I still really want to make the wave platform we've been talking about for awhile. I just don't have any time because I need to work to eat.
So I've spent the last month thinking about running a kickstarter to fund the work. Christian's email was really timely. I want arbitrary JSON documents, or arbitrary embedding like we talked about a few months ago. I want a protocol based on real P2P algorithms rather than the hacky mess we have at the moment with trees of servers connecting via an XMPP extension I want the same fundamental protocol to work server-server or server-client. The OT stuff should work like git. No single person can maintain our 500k of legacy java code. I want to write a better version with much cleaner separation of OT protocol and application specifics. I still want a web client, but it should be written in pure javascript. Messages should be cryptographically secure from snooping. The way I see it, there's fundamentally three pieces that make up wave: 1. A set of OT primitives which allow peers to generate & interpret operations 2. A platform on top of (1) for exchanging operations between networked peers 3. An application on top of (2) which is trying to replace email These pieces should be separate from one another, and usable in other contexts. I have a clear idea of how we can make (1) and (2) work. The OT part we've talked about on the list and I've been slowly prototyping out here: http://github.com/josephg/tp2stuff I have a bunch of applications I want to build on top of a platform like this. For example, I want my text editor, compiler & unit tests to all talk to one another so my text editor doesn't need language-specific completion or syntax checking, and so my friends can jump in and help me code. I don't know what the best way to build (3) is - but I'm more than happy to build the platform that a new kind of email could be built on top of. Maybe the current WIAB design is totally fine for that part - though I want end-to-end encryption. I don't know when the right time to do this would be. I don't know if I should work alone or if we should put a team together (Hi Ali!). If I were to do this properly it would take about a month of prep to get a kickstarter together, and if it is successful I'd want to quit my job to do it. I think it'd take me about 6 months to a year of work to get a stable, secure platform working (probably closer to a year), and I'm also not allowed to stay in the US without an employer on my visa. The earliest this will probably happen is the end of the year. Kickstarter might also not be the right way to fund it. Cryptocat was funded in 2012 mostly by Radio Free Asia's Open Tech Fund[1] to the tune of ~$100k. A kickstarter would give us users (great) and publicity, but the right private sponsor might also work. Maybe the most contentious part of all, I don't think I'd want to call it wave. But it really would be the grandchild of what we've been working on all this time. Thats my thoughts. If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears. As I say, I'm keen to build this, but I'm too old to live on ramen in a granny shack. This thing we've been working toward has real value, and could be put to great effect if we can actually make it good. -J [1] https://crypto.cat/documents/report-1213.pdf https://www.opentechfund.org/
