7 ms·

> A petname is a name that can be freely chosen by the user. This results in non-unique name-value mappings as www.bob.gnu to one user might be www.friend.gnu f

> A petname is a name that can be freely chosen by the user. This results in non-unique name-value mappings as www.bob.gnu to one user might be www.friend.gnu for someone else. If names aren't fixed, how do you (for example) link from one website to another? Or share a name with another user? One of the advantages of the public DNS system, with unique, canonical names, is that the same name should mean the same thing to everyone.

geocar 10y ago
GNUnet has canonical names as well: Files can be located by their content hash (e.g. gnunet://fs/chk/...) or by the signature of the peer offering the data (gnunet://fs/loc/...)[1] One of the disadvantages of the "public" DNS system, is there are companies[2] and governments[3] (sometimes having a history of oppression[4]) that can interfere with it. GNUnet on the other hand, is actually public. [1]: https://www.gnunet.org/fs-urisyntax https://www.gnunet.org/fs-urisyntax [2]: http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/06/millions-of-dymanic-dns-users-suffer-after-microsoft-seizes-no-ip-domains/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/06/millions-of-dymanic-... [3]: https://www.wired.com/2012/03/feds-seize-foreign-sites/ https://www.wired.com/2012/03/feds-seize-foreign-sites/ [4]: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Black-Friday-birth-of-U-S-protest-movement-3188770.php http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Black-Friday-birth-of-U-S...
- gcb0 10y ago
  the top linked page is the worst introduction to GNS ever. Those are much better.
  - joveian 10y ago
    Yeah, gnunet.org wins the single highest coolness factor to website quality ratio in my opinion (they have other projects besides GNS that are even less well documented), although there is stiff competition. Here is a short paper on GNS: https://gnunet.org/sites/default/files/paper_cans2014_camera_ready.pdf https://gnunet.org/sites/default/files/paper_cans2014_camera... The thing I don't like about it is the distributed hash table aspect, making it a "publish by default" system (with some obfuscation, but still). All that is really needed is a way to communicate your petnames with people you want to have access to them. I'd rather that be done more privately. Besides that, I think the system is a great way to do distributed names to values (send keys with names is much better than PKI).
smilliken 10y ago
A public DNS with unique canonical names would be nice, but we don't have one of those. The DNS we actually have is inconsistent for several reasons: replication lag, ownership disputes, legal and political disputes (governments disagree what content is ok), VPNs with custom entries, firewalls, host files, etc, etc. URIs are incredibly important and deserve a more solid foundation to build upon. To make them truly unique, we should use some form of GUIDs. Pet names are a usability layer on top of GUIDs for us humans , but we should communicate the GUID instead of or alongside the pet name.
- vog 10y ago
  Take this idea one step further, and you have IPFS, which is a very promising approach: https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/
  - chris_wot 10y ago
    I tried to setup ipfs on El Capitan yesterday. I stalked the OS X Homebrew FUSE package, mounted ipfs and it immediately fails complaining too many file descriptors are being used. ipfs is awesome, but I want to first be able to mount it as the file system :-)
    - matt_kantor 10y ago
      I haven't tried using IPFS, but the default ulimit setting on OS X is tragically low. You might want to try bumping it up.
      - chris_wot 10y ago
        I tried - increased it to unlimited and it still had the same error :-( I have zero knowledge of Go, so not even sure how to start troubleshooting.
  - fiatjaf 10y ago
    IPFS is certainly not this idea taken one step further. It is a totally different thing.
apichat 10y ago
Name registries still exist in GNS and they are still usefull but anyone can be a registry for anybody. So in a cultural context where a registry is mainstream, names are almost unique. But registries became contestable, you can avoid them and we have to require them to be libre, open source, and forkable. Look this chapter in this document : > 3.3 Relative Names for Transitivity of Delegations > Users can delegate control over a subdomain to another user’s zone by indicating this in a new record https://gnunet.org/sites/default/files/paper_cans2014_camera_ready.pdf https://gnunet.org/sites/default/files/paper_cans2014_camera...
fiatjaf 10y ago
Read the thing to the bottom before criticizing. If you wanna share something for the long-run future you can use the canonical name.
caf 10y ago
If names aren't fixed, how do you (for example) link from one website to another? If you have a website running under a server with a name in your GNS domain and you want to link to a server with the name 'www' in a different GNS domain, you'd add a PKEY record for that GNS domain to your GNS domain (eg. called 'foo'). You can then link to https://www.foo.+/ https://www.foo.+/ and it will DTRT - someone browsing your site under the name www.jonathonw.gnu will resolve the link destination as www.foo.jonathonw.gnu. Or share a name with another user? If you want to share a link with someone I guess you'd share the .zkey version.
- JonathonW 10y ago
  I'm presuming that means I'd need a GNUnet-aware browser? AFAIK, a normal browser doesn't send enough context when resolving names for the resolver to figure out that someone means www.foo.jonathonw.gnu if they pass it www.foo.+ and have been browsing www.jonathonw.gnu.
  - caf 10y ago
    Yes, or I believe the GNSProxy ( https://gnunet.org/book/export/html/1769 https://gnunet.org/book/export/html/1769 ) is an alternative. A greasemonkey type script might also be able to apply the right fixups.

