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I already mentioned this on another thread today (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5229643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5229643), but this is what w

I already mentioned this on another thread today (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5229643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5229643), but this is what we're trying to solve with Tent (https://tent.io https://tent.io).

legutierr 14y ago
This is very interesting. Can I ask some questions? How is what you are doing different than diaspora? Is it interoperable with it? And what kind of traction have you gotten?
- danielsiders 14y ago
  Tent is just a protocol that can be used for all sorts of applications. It's easy to make microblogging or traditional social networking apps (think Twitter and Facebook or Diaspora) on top of Tent, but apps like Dropbox, Evernote, Tumblr, Loopt, etc are also possible. Diaspora is an app with a great UI and its own (unfinished) protocol. We've been working with the Diaspora* team (http://wiki.diaspora-project.org/wiki/Diaspora,_Powered_by_Tent http://wiki.diaspora-project.org/wiki/Diaspora,_Powered_by_T...) to create a port of the Diaspora* UI to Tent (basically take the Diaspora* front end and a standard Tent app back end). That would let the Diaspora* community continue to use the app they love, but take advantage of the other capabilities of Tent and apps in the Tent ecosystem. It's easy to import the old posts from Diaspora as well. The only problem is that the Diaspora* community is currently based on a pod infrastructure (dozens of medium community-run servers (100s-1000s of users/server). Tent assumes that users will either run their own server or use a hosting provider (think wordpress). So far, the only Tent server implementations capable of hosting thousands of users are closed source and belong to the hosting companies. Eventually that may change, but it means there's no drop-in replacement for Diaspora* pod admins. Users would need to either set up their own Tent server (really easy to push to Heroku https://github.com/tent/tentd-admin https://github.com/tent/tentd-admin) or use a hosting provider. There aren't any UX or technical complications, the D* community is just used to community run pods. As it stands now they'd need to write a multi-tennant Tent server implementation themselves. Additionally, the idea of part time admins and a giant shared server might work for apps like Diaspora (or even some Wordpress installations), but Tent is intended for highly sensitive personal data as well. I'm not sure that part time administrators should be responsible (technically or legally) for sensitive data (imagine storing your medical and financial records, persistent location data, file backups, etc on a server with a single part-time admin). Right now there are a few dozen Tent apps of various types and a handful of server implementations. Some of the reference apps and servers as well as the protocol validator (in development) are available at https://github.com/tent/ https://github.com/tent/. The first Tent host currently has about 19,000 registered users. A dozen or so users are hosting their own Tent servers (similar to running your own Wordpress) and three other Tent hosts are preparing to launch. There's a lot of big announcements coming in the next few months that should cause an increase in those numbers.

legutierr 14y ago

This is very interesting. Can I ask some questions? How is what you are doing different than diaspora? Is it interoperable with it? And what kind of traction have you gotten?

danielsiders 14y ago
Tent is just a protocol that can be used for all sorts of applications. It's easy to make microblogging or traditional social networking apps (think Twitter and Facebook or Diaspora) on top of Tent, but apps like Dropbox, Evernote, Tumblr, Loopt, etc are also possible. Diaspora is an app with a great UI and its own (unfinished) protocol. We've been working with the Diaspora* team (http://wiki.diaspora-project.org/wiki/Diaspora,_Powered_by_Tent http://wiki.diaspora-project.org/wiki/Diaspora,_Powered_by_T...) to create a port of the Diaspora* UI to Tent (basically take the Diaspora* front end and a standard Tent app back end). That would let the Diaspora* community continue to use the app they love, but take advantage of the other capabilities of Tent and apps in the Tent ecosystem. It's easy to import the old posts from Diaspora as well. The only problem is that the Diaspora* community is currently based on a pod infrastructure (dozens of medium community-run servers (100s-1000s of users/server). Tent assumes that users will either run their own server or use a hosting provider (think wordpress). So far, the only Tent server implementations capable of hosting thousands of users are closed source and belong to the hosting companies. Eventually that may change, but it means there's no drop-in replacement for Diaspora* pod admins. Users would need to either set up their own Tent server (really easy to push to Heroku https://github.com/tent/tentd-admin https://github.com/tent/tentd-admin) or use a hosting provider. There aren't any UX or technical complications, the D* community is just used to community run pods. As it stands now they'd need to write a multi-tennant Tent server implementation themselves. Additionally, the idea of part time admins and a giant shared server might work for apps like Diaspora (or even some Wordpress installations), but Tent is intended for highly sensitive personal data as well. I'm not sure that part time administrators should be responsible (technically or legally) for sensitive data (imagine storing your medical and financial records, persistent location data, file backups, etc on a server with a single part-time admin). Right now there are a few dozen Tent apps of various types and a handful of server implementations. Some of the reference apps and servers as well as the protocol validator (in development) are available at https://github.com/tent/ https://github.com/tent/. The first Tent host currently has about 19,000 registered users. A dozen or so users are hosting their own Tent servers (similar to running your own Wordpress) and three other Tent hosts are preparing to launch. There's a lot of big announcements coming in the next few months that should cause an increase in those numbers.