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GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

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Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

#51

Post by nilved »

cxxv wrote: post #17
jMyles wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion that a file can be illegal makes as much sense to the internet as a plant being illegal makes to the earth. Especially when it has the side effect of inhibiting what otherwise might be a compelling solution.

Your analogy doesn't hold up, as (for one) we have society and plants don't. I'm glad that child porn is illegal (which is usually distributed in files), as it makes the world safer for children. Also: some plants are serious jerks.

If pi goes on forever, it contains any and all representations of child porn that could exist. The first person to calculate pi that far will be breaking the law. No, that doesn't make sense, nor does any sort of information being illegal. What does make sense is to legislate the actions that can generate that data, or the misappropriation of that data.

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

#52

Post by krupan »

DannoHung wrote: post #46

Sweet as hell. My only quibble is the idea of using the blockchain for validated naming. I think it'd end up in a landgrab which is nasty. As much as we all hate DNS, having the ability to kick a squatter off someone's name is probably a good thing. Personally I don't think having a crazy hash for identification is a bad thing. Rather, what you need to do is just have some sort of reasonable personal contact book so…

These are just usernames, not trade marked domain names. What did you do when someone got to gmail/twitter/whatever before you did and picked the name you liked? You just picked a different name, or added some digits to the end of the one you liked. You could do the same thing here.

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

#54

Post by icebraining »

DannoHung wrote: post #50
cjbprime wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand the landgrab complaint: this costs $0.08 per username registered ($0.16 if you want to avoid races with miners), in comparison to centralized sites, which usually cost $0 per username registered. Why does this lose?

Centralization is about equivalent to ICANN being able to kick off a squatter. A truly decentralized system with first to register doesn't have a way to kick off squatters.

Well, the current ones don't, but it could. Decentralized networks just need decentralized decision, ie., you could have a process by which the majority of the nodes decide to kick off a squatter.

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

#55

Post by fao_ »

cjbprime wrote: post #37
arxpoetica wrote: post #19

Major fan of this idea. But how does one address the GUI challenges presented by leaving GitHub behind? It can't be understated that GitHub provides an amazing (communal/social) user experience.

(Author here.) You're right, of course. This is just a first step. One interesting followup idea might be that the BitTorrent library I'm using, webtorrent, also works in browsers over WebRTC. But I'm not using that because I wouldn't know what to do with a git cloned repo inside of a browser tab. Maybe someone else will though. :)

Perhaps approaching it the way (I assume) TPB does it, and have the comments section, etc, handled through BitTorrent?

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

#56

Post by Skunkleton »

I could see this integrating really nicely with mailing lists. The commit could be sent out to the mailing list, and anyone who is interested in reviewing the code or doing a merge would already have the information they need, no blockchain required.

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

#57

Post by physcab »

This is an aside but I like the author's writing style. Not only is he clear but also describes why he's doing what he's doing and how it's important to him and others. Really helps me give the ideas more thought!

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

#60

Post by minot »

rektide wrote: post #38

Lovely work! We ask for the commit we want and connect to a node with BitTorrent, but once connected we conduct this Smart Protocol negotiation in an overlay connection on top of the BitTorrent wire protocol, in what’s called a BitTorrent Extension. Then the remote node makes us a packfile and tells us the hash of that packfile, and then we start downloading that packfile from it and any other nodes who are seeding i…

> The un-updateability of torrents is something that seems to seriously limit it's use.

I am not involved with the development of torrents at all but (please bear with me until the end) my initial reaction is that we should think of the lack of ability of torrents to update as a feature and not as a bug.

Perhaps if ability of torrents to update is a concern then it warrants a new peer to peer protocol? (Please note that this is not the case of http://xkcd.com/927/?cmpid=pscau as I am not advocating a new protocol for every use case)

It seems like we can sign torrent files with gpg keys. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps, we can allow updating in torrents if we require that the updates be signed with the same private key as the original torrent? Am I barking up the right tree here?

Edit: Oops. I edited this post before I saw the reply about BEP-0039. Apologies.

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