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GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

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Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

#41
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There aren't any inherent protections to storing illegal data in the Bitcoin blockchain, either (short of evading the issue by using a thin client, I suppose). The nature of what is illegal being so encompassing, in that you can ultimately encode the information into some integer of sorts either way, means it's impractical or unnecessary to provide full protection for such things.

No inherent protections, just different incentives. Storing a 4MB image at 80 bytes per $0.08 OP_RETURN transaction would cost you $4000. Why would you do that when you can use namecoin for practically free?

Which makes the statement you made that, "this currency stuff is frankly kind of uninteresting to me," kind of funny (I assume that was on purpose) because the currency stuff is exactly the thing that makes bitcoin work so well.

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

#42

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.

Wouldn't it be the equivalent of creating a BitTorrent client? There are lots of attractive and functional clients for that.

I think they are talking about the issue tracking etc

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

#43

A very interesting idea, GitTorrent, but I have one question which comes to me whenever I read about a delta-based distribution scheme: who is going to generate and share all those deltas? Some Linux distributions have experimented with delta-based package repositories, examples are deltup for Arch Linux and rpm-delta for RPM-based distros. Some of the known issues are: - choosing the number and spacing between delta…

My impression was that peers are generating the deltas on-the-fly based on which commits the requesting peer states it needs. The problem's therefore shoved onto git itself, with the seeder just cherry-picking a specific range of commits from its own copy of the repo and bundling them together.

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

#44
post #41
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No inherent protections, just different incentives. Storing a 4MB image at 80 bytes per $0.08 OP_RETURN transaction would cost you $4000. Why would you do that when you can use namecoin for practically free?

Which makes the statement you made that, "this currency stuff is frankly kind of uninteresting to me," kind of funny (I assume that was on purpose) because the currency stuff is exactly the thing that makes bitcoin work so well.

Fair point!

I made that statement because a lot of people don't realize that Bitcoin, ignoring the fact that you can trade it, has solved a fundamental consensus problem in distributed systems that we should care about and use :)

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

#45

A very interesting idea, GitTorrent, but I have one question which comes to me whenever I read about a delta-based distribution scheme: who is going to generate and share all those deltas? Some Linux distributions have experimented with delta-based package repositories, examples are deltup for Arch Linux and rpm-delta for RPM-based distros. Some of the known issues are: - choosing the number and spacing between delta…

Git is built out of deltas. You're already storing all of them.

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

#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 you only have to deal with the crazy hash once (when you decide you want to remember that someone is who they said they were).

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

#47

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…

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?

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

#48

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…

Hmm. How about mixing and matching, like by having a DNS record with a special TXT record syntax, e.g. 'IN TXT "gt=yoursha256hash"'. That way you could find your destination via DNS and verify the hash in the TXT record against the blockchain.

Re: GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub

#50

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…

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.
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