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Locking the Web Open: A Call for a Distributed Web

brewster.kahle.org

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Re: Locking the Web Open: A Call for a Distributed Web

#21

Post by astazangasta »

dikaiosune wrote: post #15

I would love to live in this future -- but where's the incentive for businesses? How do they make more money developing in this way? How do users get more value accessing sites developed in a purely decentralized fashion? How do we avoid JavaScript being the basis for all of this? Interesting (almost exciting) vision, but I don't see why the majority of existing users would move. They just don't get much value out of…

Who cares? The web preceded the Internet company. I remember, it was a great place full of interesting people and things, not shitty content mills crammed full of ads. A system like the one described means that ordinary people can build the web again, which is great. Businesses can continue as they are.

Re: Locking the Web Open: A Call for a Distributed Web

#22

Post by astazangasta »

zaphar wrote: post #19
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interests of society do not revolve around making life as convenient as possible for business. It is the onus on business to adapt itself to new conditions. A distributed web scheme should orient itself around giving its users freedom. All other concerns are secondary.

This may be philosophically correct. But in a non platonic realm you must somehow fund these sorts of things. If it's not possible to make money on them then it may not be feasible to implement for the masses. The keyword being masses there. There all kinds of distributed p2p web projects out there. None of them appeal to a majority though they are all niche products. Most of these proposals forget the need fund mark…

Wikipedia is one of the best sites on the web and didn't think in this way. The whole point of such a system is to remove capital requirements (hardware) from the process of building massive websites. It inherently means less funding is required.

Re: Locking the Web Open: A Call for a Distributed Web

#24

Post by omouse »

That's been the goal of the Freenet project for a while, to build a distributed encrypted network protocol. It distributes storage and processing which is why full encryption is necessary; you don't want 10 people reading your email when it's distributed across their machines.

The challenge for Freenet has been speed and fun. To have something like Facebook you have to download a JAR plugin for Freenet that adds that capability. That's not fun. The speed is slow because of the encryption and constant syncing.

It might be better to look at the MediaGoblin and Pump.io (and StatusNet to some extent) for ideas on federated platforms. The challenge there again is fun; it isn't fun to set things up.

Re: Locking the Web Open: A Call for a Distributed Web

#25

Post by heywire »

omouse wrote: post #24

That's been the goal of the Freenet project for a while, to build a distributed encrypted network protocol. It distributes storage and processing which is why full encryption is necessary; you don't want 10 people reading your email when it's distributed across their machines. The challenge for Freenet has been speed and fun. To have something like Facebook you have to download a JAR plugin for Freenet that adds that…

Am I the only one who is scared to even try things like Freenet and Tor, for the risk that someone will somehow transmit illegal content across my connection? I'm not talking about content piracy, but the types of things that I don't even want to type for fear of having the terms associated with my username.

Re: Locking the Web Open: A Call for a Distributed Web

#26

Post by nopcode »

Just replacing DNS with a decentralised alternative would be a big step, yet appeared to be an impossible one (zookos triangle).

Something this big requires everyone using the internet to switch to the new system or it will never work, and that will never happen. It's the dancing pig problem.

We can't go back on the decisions that have been made, only go forward.

Re: Locking the Web Open: A Call for a Distributed Web

#27

Post by rgbrgb »

astazangasta wrote: post #21
dikaiosune wrote: post #15

I would love to live in this future -- but where's the incentive for businesses? How do they make more money developing in this way? How do users get more value accessing sites developed in a purely decentralized fashion? How do we avoid JavaScript being the basis for all of this? Interesting (almost exciting) vision, but I don't see why the majority of existing users would move. They just don't get much value out of…

Who cares? The web preceded the Internet company. I remember, it was a great place full of interesting people and things, not shitty content mills crammed full of ads. A system like the one described means that ordinary people can build the web again, which is great. Businesses can continue as they are.

Ordinary people can and still do build the web. Why would decentralization allow for more of this? It's cheaper and easier than ever to spin up a heroku/do/aws/google/azure instance and put up a website. Things like squarespace and weebly even make it so you don't have to do any programming whatsoever.

In theory I want this decentralized web stuff to succeed but in practice the only killer apps I see are overthrowing governments and kiddy porn. I'd be happy to be proven wrong. From where I stand, decentralization seems like more of a social/product problem than a technical one. If you prove there's a product that end-users want that can't be built or accessed from the current web, people (end-users and developers) will switch.

Re: Locking the Web Open: A Call for a Distributed Web

#28

Post by colordrops »

dweinus wrote: post #12

I want this for all the reasons they list, but it seems there are huge unanswered questions for anything beyond a permission-less static page. Imagine you are developing a modern web app in the locked open paradigm. Is all system data distributed, including private user data and passwords? The only solution I can come up with is homomorphic encryption, which is not performant enough and still probably leaves a huge t…

A system like this that uses passwords would be poorly designed. You would use private keys that are never stored online.

Re: Locking the Web Open: A Call for a Distributed Web

#29

Post by kodablah »

dweinus wrote: post #12

I want this for all the reasons they list, but it seems there are huge unanswered questions for anything beyond a permission-less static page. Imagine you are developing a modern web app in the locked open paradigm. Is all system data distributed, including private user data and passwords? The only solution I can come up with is homomorphic encryption, which is not performant enough and still probably leaves a huge t…

Point by point...(sorry for the long post)

"homomorphic encryption, which is not performant enough"

It is fast enough on a per viewer basis, and in a DHT downloading the database doesn't mean it was all encrypted w/ one key. Each user encrypts his data as needed, or common groups of users encrypt data for each other with each others keys.

"If I make any mistakes on the database security"

This is why encryption is the underpinning. Sure you can still leak your private key like you can leak an SSH key today.

"in client javascript"

Nobody would use a distributed network where this was the case. In many cases (i.e. MaidSafe) they are developing a browser plugin for client side to communicate with the backend.

"where does system processing that is independent of user activity (scheduled tasks, etc) happen?"

Many of these now-being-designed systems have a pay-for-computing concept. Granted several (not all, unless you want to be limited by a single-file-line blockchain forever) have to agree on the results. Give some computing for other computes and get some. As for "scheduled task" timing issues are inherently difficult for these systems and I don't expect the "system" to trigger a job but rather a user to trigger it. Introducing timing into these distributed networks can be hairy.

The real problem that needs to be tackled is a way for the common human to hold his private key in his memory or some other non-digitally-retrievable way.

Re: Locking the Web Open: A Call for a Distributed Web

#30

Post by vezzy-fnord »

zaphar wrote: post #19
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interests of society do not revolve around making life as convenient as possible for business. It is the onus on business to adapt itself to new conditions. A distributed web scheme should orient itself around giving its users freedom. All other concerns are secondary.

This may be philosophically correct. But in a non platonic realm you must somehow fund these sorts of things. If it's not possible to make money on them then it may not be feasible to implement for the masses. The keyword being masses there. There all kinds of distributed p2p web projects out there. None of them appeal to a majority though they are all niche products. Most of these proposals forget the need fund mark…

Clearly there are many major free software projects which are formed as NPOs and receive adequate levels of funding. These may further be improved through use of quadratic base-level pledging, crowdfunding, consulting work, academic grants and so forth.

Marketing and promotion are perfectly tractable. I do not see how appeasing to interests of proprietary service companies will suddenly have the funds funneling in, in any case. Not sure what is meant by "scale".

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