Lame QM jokes, aside, I think Wave matters
for the concerns of this group.
As a discussion starter, here is a copy of
something I posted to a different mailing
list (Jonathan Edward's "subtext" list).
It's been correctly pointed out there that
I abuse the word "resource" a bit in this
but the point should still be somewhat clear.
Regards,
-t
Forwarded (headers and context-quote stripped):
I have a different take on why the Wave wave matters.
I don't think the demonstrated Wave clients matter
all that much, per se, other than their utility in
sparking interest and giving hackers of a certain
bent something to hack on. I'm thinking that the
future of Wave clients is still pretty wide open
although new one's will have to subsume or respond
to the initial client.
Rather, I think the real advance - albeit an
incremental one anticipated in the designs it
builds upon - is in the protocols and data model.
And I don't think the protocols and data model
are anywhere near done and I'm certain that there
are flaws in the current design, but here is why
they matter:
To a first approximation, every resource on
the web as we know it today is identified by
a host-based URL. Of course most commonly
the URL has the form:
http://example.com/relative/uri
Contrary to popular assumption, we do not name
resources on the web - we name hosts and
relative addresses within hosts. If I type into
the location box on my browser:
http://example.com/docs/GPLv3.txt
my browser operates correctly not when it returns
to me a verbatim copy of the GPLv3 in plain text
format but, rather, when it contacts the host "example.com"
and asks it to reply to a GET request for "/docs/GPLv3.txt".
In effect, a URL of that form does not name the
document - it names a question posed to whomever
currently owns "example.com".
In fact, there is no widely accepted, human-friendly,
secure, distributed and decentralized namespace in
which I can name some specific text - like a GPLv3 text
file originally published by the FSF - and expect
a browser to find it.
Wave opens that door a crack. There's still
some chains keeping the door closed but the deadbolts
have been unlocked and the door cracked a couple of
inches and with a few swift kicks the rest inevitably
follows. The web-as-you-know-it has numbered days,
now.
Wave opens the door, more specifically, to a
secure, human-friendly, browser-friendly (really,
user-agent-friendly), distributed, decentralized,
dynamically updated, secure, and location independent
namespace for web resources. A namespace in which
routing is based on content or resource name and goes
to any convenient verifiable host of that has that
content or can provide that resource.
The way that Wave encourages this is by encouraging
the development of clients that route to resources
by host-independent IDs like wave ids, wavelet ids,
and document ids -- while at the same time leaving
fairly open ended what a document id is and leaving
open to extension what an id is.
Wave initiates the game of building a much needed
and much anticipated overlay network that can operate
in a distributed and decentralized way, giving names to
resources rather than questions to hosts.
-t
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