I am sorry I missed the start of this conversation because the mail below - * http://zerostate.net * smallest federated wiki, fossil * XMPP * litter, torchat * YaCy - etc. is superb.
Nick Hardiman [email protected] @intmachines On 20 Sep 2012, at 19:19, Eugen Leitl wrote: > ----- Forwarded message from Bryce Lynch <[email protected]> ----- > > From: Bryce Lynch <[email protected]> > Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2012 12:49:35 -0400 > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [ZS] ZS reboot seed > Reply-To: [email protected] > > On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 11:59 AM, Dirk Bruere <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Given that you know vastly more about it than most of us, including >> me, could you put together some suggestions as to how we proceed, with >> recommendations? > > I'll take a crack at it: > > A lot of the Zero State notes and docs are online in Google Pages. > That's pretty much a wiki. The usual wiki software (MediaWiki, Trac, > MoinMoin, et cetera) is nice, but not distributed. One server, one > database, one wiki. While it's possible to cluster the databases not > all software plays nicely that way, and in fact a lot of database > software we're likely to get hold of has serious hardcoded limitations > on the number of nodes (MySQL, I'm looking at you). There are > alternative wiki implementations that do the same thing but make it > possible to share the whole shebang across arbitrary numbers of nodes, > potentially more one per member of the Zero State, potentially more > than one per member. > > The first thing that comes to mind is Ward Cunningham's Smallest > Federated Wiki (https://github.com/WardCunningham/Smallest-Federated-Wiki). > It's a web application (Ruby/Sinatra/JavaScript) which runs on a > machine and is accessible through a web browser. It's designed such > that multiple instances of the server can connect to one another over > a network and synch up, so it's really one wiki spread across lots of > machines at the same time. Multiple people can browse the wiki, > create and edit pages. I dont' see why we can't have instances > communicating over a darknet. > > The one that I keep coming back to (and not just because I suck at > Ruby apps) is called Fossil > (https://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki), > which is a distributed revision control system, bug/ticket tracker, > blog, and wiki. It uses many of the same techniques as (and in fact > is compatible with) the revision control system Git > (http://git-scm.org/). Again, it's accessed with a web browser, > everything is versioned, and multiple instances can synch up with one > another in a by-any-means-necessary approach. Revision control is > good for more than just source code - a lot of us use it to help > manage our configuration files as well as things we write. We can > check stuff we're working on into revision control if we wanted to. > We could definitely use the wiki and blog. The ticket tracker could > be used to assign and keep track of tasks (ticket #31337: Create > Friendly AGI) that we're working on. Fossil can automatically synch > off of a single server, or instances can synch off of each other and > merge the data. It's cross platform. And, if something does happen, > all it takes is a single instance of Fossil to re-bootstrap because > every node has... well.. everything. > > We could import everything important into one of these systems and > others could set up and synch their own copies of the whole Zero State > superstructure. > > Chat isn't particularly difficult: While we could set up our own > servers we could also just as easily take advantage of any and all > XMPP services out there. There are skillions of them, and most of > them can cross-chat between one another. I do that a lot with friends > aorund the world: My jabber.ccc.de account can talk to the endno.de > folks, the Blackbird folks, and so on. If we really wanted to we > could set up our own XMPP servers. But there are other ways. > > Lately I've been experimenting with Litter > (https://github.com/ptony82/litter), a distributed microblogging > system written in Python. Unpack it, run it, and it does pretty much > what you'd expect of Twitter.. save that it automatically seeks out > and finds other instances of Litter on the network using IP > multicasting and exchanges messages with them. It's pretty nifty and > very lightweight. I haven't tested it with Tor or I2P yet, though. > > Torchat (https://github.com/prof7bit/TorChat) is actually implemented > in a number of languages, but they all do pretty much the same thing: > If you're running Tor on your laptop or workstation it'll set up a > hidden service that is uniquely yours. Other Torchat users can, if > they know the address, add you as a friend and you can IM over the Tor > network. It's a pretty nice IM client. > > Tahoe-LAFS (https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs) is a massively > distributed file storage and sharing grid. The idea is that you > install it and join a grid, and you donate a portion of your disk > space to the grid that people can use to share and back up files. If > some number of members built a grid we could put Zero State related > materials into it for us to access - Fossil trees, documents, videos, > audio recordings, whatever we needed to replicate and make available, > we could. > > The next question is how to network all this stuff together. Tor > (https://torproject.org/) is the first thing that comes to mind > because it's the most popoular and heavily worked on right now. There > isn't a whole lot that we couldn't set up so that it's available only > to Zero State members through the Tor network who know the .onion > addresses. > > If we wanted to go about it another way, we could use something like > SocialVPN (https://socialvpn.wordpress.com/). It's written in C# but > designed to be Mono-compatible, and it's a peer to peer VPN that > connects users over... XMPP. Rather than hunting for IP addresses of > other nodes to connect to, the addresses are usernames of some people > you probably already have in your IM friends list. As I recall, their > primary test transport for this project is GChat. However, my concern > is that it implicitly exposes your socnet because the usernames and > addresses of your IM friends/VPN nodes might be in the clear. I'm not > sure yet, I haven't looked into it. It also hasn't shown a lot of > development in the past year. > > For whatever software development we do in the long run, we'll need > someplace to put it all. If we go with Fossil we'll have a very > useful hosting environment already. However, there are some > alternatives which should be explored (though they're not as > distributed-friendly as Fossil). Gitlab (http://gitlabhq.com/) does > pretty much what Github (https://github.com/) is, though it's F/OSS, > meaning we can set up as many instances of it as we like, anywhere we > like. It does project management, Git repository hosting and > management, bug tracking, fork and merge management, it has a wiki... > It's written with Ruby On Rails. We can also clone Github with > Redmine (http://xdissent.com/2010/05/04/github-clone-with-redmine/). > I have personal reservations about Redmine (because I suck at Ruby and > have been fighting with it at work for most of a year now) but if > someone here is good with it, feel free to consider it as an option. > > So, how do we search all this stuff? I've been running a YaCy > (http://yacy.de/) node for over a year as part of their grid and I'm > quite pleased with how well it works as a search engine. It's > basically a distributed search engine that you can either proxy your > traffic through (and it'll index everything you browse through it - > it's privacy aware, too), or it can be fed links that it'll index, > follow, index, follow... It can be run as part of a private search > grid (Crusoe Mode), so we could set up a private YaCy network (and run > the traffic over Tor) to index all of our resources. It's written in > Java but installs pretty easily, though the indices are pretty big so > disk space will be necessary. I'm long overdue to add a couple of > terabytes to my YaCy box. > > -- > The Doctor [412/724/301/703] [ZS] > https://drwho.virtadpt.net/ > "I am everywhere." > > -- > -- > Zero State mailing list: > http://groups.google.com/group/DoctrineZero > > > > ----- 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 > > _______________________________________________ > Freedombox-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss >
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