Hello, I'm basically just a curious potential end user of this awesome technology. I've read a couple of posts that got me thinking: [Freedombox-discuss] Tahoe-LAFS is not a filesystem http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2011-November/00... [tahoe-dev] "BitTorrent for storage" is a bad idea -- [p2p-hackers] P2P file storage systems https://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2011-February/006150.html This is a little example of what I think a nice user experience could be like, realistically (ie, assuming files and applications as currently understood are still relevant): I create a document, let's say a LibreOffice presentation. I save it. I modify it and save it again. I right-click on it (or similar procedure) and I can see that a copy is stored locally, another copy is stored in an online server I pay for (fully encrypted), and a third copy is stored in my laptop (or smartphone). They are all synced, unobstrusively (I don't experience any latency, syncing just works in the background). Now, let's say I want to share this document with a friend. I open a menu on the file (right click or whatever), select "share", select friend (like in Google docs). Now he will have a notification that I shared a document with him. My friend right-clicks on this document and he selects "follow this document". Now If I delete my document later, my friend will still be able to see all the snapshots up to the time I deleted it. My friend likes the document, so he recommends that I publish it. So I simply share it with a some popular swarm of peers. My question is, where does Tahoe fit in this picture, if at all? I mean, what would be the best way to merge local storage, single-user distributed storage, F2F (like Tahoe seems to be) and full-scale P2P, at the lowest level possible and in a transparent, but configurable, way? Since Tahoe is not intended to fill all those roles, how could it be combined with other services in order to produce a seamless user experience? Should Tahoe be the manager and delegate to other filesystems, should it be the other way around, should they coexist and be managed by some upper layer? And how does Tahoe relate right now with other projects such as XtreemFS (very similar to Tahoe) , Camlistore (more emphasis on metadata, less on duplication logistics), OneSwarm (privacy-preserving P2P), Tribler (a trackerless Bittorrent), to name a few? I would say XtreemFS is a direct competitor (but there could also be cooperation). As for the others, maybe they could be somehow combined with Tahoe to build an awesome user experience. What do you think? Best, -Martin _______________________________________________ tahoe-dev mailing list tahoe-dev@tahoe-lafs.org http://tahoe-lafs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE