Slashdot Mirror
uServ -- P2P Webserver from IBM
ryantate writes: "Some folks over at IBM have been working on the uServ Project, which provides "high availability web hosting ... using existing web and internet protocols", meaning you can serve a website from your desktop and people can get at it with a standard Web browser and without special software. They claim the system, which works from behind firewalls and when you are offline (provided you can convince other peers to 'replicate' your site), is in active use by about 900 people within IBM. Here's the white paper."
I can't wait to see the RIAA try to sue IBM. God I love this industry ...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
On the other hand, it's not Freenet, either. Freenet is a platform which guarrantees that data is survivable (lawyer-proof) and secure. uServ doesn't seem to be concerned with either. It's primarily a way for users who aren't very technologically savvy to publish content. That's it. Useful in its own way.
BEN
If this were a freeware/shareware/open source P2P web hosting program, I'd be thrilled. In fact, I would already have a web page up on it, because I've been looking for just such a solution. But a closed source program that I have to pay a subscription fee for, with a larger fee if I want its fullest abilities? Compared to a hosting service that wants a subscription fee but doesn't take up my internet connection or bog down my computer with continuous server processes, this "P2P Web Hosting (Subscription) Service" is just reinventing the wheel by making it a triangle.
The whole thing just seems... kind of stupid.
this story sounds like it came right out of the Slashdot Story Generator
Hmmm... I think it's been mentioned that this sounds like Freenet without all the extras thrown in.
Frankly, there are a few things inhibiting Freenet's popularity when compared to Gnutella and Fasttrack (Is that still running?).
1. High learning curve: Trying to figure out how to search for freenet keys is a bit of a challenge, especially compared to typing in "Matalika" in a Morpheus or Gnutella search window and getting dozens of relevent matches from Lars and co.. You don't have critical mass until you have the morons.
2. Difficult install: I have yet to see a Freenet implimentation that didn't require an attendant JRE install of some kind. Worse, it also frequently entails setting up Java class paths, a task that can confuse even Java developers from time to time. Then a user must understand that he usually has to use his or her browser to access Freenet. There is no 'Freenet' icon to point and click.
3. Difficulty of sharing: It's possible to make entire web pages available via Freenet, but if a Freenet user is firewalled for any reason, it really harms him in terms of being able to participate in the sharing.
4. Unpopular data doesn't propogate: Because the most popular data is shared and replicated most frequently. Warez and mp3s show up, but things like dissident and political theories, text files, and more personal data are lost... even to those who might be interested. (Oddly, Hotline is still a very good place to find these sorts of things. IRC fserves, as well.)
From what I read of the white-paper it looks like this project, or an open-source project very similar to it, could solve these problems and still acheive many of Freenet's goals.
Maybe the OSS community should look into something like this... a moron-safe, web-based file sharing project for the masses that ignores anonymization and encryption in order to gain a more critical mass. Better yet, because of the similarity between the two projects, once the sharing infrastructure was in place, it could accept a Freenet plugin, or vice-versa.
Just an idea...
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Isn't this the entire purpose of the internet: a distributed, uncontrollable network allowing anyone to share information with anyone else? Don't be fooled by the scant description offered on the front page or any preconcieved notions about what distributed filesharing systems do. This isn't a client/server program like gnutella; it relies on basic internet protocols to use the dormant resources of clients as servers. Coordinating servers will be set up not only by IBM, but individual power users like the typical slashdotter-someone with a spare computer to use as a dedicated server, and enough knowledge to run it well. The dream of uServ's creators is nothing less than freeing the server side of the internet from the chains of money, nothing less than making web serving as cheap and easy as web browsing. Nothing less than the liberation of content from the hands of the powerful.
See for yourself in the document by the researchers Bayardo, Somani, Gruhl, and Agrawal. Their ultimate vision is a system taken for granted by the end user in the same way DNS is now. A complex solution to a serious problem, but one so easy to use, effective, reliable, and hidden in the background that anything else is unimaginable to the end user. Think of what will be possible when we have a large, community driven, self-sufficient, unregulated section of the internet. Censorship will be impossible, even for restrictive nations such as China. Using its revolutionary peer-to-peer proxying technology uServ will be able to dynamically create tunnels and anonymous proxies as easily as it can create webpages. Today Napster can be shut down, but one million users in a hundred countries with most of their traffic completely legitimate cannot be stopped. Today political dissidents can be tracked by oppressive governments, but a distributed network with built-in anonymity and trail obfuscation created by dozens of cooperating users in different countries can guarantee anonymity. Today the internet can to a large extent be controlled by those with money and power-but a mature uServ would bring us close to realization of the internet's original vision, where everyone is equal.