7 ms·

While I'm just hearing about this Edsu project and am not in any position to vouch for it re: future betrayal, I think the specific concern you raised is solved

by ex3xu 8y ago

While I'm just hearing about this Edsu project and am not in any position to vouch for it re: future betrayal, I think the specific concern you raised is solved by Edsu by using local storage rather than a centralized repository. A few clicks in, the first line of https://edclave.com/ https://edclave.com/ is: "Edsu makes life better for both developers and users of Online Open Source Software (OOSS). Instead of the developer having to hold on to your data, you do. It gives you more control, and gives them less to worry about."

Waterluvian 8y ago
Local storage feels really quite volatile. It lives on a local disk inside your browser. May as well just use notepad and a file.
- beatgammit 8y ago
  It seems the data stays in sync with other places you're signed in, so supposedly you could get redundancy by signing in on more devices/browsers. In that sense, it's better than a crappy text editor on your computer.
  - heathjohns 8y ago
    You're right about the sync part, but it's an old skool client-server sync, not a peer-to-peer one.
    - larkeith 8y ago
      Hmmm, a p2p version that uses local storage on each device you have could have some interesting applications. As a client-server architecture it's a tad complex for a lot of users to set up, but with a good UI it could become a viable alternative storage method, as well as allowing for potential app cross-compatibility. You would have to make sure at devices had a chance to sync - perhaps have a web service there? - and I'm unsure how you would deal with conflict resolution, but the idea definitely seems to have a lot of potential. I'll need to think about this.
      - larkeith 8y ago
        ...I just described a subsection of git... although with better UX.
        nikkwong 8y ago
        But let’s say for example your phone and your computer are clients, and your computer has latest version of your data. When you open your phone, if your computer is not on the internet, you won’t be able to get latest. So, would this be practically useful for a terribly trivial use case like this?
        gpm 8y ago
        Have a server be just another peer, not privileged in any way, but always online and available. Maybe do the routing through a distributed hash table like we use for finding torrent peers (perhaps even the exact "mainline" DHT torrents use), which would mean that even with the server being down you could still sync with your other online clients.
      - tylerhou 8y ago
        It's possible and there has been research in this area, see http://archagon.net/blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/ http://archagon.net/blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/ for details about conflict resolution. The main problem is garbage collection - to guarantee that you can sync across all devices for all time, your data structure must be append-only, so your document can only grow. A long living document will eventually grow very very large. You could let the user decide when to collect garbage/establish a new baseline doc; maybe like 5 years. But this means that if you edited the document on a laptop, didn't sync it with another client, and then closed the laptop for 5 years you would lose the ability for the changes you made on that laptop to be resolved automatically.
        EGreg 8y ago
        Just use a CRDT
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- heathjohns 8y ago
  You can run an Edsu server locally, but I wouldn't. It's meant to be run on an internet-accessible server - a $2.50/month VPS would do, or if you don't want to run your own there's at least one provider that will do it for you.
- stephengillie 8y ago
  Notepad++ and Dropbox work quite well together.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

by ex3xu 8y ago

Waterluvian 8y ago

Local storage feels really quite volatile. It lives on a local disk inside your browser. May as well just use notepad and a file.

beatgammit 8y ago
It seems the data stays in sync with other places you're signed in, so supposedly you could get redundancy by signing in on more devices/browsers. In that sense, it's better than a crappy text editor on your computer.
- heathjohns 8y ago
  You're right about the sync part, but it's an old skool client-server sync, not a peer-to-peer one.
  - larkeith 8y ago
    Hmmm, a p2p version that uses local storage on each device you have could have some interesting applications. As a client-server architecture it's a tad complex for a lot of users to set up, but with a good UI it could become a viable alternative storage method, as well as allowing for potential app cross-compatibility. You would have to make sure at devices had a chance to sync - perhaps have a web service there? - and I'm unsure how you would deal with conflict resolution, but the idea definitely seems to have a lot of potential. I'll need to think about this.
    - larkeith 8y ago
      ...I just described a subsection of git... although with better UX.
      - nikkwong 8y ago
        But let’s say for example your phone and your computer are clients, and your computer has latest version of your data. When you open your phone, if your computer is not on the internet, you won’t be able to get latest. So, would this be practically useful for a terribly trivial use case like this?
        gpm 8y ago
        Have a server be just another peer, not privileged in any way, but always online and available. Maybe do the routing through a distributed hash table like we use for finding torrent peers (perhaps even the exact "mainline" DHT torrents use), which would mean that even with the server being down you could still sync with your other online clients.
    - tylerhou 8y ago
      It's possible and there has been research in this area, see http://archagon.net/blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/ http://archagon.net/blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/ for details about conflict resolution. The main problem is garbage collection - to guarantee that you can sync across all devices for all time, your data structure must be append-only, so your document can only grow. A long living document will eventually grow very very large. You could let the user decide when to collect garbage/establish a new baseline doc; maybe like 5 years. But this means that if you edited the document on a laptop, didn't sync it with another client, and then closed the laptop for 5 years you would lose the ability for the changes you made on that laptop to be resolved automatically.
      - EGreg 8y ago
        Just use a CRDT
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
heathjohns 8y ago
You can run an Edsu server locally, but I wouldn't. It's meant to be run on an internet-accessible server - a $2.50/month VPS would do, or if you don't want to run your own there's at least one provider that will do it for you.
stephengillie 8y ago
Notepad++ and Dropbox work quite well together.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]