geocar 10y ago

GNUnet has canonical names as well: Files can be located by their content hash (e.g. gnunet://fs/chk/...) or by the signature of the peer offering the data (gnunet://fs/loc/...)[1] One of the disadvantages of the "public" DNS system, is there are companies[2] and governments[3] (sometimes having a history of oppression[4]) that can interfere with it. GNUnet on the other hand, is actually public. [1]: https://www.gnunet.org/fs-urisyntax https://www.gnunet.org/fs-urisyntax [2]: http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/06/millions-of-dymanic-dns-users-suffer-after-microsoft-seizes-no-ip-domains/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/06/millions-of-dymanic-... [3]: https://www.wired.com/2012/03/feds-seize-foreign-sites/ https://www.wired.com/2012/03/feds-seize-foreign-sites/ [4]: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Black-Friday-birth-of-U-S-protest-movement-3188770.php http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Black-Friday-birth-of-U-S...

gcb0 10y ago
the top linked page is the worst introduction to GNS ever. Those are much better.
- joveian 10y ago
  Yeah, gnunet.org wins the single highest coolness factor to website quality ratio in my opinion (they have other projects besides GNS that are even less well documented), although there is stiff competition. Here is a short paper on GNS: https://gnunet.org/sites/default/files/paper_cans2014_camera_ready.pdf https://gnunet.org/sites/default/files/paper_cans2014_camera... The thing I don't like about it is the distributed hash table aspect, making it a "publish by default" system (with some obfuscation, but still). All that is really needed is a way to communicate your petnames with people you want to have access to them. I'd rather that be done more privately. Besides that, I think the system is a great way to do distributed names to values (send keys with names is much better than PKI).

smilliken 10y ago

A public DNS with unique canonical names would be nice, but we don't have one of those. The DNS we actually have is inconsistent for several reasons: replication lag, ownership disputes, legal and political disputes (governments disagree what content is ok), VPNs with custom entries, firewalls, host files, etc, etc. URIs are incredibly important and deserve a more solid foundation to build upon. To make them truly unique, we should use some form of GUIDs. Pet names are a usability layer on top of GUIDs for us humans , but we should communicate the GUID instead of or alongside the pet name.

vog 10y ago
Take this idea one step further, and you have IPFS, which is a very promising approach: https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/
- chris_wot 10y ago
  I tried to setup ipfs on El Capitan yesterday. I stalked the OS X Homebrew FUSE package, mounted ipfs and it immediately fails complaining too many file descriptors are being used. ipfs is awesome, but I want to first be able to mount it as the file system :-)
  - matt_kantor 10y ago
    I haven't tried using IPFS, but the default ulimit setting on OS X is tragically low. You might want to try bumping it up.
    - chris_wot 10y ago
      I tried - increased it to unlimited and it still had the same error :-( I have zero knowledge of Go, so not even sure how to start troubleshooting.
- fiatjaf 10y ago
  IPFS is certainly not this idea taken one step further. It is a totally different thing.

apichat 10y ago

Name registries still exist in GNS and they are still usefull but anyone can be a registry for anybody. So in a cultural context where a registry is mainstream, names are almost unique. But registries became contestable, you can avoid them and we have to require them to be libre, open source, and forkable. Look this chapter in this document : > 3.3 Relative Names for Transitivity of Delegations > Users can delegate control over a subdomain to another user’s zone by indicating this in a new record https://gnunet.org/sites/default/files/paper_cans2014_camera_ready.pdf https://gnunet.org/sites/default/files/paper_cans2014_camera...

fiatjaf 10y ago

Read the thing to the bottom before criticizing. If you wanna share something for the long-run future you can use the canonical name.

caf 10y ago

If names aren't fixed, how do you (for example) link from one website to another? If you have a website running under a server with a name in your GNS domain and you want to link to a server with the name 'www' in a different GNS domain, you'd add a PKEY record for that GNS domain to your GNS domain (eg. called 'foo'). You can then link to https://www.foo.+/ https://www.foo.+/ and it will DTRT - someone browsing your site under the name www.jonathonw.gnu will resolve the link destination as www.foo.jonathonw.gnu. Or share a name with another user? If you want to share a link with someone I guess you'd share the .zkey version.

JonathonW 10y ago
I'm presuming that means I'd need a GNUnet-aware browser? AFAIK, a normal browser doesn't send enough context when resolving names for the resolver to figure out that someone means www.foo.jonathonw.gnu if they pass it www.foo.+ and have been browsing www.jonathonw.gnu.
- caf 10y ago
  Yes, or I believe the GNSProxy ( https://gnunet.org/book/export/html/1769 https://gnunet.org/book/export/html/1769 ) is an alternative. A greasemonkey type script might also be able to apply the right fixups.