[Social-discuss] Re: [foaf-dev] Yet another idea on a free social network

[Lucas Stadler]

> hello Lucas
> it is already all given
> http://retroshare.sf.net for the web of trust
> and http://offload.sf.net for the storage network
> we developed the http://retromessenger.sf.net with wxwidget gui to get
> retrosahre into offload
> Can you help us? We need to release retromessenger and then integrate
> the wxwidgets gui into offload
> 
> If you have questions, mail me back
> 
> Regards Max
I am affraid that our aims are somewhat differing. I know that several
distributed storage etc. applications already exist.
Apart from being an application rather than a protocol your project
(especially the retromessenger) gets quite near the point.
Unfortunately you seem to create exactly one client with just an internal
protocol rather than a public standardized one. This was my aim. I really
respect your work there, but our approaches seem rather different.

Let me point it out more in-depth. Basically the idea I had was like a XMPP
that does not need any server or domain and just a public key. But it was
more, as I dreamt of metadata provided by RDF.
The protocol should be designed both simple and extensible, ideally even human
writable format. XML and RDF fulfill most parts of my whishes and just the
inter-client communication is really to be invented.
I know of several p2p projects using DHTs, but I do not know two systems
which are interoperable. I think that there is a need for a specification
solving this. Just the connection part and nothing more, as as much freedom
as possible has to be given to the clients and users.

I am sorry not being able to help you with your project, but I think that
the web simply requires more than one application doing something and
therefor, just a specification to connect these...

 -Lucas