3 ms·

Can anyone describe how this differs from Tangled (https://tangled.org/ https://tangled.org/)? Both seem very interesting, but I'm not deep enough into either t

Can anyone describe how this differs from Tangled (https://tangled.org/ https://tangled.org/)? Both seem very interesting, but I'm not deep enough into either to understand how they differ.

lorenzleutgeb 9mo ago
Tangled is built on top of the AT Protocol, and "mediates" between what they call "knots". Git servers. Their strength is to use AT Protocol to make communication across multiple Git servers work smoothly. Radicle is completely peer to peer. There are no such things as servers and clients, only nodes. However, there are quite a few nodes that then act as HTTP servers to offer convenient access via the browser.
- phoronixrly 9mo ago
  Also, Tangled is VC-funded. I cannot find information about Radicle, but considering the authorship is not advertised on their website, and that P2P is not easily monetizable, I would bet it is not VC-funded. All in all, seems like an awesome project and instantly more trustworthy and rugpull-resistant than Tangled.
  - 0x3o3 9mo ago
    yeah the Radicle protocol is fully owned and governed by a Swiss non-profit.
    - phoronixrly 9mo ago
      As per https://radicle.xyz/history https://radicle.xyz/history > The Radicle Foundation is established. A Swiss non-profit that oversees the development of the project. Thank you!
  - creativeair2049 9mo ago
    > instantly more trustworthy quite ironic, radicle seems to have raised 7m$ from "radworks", some sort of crypto foundation. that being said, why is it being not monetizable a good thing? their website says radicle has been in development for 4 years already. without more money in the bank, how would they continue to build the thing?
    - lorenzleutgeb 9mo ago
      Radicle is a free software project, not a company or commercial product. Many other open source projects are also not monetizable in the narrow sense, and still manage to attract enough contributors and funding to flourish. Sometimes these projects even get adopted so widespread that multiple companies build consortia/foundations to fund the development, even if there is no direct revenue stream from that. As long as someone is willing to fund the development of Radicle, the developers just will have a stronger incentive to work on it. Without any more funding, of course it will join the (very large) club of less well funded free software projects. If enough people join and contribute now, and then some companies make the switch, it might well be feasible to pay a small team to continue working on it, financed by donations. Just don't think about it as a commercial product, only because someone decided to use their money towards its development. If you don't like that it's not a company, then that's okay. I am just trying to give another perspective.
  - makeworld 9mo ago
    Source for it being VC funded?
    - phoronixrly 9mo ago
      Crunchbase search on Tangled Labs Oy -- the company behind tangled as per Tangled's website.
0x3o3 9mo ago
Radicle is architecturally local-first: you run your own node, sync repositories from a P2P gossip network, and then everything—browsing code, creating issues, reviewing patches—happens against your local data store. There's no round-trip to a server. Issues and patches are stored as signed Git objects (COBs) that replicate with the repo itself. The network is only involved when you choose to sync. This makes it extremely performant for day-to-day work and fully functional offline. Tangled to my understanding is federated in theory but centralized in practice. It relies on "knots" (servers that host Git repos) and a central AppView at tangled.sh that aggregates the network. Issues and social artifacts live on Personal Data Servers, not locally. While you can self-host a knot, the default experience routes through Tangled's managed infrastructure. The architecture is fundamentally client-server: your operations go over the network to wherever your data lives.
- fc417fc802 9mo ago
  That implementation sounds really awesome but it raises a few questions for me (that I didn't immediately see when skimming the landing page although I realize answers might be in the docs somewhere). I found the answer to one of them (how automatic pinning works) which I'll paste here because others are likely to wonder as well. Related, I assume there's a way to block overly large files if you run a seed node? > They can vary in their seeding policies, from public seed nodes that openly seed all repositories to community seed nodes that selectively seed repositories from a group of trusted peers. Suppose I'm A and I collaborate with B, C, ... Z. If I file an issue locally and sync to C, am I able to see if and when that propagates through the network to everyone else? I guess what I'm wondering about is what the latency, reliability, and end user understandability are like when using this to collaborate in practice. Like if I file an issue on GitHub I know that it's globally visible immediately. How does that work here?
  - lorenzleutgeb 9mo ago
    Currently, with Radicle still under active development, we already reach convergence times that are negligible for async collaboration (like working on code or issues). Working on a well-seeded repo, my changes sync to ~10 nodes within a tenth of a second and with ~80 nodes within 3 seconds. This is obviously not fast enough for sync collaboration, like writing on a virtual whiteboard together, but that's also not what Radicle is designed for. Also, if you share larger files (e.g. you attach a screenshot to your issue) the above times might not be a good estimation anymore, but that's the exception for now. It's really strange to see that people assume that peer to peer networks somehow must be slow. In my experience, since everything runs locally, working with Radicle feels way more snappy than any web interface, which has lots of latency on every so-odd click. As the network scales, it'll of course take some care to keep the speed up, but that's known and there are a few models to take inspiration from.

