Hi list, before digging into technical details in the following messages, I'd like to introduce you to a OpenAFS-related project that you may find interesting.
It started some ten years ago as a quest for better means to interact with computers and devices they control. This further deepened into requirements of persistent data and functionality, and ability to share them with others in an easy and compatible way. These led to some fundamental notions: - Whereas software and hardware platforms come and go frequently, the essence of knowledge and methods are likely to last from generations to generations. - To be able/willing to build on top of somebody else's work, you need to trust its future existance and predictable behaviour. - There are lots of great free software and utilities out there even today, but due to incompatibilities and overall complexity to setup a working environment, they are often out of the reach of most of us. Or it's just not worth the trouble. You'd rather contribute to your own field of expertise. This project called Finndesign Liitin is addressing these issues in a new way, yet trying to keep it very simple to the user. The role of OpenAFS, along with Kerberos and OpenLDAP, is to provide the foundation or "stage" if you like. It has to be - Instant - Global - Secure - Expandable - Extremely easy and transparent to the user The last bullet can be further broken into things like - Single-sign-on - Compatibility built-in - Seamless distributed computation - Background activities like automated backups and other things the user needs but shouldn't need to worry about him/herself Simply put; you just log into a ready-made environment, and will have access to all personal and public data and methods in a compatible and persistent manner. A proof-of-concept level prototype has been operational about a year now, and the project has moved on to 'dog-fooding' phase to test its usefulness in practice. Since the project is made from industrial designer's point of view (usability and visual design), there are many issues needing other fields of experties. But more about those issues later on... Please, have a look at the project page for details at http://liitin.finndesign.fi The project page may not cover all the details, so I'd be glad answer any questions. Best regards, Jukka | J U K K A T U O M I N E N | m a n a g i n g d i r e c t o r M. A. | | Finndesign Kauppiaankatu 9 B 13, FI-00160 Helsinki, Finland | mobile +358 50 5666290 | [email protected] www.finndesign.fi _______________________________________________ OpenAFS-info mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openafs.org/mailman/listinfo/openafs-info
