The biggest benefit to a P2P-capable system is federation. Currently, the wave federation algorithms create a distributed tree of servers, and they're vulnerable to netsplits if one of the root servers goes offline. Maintaining that tree is complex and unnecessary - there are better algorithms we can use instead.
I imagine most devices will (most of the time) still connect to a single server. But if our OT system can manage P2P anyway and our system supports OT over arbitrary JSON blobs, there's a few really neat things we can do with that. So, this is something I've been wanting for ages - Imagine you're working on a software project. You put all the source code inside a JSON wave object and you edit it there. Because its a shared OT document, your compiler can join in on the document and annotate your code (live) with syntax highlighting, errors and autocomplete suggestions. It would know at a very granular level which functions need to be recompiled as you edit. Your unit tests could rerun themselves automatically and mark in your source code which tests failed and where. Its like a lego set for IDEs - your editor doesn't have to understand your programming language, your compiler doesn't have to know what editor you're using and where, and all the pieces can be on whatever computers are most convenient for you. And of course, you can pair program for free. You could build stuff like that on top of ShareJS today, but it would require a centralized server - and you have to put that somewhere. If the server is on your local machine, you can't upload the edits you're making to another OT server (like your private wave server). If its a remote server, you'll get terrible latency between making a change in your editor and your compiler finding out about it. With a system that supports P2P OT, we can make servers connect any way we want and It'll all just work. -J On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Dave <w...@glark.co.uk> wrote: > [John B - I wasn't sure where else it would be appropriate to ask this > question, but please forward on anywhere you think it appropriate] > > There are many things about Wave and WIAB that I would like to see improved > / changed, but based on my readings I've been content with the TP1 OT > approach chosen by google (not that I'm even close to an expert) - even if > the WIAB implementation would benefit from some love. > > But one of the things mentioned in the recent wave-forward hangout was the > weakness in Wave's OT implementation for a required canonical version of a > given wave (providing absolute ordering of changesets). Specifically, this > effectively prevents 3 party P2P messaging where there isn't guaranteed to > be that one canonical ordering. My understanding is that Joseph is playing > with some alternative OT algorithms that are TP2, and therefore don't > require arbitration of changeset order. This was specifically called out as > an advantage to support P2P messaging and running the full stack on a phone. > > That got me thinking - why would you want to do that? What are the benefits > of P2P messaging, and are there other reasons to need TP2? > > Most of the messaging and collaboration systems I could think of are > client-server (some with federated servers) and Wave/WIAB support this with > TP1. Most networked phone apps that I'm aware of are also client/server, > and at first glance this seems a good thing - it makes addressing easier and > avoids issues with intermittent connectivity. The ability to have a simple > "wavelike" server (and detached clients) > > I suspect I'm missing something, and I wondered if I'm alone? > > My understanding is that technical interop between the various wave-like > communities will need us to use the same OT alogrithm (eventually), so > clarity on the pros/cons of keeping or changing the wave OT approach would > be a good first step in that direction! > > Dave
