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This is not a service. IPFS is not a service. Who ever has authorized the software to run on their computer is paying for it. IPFS is a set of protocols, in th

This is not a service. IPFS is not a service. Who ever has authorized the software to run on their computer is paying for it. IPFS is a set of protocols, in the same way that Bitcoin is a set of protocols. Do you consider a peer2peer WebRTC collaborative text editor serverless? IPFS is just a fancy content addressed value store that allows peers to ask the network if someone has the value for any address, and OrbitDB is a database built on top of it. > If no, then where will my data get stored if I upload it and then disappear for a year? On your computer, and it will be available to the network if you turn your computer back on.

theamk 8y ago
(1) IPFS is a service, because it is a single database with consistent information. It is somewhat unusual in that it is widely distributed and is owned by multiple independent actors, but that does not make it any less of a service. An example of set of protocols is HTTP. There is no single "HTTP content cloud" -- each HTTP server is unique and provides different content. (2) I defined "serverless" as "does not need the server to operate" (we traditionally ignore static files servers in this definition). So the case of "collaborative text editor" is a great example, because there are two very distinct products using this name: - Some of them are designed for throw-away documents and have little expectation of durability, like collabedit -- these could be truly serverless, with all data stored in LocalStorage (of course a commercial entity would still at least maintain a TURN server, thus making it not fully serverless) - Some of them are designed for more permanent purpose, like Google Docs. For those, even if you use peer2peer synchronization, you still need a central server. After all, you don't want to lose your life's work if you cleared your browser state. My assumption with most of the databases is that unless mentioned otherwise, they are durable and capable. For OrbitDB, it looks like if you want your database to survive browser cookie clearing and/or to have more than LocalStorage limit, you need to maintain a real server on your infrastructure. So it is not serverless.
- solarkraft 8y ago
  I think I know what you're on about. In my mind "Serverless" just means "Requires a server" and the author doesn't particularly think about their terminology.
raarts 8y ago
With the decreasing number of personal computers isn't the substrate for IPFS just shrinking?

theamk 8y ago

(1) IPFS is a service, because it is a single database with consistent information. It is somewhat unusual in that it is widely distributed and is owned by multiple independent actors, but that does not make it any less of a service. An example of set of protocols is HTTP. There is no single "HTTP content cloud" -- each HTTP server is unique and provides different content. (2) I defined "serverless" as "does not need the server to operate" (we traditionally ignore static files servers in this definition). So the case of "collaborative text editor" is a great example, because there are two very distinct products using this name: - Some of them are designed for throw-away documents and have little expectation of durability, like collabedit -- these could be truly serverless, with all data stored in LocalStorage (of course a commercial entity would still at least maintain a TURN server, thus making it not fully serverless) - Some of them are designed for more permanent purpose, like Google Docs. For those, even if you use peer2peer synchronization, you still need a central server. After all, you don't want to lose your life's work if you cleared your browser state. My assumption with most of the databases is that unless mentioned otherwise, they are durable and capable. For OrbitDB, it looks like if you want your database to survive browser cookie clearing and/or to have more than LocalStorage limit, you need to maintain a real server on your infrastructure. So it is not serverless.

solarkraft 8y ago
I think I know what you're on about. In my mind "Serverless" just means "Requires a server" and the author doesn't particularly think about their terminology.

raarts 8y ago

With the decreasing number of personal computers isn't the substrate for IPFS just shrinking?