required by RemoteStorage), and WebFinger. > I'm almost there with OAuth2, but some important deadlines have stalled > this, but it should be there around mid-October. > > I agree that fragmentation and duplicated effort is a bad thing, and I > want to do what I can to prevent it on the WebBox front. > > We have some particular offerings, in terms of the methods of > WebBox-to-WebBox sharing communication that seem to be unique, and I will > want to push those ideas into some form of standard way to doing machine to > machine sharing (all using existing protocols of course). > > Freedombox is definitely a driver for us, and has been heavily referenced > in our meetings, although we're not as au fait with the hardware (dream > plug?) as the mailing list is - we're not involved with any hardware in > terms of our own remit, so I'm happy to push to whatever makes sense, > although I should say that I do have a couple of Raspberry Pis here that > I've been enjoying playing with. > > We're almost at a point where we will want to tackle things like WebBox > communication through NAT, using changing IPs and NAT-to-NAT broadband type > things - so for us, any help in that area will be welcome. If I can avoid > burning our own cycles on that kind of development, that would be great, as > it's not really an area we're particularly into (and, selfishly, not an > area I'm confident in submitting research papers into! I'm doing this under > my academic research hat at the moment.) > > In conclusion, thanks for the update, I completely agree that we do need > better communications. I for one have subscribed to the freedombox list. > > I wouldn't mind a new list/organisation that for just for "us" though - > perhaps the RWW group as Melvin Carvalho suggested, would be a good place > to start? The WebBox history aligns with this quite well, as we did start > WebBox in TimBL's office at W3C/CSAIL. > You're very welcome to use the RWW list to help develop ideas. We're about 60 like minded people now, it's a pretty clued up group, and timbl is a member. You should try and drop by his office again if you get a chance, he's brilliant at getting to the heart of a problem. In any case, would definitely like to keep track of WebBox and glad to see progress! :) > > Sorry for the wall of text! I'll keep an eye on this list in the mean > time, and I encourage any ideas of how we can merge our efforts (and I'll > try to reply in a more timely manner!). > > > Best, > Dan > > > > -- > Dr. Daniel Alexander Smith > Research Fellow > Scalable Semantic Web Interfaces > > Web and Internet Science Research Group > Electronics and Computer Science > University of Southampton > > http://danielsmith.eu/ > > > _______________________________________________ > Freedombox-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss >
_______________________________________________ Freedombox-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
