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Subject: 
Re: Musings on an open-source Brickshelf replacement
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.general
Date: 
Tue, 7 Jun 2005 20:18:44 GMT
Viewed: 
771 times
  
In lugnet.general, Joe Strout wrote:
1. Custom app with peer-to-peer storage: a cross-platform app could be
written to share images in a fashion similar to gnutella, napster, etc., but
specialized for our own purposes.
[...]

I definitely like the idea, although I would encourage it to be more generic
than "lego-specific". Something that other online groups could use for sharing
images, etc., if they so wanted. A couple issues I can think of:

- If an owner of an image decides to remove something for some reason (or is
forced to due to copyright violation), there's now no way of removing it. Ditto
moderated content. You couldn't just remove the files from people's caches (if
built on the principles as gnutella, etc).

- Dunno how much it would help. The majority of traffic (I'd think) would be web
references to the data. So while it would more-or-less ensure that data wouldn't
disappear, it wouldn't be terribly useful in terms of linking to images-- people
have to download a viewer to see anything (and that means support for *nix,
Windows, Mac, and whatever else.

2. [...] So, the images would have to be stored elsewhere, hither and yon,
and this server would just act as a central indexer.

Isn't that effectively MOCPages?

I don't know much about MOCPages' interface, since I haven't actually used it,
but ultimately, I think something like that might be useful, only more robust.
At present MOCPages (when available) is kinda pokey, and I think there's lots of
unused features that might be dragging it down. Like checking overall ranking,
other MOC's by that user, user comments, etc. Stuff that *could* be optional for
the owner in order to streamline the page.

I kinda wonder if you could combine the two. Here's about the limit of my
techhy-ness:

Effectively, have an indexer site where you can upload/download with ease. With
each upload/download of an image, it offloads them onto the BrickTella network
(there would be ways of ensuring that when something is uploaded via the site
that it is *pushed* to certain client servers who have flagged themselves as
"bigger" storehouses or something).

Then, requests to the site simply get deferred to the network. When a request
comes into the central webserver, it looks up a place on the network where the
data is currently being hosted, and spits out a redirect. Each BrickTella client
has the option to run as a very limited webserver on a reserved port. Hence, a
request for:

http://www.brickpics.org/users/joeblow/vignettes/ihaveabadfeelingaboutthis.jpg

Turns into:
http://123.45.67.89:7360/users/joeblow/vignettes/ihaveabadfeelingaboutthis.jpg
And seconds later, turns into:
http://98.76.54.32:7360/users/joeblow/vignettes/ihaveabadfeelingaboutthis.jpg

All the indexing information is stored on the main site, but all the actual
heavy data is stored elsewhere.

Of course, in reality, (all feasibility aside) I dunno if that'd work anyway. It
would require a lot of people to turn hosting on, and might cause issues if
you've only got a few (like 15 people) who're doing it. Their connections grind
to a halt, encouraging them to turn off their web-hosting option.

But assuming it started small and had enough willing souls lending space, does
that sound feasible?

DaveE



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Musings on an open-source Brickshelf replacement
 
(...) I suppose, but in that direction lies scope creep, which can kill an open-source project deader than just about anything else. (...) A good point. As for moderation, I was thinking that we could build in a sort of rating system, with the (...) (19 years ago, 7-Jun-05, to lugnet.general, FTX)

Message is in Reply To:
  Musings on an open-source Brickshelf replacement
 
Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that Brickshelf goes away or stops accepting new uploads. Further suppose that, as a community, we deem it wise to develop something that is decentralized open-source, so that our valued LEGO images and other (...) (19 years ago, 7-Jun-05, to lugnet.general, FTX)

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