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The terminology surrounding Paxos is very unfortunate in my opinion. First there is this general air of mystery which is entirely unnecessary. Next, the paper t
by dunkelheit 7y ago
The terminology surrounding Paxos is very unfortunate in my opinion. First there is this general air of mystery which is entirely unnecessary. Next, the paper talks about "ballots" and "voting" but the actual protocol is very different from what is usually understood by voting - in the protocol everybody just votes what the leader told them! Maybe call it soviet-style voting or something.
- furyofantares 7y agoI understand your complaint about the terminology and in the linked video that same confusion came up. But the terminology does make sense to me in the context of trying to reach consensus. When I’ve been a part of a group looking to reach consensus there’s an occasional ballot/vote taken to check for consensus and there isn’t a functional difference between abstaining and voting for some non-leading option. If you just say up front that there are additional logical constraints on when to abstain vs vote for the leader that make it work in a distributed system, then I think the metaphor serves to help think about it rather than confuse.