3 ms·

If you want to build a solution that lasts, building it on top of a new, unproven and not widely adopted technology like IPFS seems a risky choice at least. It

by danbruc 11y ago

If you want to build a solution that lasts, building it on top of a new, unproven and not widely adopted technology like IPFS seems a risky choice at least. It is already not to easy to predict what will happen to a technology in the next five or ten years when it has has been around for decades, in case of something as young as IPFS you can probably just flip a coin. TeX, Perl and Erlang have CTAN [1], CPAN and CEAN respectively and are now almost 25 years old. I would say the most important thing is having a large number of mirrors and it seems to me that mirroring a set of packages with an ordinary web or FTP server lowers the barrier to entry quite a bit. You will of course have to roll your own synchronization and discovery mechanism on top of that but it has been done and works. And one thing that most likely won't work anyway is creating a distributed solution, releasing it into the wild and the problem is solved. Someone has to take ownership, issues will come up and someone has to take care of them, even if it is only fixing bugs or adapting the code to changing environments. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTAN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTAN

fit2rule 11y ago
Anecdotal: been running IPFS for a year, and it is simply great. Its my go-to for file-sharing these days, it just works so well. I don't think its going to go away any time soon ..
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- danbruc 11y ago
  That really doesn't change that it has zero adoption. It's hard to quantify but I just searched the programming languages ranked 90 to 100 in the TIOBE index on Google, they have millions of results, IPFS brings up somewhat between 100 and 300 thousand results. Have you ever heard of Andrew File System [1], a distributed file system developed in the 80s? It is certainly not a widely adopted technology as far as I can tell, but it still has ten times more search results. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_File_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_File_System
  - tokenizerrr 11y ago
    Not sure what you're talking about? IPFS[1] has 291.000 results, and "Andrew File System"[2] has 46.400 results. My guess is you searched for Andrew File System without the quotes. Which will return plenty results utterly unrelated to any kind of file system. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q="IPFS" https://www.google.com/search?q="IPFS" [2] https://www.google.com/search?q="andrew+file+system" https://www.google.com/search?q="andrew+file+system"
    - danbruc 11y ago
      I did indeed not add quotes, I only skimmed through a couple of pages to see if the results are relevant but you can not go beyond 1000 results so I certainly missed the irrelevant results. But that doesn't really change the picture, for me "interplanetary file system" has 5,910 results, "andrew file system" 46,300. The abbreviations IPFS and AFS have 289,000 and 27,700,000 results but both have several meanings and are therefore not representative. If you look at Google Trends, IPFS began rising as a search term in 2011 [1] well before the inception of Interplanetary File System but I failed to quickly figure out what it refers to. [1] https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=ipfs https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=ipfs
      - yorwba 11y ago
        The curve for "ipfs corporation" shows a similar development since 2011 [0], so that seems like the most likely candidate. I would still attribute most of the growth since 2015 to the InterPlanetaryFileSystem, so maybe a third of the search volume. [0] https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=ipfs%2C%20ipfs%20corporation https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=ipfs%2C%20ipfs%20cor...
      - fit2rule 11y ago
        How things grow: people use them. They don't stop using them. IPFS is growing.
ctanctan 11y ago
CTAN has a central server. CPAN has a master site. What you're proposing has exactly the same deficiency as the npm repository: it is centralized and thus vulnerable to takedown notices, "right to be forgotten", author deletion and similar shenanigans. IPFS is distributed and has no such single point of failure (SPOF).
- danbruc 11y ago
  You don't have to allow deletions or replicate them. I also see no reason one could not send out takedown notices to IPFS nodes, especially in the current situation with a pretty small system - I found a number of about 2000 nodes in January 2016.
diggan 11y ago
That's fair critique, but at one point you have to start implementing things with a technology, to help the technology grow and get real world usage. Yeah, I agree. My point of this adventure is to have a large set of mirros, that are easy to setup. > You will of course have to roll your own synchronization and discovery mechanism on top of that but it has been done and works I'm not interested in implementing these things, and would rather compose existing parts to achieve my goals. IPFS is just one part of the puzzle. You're right about the ownership. Everyone is dependently owning the issue of seeding their own modules. I will provide a public mirror that people can use if they want or not, and maybe some other organization steps forward to help with mirroring as well (npm maybe?)

by danbruc 11y ago

fit2rule 11y ago

Anecdotal: been running IPFS for a year, and it is simply great. Its my go-to for file-sharing these days, it just works so well. I don't think its going to go away any time soon ..

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
danbruc 11y ago
That really doesn't change that it has zero adoption. It's hard to quantify but I just searched the programming languages ranked 90 to 100 in the TIOBE index on Google, they have millions of results, IPFS brings up somewhat between 100 and 300 thousand results. Have you ever heard of Andrew File System [1], a distributed file system developed in the 80s? It is certainly not a widely adopted technology as far as I can tell, but it still has ten times more search results. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_File_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_File_System
- tokenizerrr 11y ago
  Not sure what you're talking about? IPFS[1] has 291.000 results, and "Andrew File System"[2] has 46.400 results. My guess is you searched for Andrew File System without the quotes. Which will return plenty results utterly unrelated to any kind of file system. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q="IPFS" https://www.google.com/search?q="IPFS" [2] https://www.google.com/search?q="andrew+file+system" https://www.google.com/search?q="andrew+file+system"
  - danbruc 11y ago
    I did indeed not add quotes, I only skimmed through a couple of pages to see if the results are relevant but you can not go beyond 1000 results so I certainly missed the irrelevant results. But that doesn't really change the picture, for me "interplanetary file system" has 5,910 results, "andrew file system" 46,300. The abbreviations IPFS and AFS have 289,000 and 27,700,000 results but both have several meanings and are therefore not representative. If you look at Google Trends, IPFS began rising as a search term in 2011 [1] well before the inception of Interplanetary File System but I failed to quickly figure out what it refers to. [1] https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=ipfs https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=ipfs
    - yorwba 11y ago
      The curve for "ipfs corporation" shows a similar development since 2011 [0], so that seems like the most likely candidate. I would still attribute most of the growth since 2015 to the InterPlanetaryFileSystem, so maybe a third of the search volume. [0] https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=ipfs%2C%20ipfs%20corporation https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=ipfs%2C%20ipfs%20cor...
    - fit2rule 11y ago
      How things grow: people use them. They don't stop using them. IPFS is growing.

ctanctan 11y ago

CTAN has a central server. CPAN has a master site. What you're proposing has exactly the same deficiency as the npm repository: it is centralized and thus vulnerable to takedown notices, "right to be forgotten", author deletion and similar shenanigans. IPFS is distributed and has no such single point of failure (SPOF).

danbruc 11y ago
You don't have to allow deletions or replicate them. I also see no reason one could not send out takedown notices to IPFS nodes, especially in the current situation with a pretty small system - I found a number of about 2000 nodes in January 2016.

diggan 11y ago

That's fair critique, but at one point you have to start implementing things with a technology, to help the technology grow and get real world usage. Yeah, I agree. My point of this adventure is to have a large set of mirros, that are easy to setup. > You will of course have to roll your own synchronization and discovery mechanism on top of that but it has been done and works I'm not interested in implementing these things, and would rather compose existing parts to achieve my goals. IPFS is just one part of the puzzle. You're right about the ownership. Everyone is dependently owning the issue of seeding their own modules. I will provide a public mirror that people can use if they want or not, and maybe some other organization steps forward to help with mirroring as well (npm maybe?)