I've been a regular Zim user for a few years now and it is a fantastic
program which I use almost every time I turn on my PC. Recently I got
involved with a MaidSafe's SAFE project - a private, secure
decentralised (p2p) network, that is more than just a network. I would
love to see Zim on SAFE and to use SAFE to gain a far wider user base.
At its simplest Zim will work with SAFE out of the box, letting you
store and retrieve data (with complete privacy and anonymity) from
anywhere by logging in and using the network like any old cloud storage
- no need to sync, just access a virtual drive on the local system. Your
SAFE drive will be like Dropbox with sharing, sync etc but with complete
privacy, security and anonymity (and no company or centralised servers
to pay for, go bankrupt, get blown up etc.). This is what most people
will see and want at least in the beginning, because the storage will be
extremely cheap, effectively free even for TB if you can share a decent
chunk of disk space with the network. But SAFE has far more features and
potential, particularly for apps that use the SAFE API (login, storage,
communications etc.)
The reason for this post is that I believe the SAFE API presents a big
opportunity for Zim. For example, it would be great to have Zim as *the*
structured document creation and publishing app on the SAFE platform,
bringing its features to a wide number of users. If a Zim app were there
early on, it could be massive. I am confident that this network will
grow rapidly to very large numbers indeed - but right now hardly anyone
has heard of it. So to start with there will be relatively few apps
available. Imagine being one of a hundred apps with a user base of
millions that is growing exponentially. I want to declare that I have a
small investment in this project, but assure you this is not my reason
for suggesting this. I got involved because I believe in the project's
goals, technology, team and community ownership, but it would not be
fair to hide the fact I invested by buying a small amount of the crypto
currency that will live on the network (similar to bitcoin but with many
improvements). I hope this doesn't stop people seeing the potential for
Zim here though!
Zim has many advantages in this situation. It is very easy to understand
the basics of what it does and decide to try it, will appeal to a large
percentage of people, is easy to learn, has a mature codebase, its own
community, and will easily exceed the expectations of any new users - it
would create quite a buzz.
While websites and the web will not be going away anytime soon, SAFE
makes server based web redundant - and provides a simpler, cheaper,
functional alternative. Enter Zim: the stand out authoring tool for the
next web! Ok, but *a* stand out tool of that I'm sure . Users wanting to
publish material will simply save it to a public share, so it will be
possible to share any kind of document with anyone, and if Zim were a
free app, that immediately becomes a two way process should the
publisher want it to be. (Note: SAFE has document versioning built in,
and never deletes data, which is what you need for a collaborative
publishing platform).
In the short term, Zim will stand out for its abilitiy to create
structured documents and publish them in different formats, most
recently as responsive web pages (thank you Paulo van Breugal) and the
many other features of Zim. I think it would gain popularity with early
adopters of SAFE and then become very widespread as the network grows.
In the longer term Zim could be the, or at least one of the, most used
publishing and document editing tools on the *new internet*. New
developers will be drawn to it as well, to contribute to the core, to
add new plugins etc. And for those that want it, there is the
opportunity to use micropayments to support their work and the project
as a whole (the SAFE crypto currency can handle this far better than
bitcoin because transaction rates and transaction times are several
orders of magnitude better).
I started to write just a short note here, and now look! Hopefully this
is a sign of some real potential for Zim. Let me know what you guys
think, and if you want more info on SAFE please ask or check out
MaidSafe.net (main website), MaidSafe.org (forum). Plus I've written a
bit more about SAFE below.
SAFE Network Summary
SAFE Network (Safe Access For Everyone) allows users to join and create
a complete internet replacement (eliminates HTTP, DNS, SSL, SMTP etc and
all their security weaknesses) and replace it with a completely
anonymous communication network, encrypted unlimited storage (fog rather
than cloud!), and an application platform, and a cash like crypto
currency that will outperform bitcoin without losing any of its
features. It will also offer a massively parallel distributed computing
platform, rented out for fees that are distributed to the anonymous
individuals who allow their computers to be part of SAFE. Users who
contribute storage, connectivity and processing are known as "farmers",
and rewarded with crypto currency, similar to bitcoin "miners". App
builders will also be able to charge for their apps or services, for
example using the built in crypto currency to take micropayments, with
no overheads or fees to the network.
I know that is quite a lot to take in, but hope it hints that this is
not just any old save the internet project, but one which could
transform the way most of the people on the planet experience the
internet and computing.
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