Can anyone describe how this differs from Tangled (https://tangled.org/ https://tangled.org/)? Both seem very interesting, but I'm not deep enough into either to understand how they differ.

lorenzleutgeb 9mo ago

Tangled is built on top of the AT Protocol, and "mediates" between what they call "knots". Git servers. Their strength is to use AT Protocol to make communication across multiple Git servers work smoothly. Radicle is completely peer to peer. There are no such things as servers and clients, only nodes. However, there are quite a few nodes that then act as HTTP servers to offer convenient access via the browser.

phoronixrly 9mo ago
Also, Tangled is VC-funded. I cannot find information about Radicle, but considering the authorship is not advertised on their website, and that P2P is not easily monetizable, I would bet it is not VC-funded. All in all, seems like an awesome project and instantly more trustworthy and rugpull-resistant than Tangled.
- 0x3o3 9mo ago
  yeah the Radicle protocol is fully owned and governed by a Swiss non-profit.
  - phoronixrly 9mo ago
    As per https://radicle.xyz/history https://radicle.xyz/history > The Radicle Foundation is established. A Swiss non-profit that oversees the development of the project. Thank you!
- creativeair2049 9mo ago
  > instantly more trustworthy quite ironic, radicle seems to have raised 7m$ from "radworks", some sort of crypto foundation. that being said, why is it being not monetizable a good thing? their website says radicle has been in development for 4 years already. without more money in the bank, how would they continue to build the thing?
  - lorenzleutgeb 9mo ago
    Radicle is a free software project, not a company or commercial product. Many other open source projects are also not monetizable in the narrow sense, and still manage to attract enough contributors and funding to flourish. Sometimes these projects even get adopted so widespread that multiple companies build consortia/foundations to fund the development, even if there is no direct revenue stream from that. As long as someone is willing to fund the development of Radicle, the developers just will have a stronger incentive to work on it. Without any more funding, of course it will join the (very large) club of less well funded free software projects. If enough people join and contribute now, and then some companies make the switch, it might well be feasible to pay a small team to continue working on it, financed by donations. Just don't think about it as a commercial product, only because someone decided to use their money towards its development. If you don't like that it's not a company, then that's okay. I am just trying to give another perspective.
- makeworld 9mo ago
  Source for it being VC funded?
  - phoronixrly 9mo ago
    Crunchbase search on Tangled Labs Oy -- the company behind tangled as per Tangled's website.

0x3o3 9mo ago

Radicle is architecturally local-first: you run your own node, sync repositories from a P2P gossip network, and then everything—browsing code, creating issues, reviewing patches—happens against your local data store. There's no round-trip to a server. Issues and patches are stored as signed Git objects (COBs) that replicate with the repo itself. The network is only involved when you choose to sync. This makes it extremely performant for day-to-day work and fully functional offline. Tangled to my understanding is federated in theory but centralized in practice. It relies on "knots" (servers that host Git repos) and a central AppView at tangled.sh that aggregates the network. Issues and social artifacts live on Personal Data Servers, not locally. While you can self-host a knot, the default experience routes through Tangled's managed infrastructure. The architecture is fundamentally client-server: your operations go over the network to wherever your data lives.

fc417fc802 9mo ago
That implementation sounds really awesome but it raises a few questions for me (that I didn't immediately see when skimming the landing page although I realize answers might be in the docs somewhere). I found the answer to one of them (how automatic pinning works) which I'll paste here because others are likely to wonder as well. Related, I assume there's a way to block overly large files if you run a seed node? > They can vary in their seeding policies, from public seed nodes that openly seed all repositories to community seed nodes that selectively seed repositories from a group of trusted peers. Suppose I'm A and I collaborate with B, C, ... Z. If I file an issue locally and sync to C, am I able to see if and when that propagates through the network to everyone else? I guess what I'm wondering about is what the latency, reliability, and end user understandability are like when using this to collaborate in practice. Like if I file an issue on GitHub I know that it's globally visible immediately. How does that work here?
- lorenzleutgeb 9mo ago
  Currently, with Radicle still under active development, we already reach convergence times that are negligible for async collaboration (like working on code or issues). Working on a well-seeded repo, my changes sync to ~10 nodes within a tenth of a second and with ~80 nodes within 3 seconds. This is obviously not fast enough for sync collaboration, like writing on a virtual whiteboard together, but that's also not what Radicle is designed for. Also, if you share larger files (e.g. you attach a screenshot to your issue) the above times might not be a good estimation anymore, but that's the exception for now. It's really strange to see that people assume that peer to peer networks somehow must be slow. In my experience, since everything runs locally, working with Radicle feels way more snappy than any web interface, which has lots of latency on every so-odd click. As the network scales, it'll of course take some care to keep the speed up, but that's known and there are a few models to take inspiration from.