Re: Fwd: [gnu-soc] GNU Guix Project: Decentralized substitute distribution

[Shivam Madlani <shivammadlani5@gmail.com>]

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Thanks a lot for the resources. I am currently going through them to clear
out my basic concepts. Also, it would be great if you could share some more
project related resources so I could play around with them a bit and
experiment.

Shivam

On Sun, 5 Mar 2023 at 13:36, pukkamustard <pukkamustard@posteo.net> wrote:

>
> Hi Shivam,
>
> Thanks for your interest!
>
> Shivam Madlani <shivammadlani5@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > 1) The project title states "decentralized"... which i don't get. How
> > exactly is it decentralized? Similar to a P2P file sharing tech or
> > something else (BitTorrent)?
>
> Actually it is similar to P2P file sharing exactly like BitTorrent :)
>
> The terms "centralized", "decentralized" and "distributed" are a bit
> confusing. I like to think of them as illustrated in a paper by P. Baran
> from 1964 [1]:
>
> - Centralized means that all nodes connect to one single central node.
> - Decentralized means that nodes connect to a smaller set of nodes that
>   may be interconnected. This is similar to what is sometimes called
>   "federated" networks.
> - Distributed means that all nodes are equivalent and connect to many
>   other nodes (like a grid or mesh).
>
> [1]
> https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_memoranda/2006/RM3420.pdf#page=16&zoom=90,-494,792
>
> The goal of the project is to make Guix substitute distribution
> something more in-between decentralied and distributed. Currently it
> resembels something between centralized and decentralized.
>
> The project will work atop of previous work to make substitute
> distribution decentralized: https://issues.guix.gnu.org/52555
>
> The idea is to use an encoding of content that allows the content, in
> this case substitutes, to be distributed over many different protocols
> and transport mediums including IPFS, GNUnet, NDN, CoAP, HTTP. The basic
> ideas are very similar to BitTorrent.
>
> There are a few directions in which a project go (quote from the project
> description):
>
> - Improving the user experience and integration
> - Adding more transport protocols (e.g. IPFS, GNUnet, NDN, CoAP,...)
> - Conducting performance evaluations
>
> > 2) As per the project idea I interpreted that the technologies involved
> > would be c/c++, shell and a bit of networking. Is this correct or am I
> > missing something?
>
> The main programming language involved is Guile Scheme (as already
> mentioned by Csepp).
>
> There might be some interaction with existing tools and libraries that
> would require programming in other languages (e.g. C/C++/Rust/Go) but
> that is not the focus or main task of the project.
>
> > 3) What would be the duration of the project? (175hrs/350hrs).
>
> I think 175h should be enough to do interesting and meaningfull work.
>
> Csepp <raingloom@riseup.net> writes:
>
> > As for other details, I CC'd Pukkamustard, who will be the mentor for
> > this project if I'm not mistaken, and should be able to fill in the
> > blanks.
>
> Thanks for the CC, also CCing Attila who might co-mentor (yay!).
>
> -pukkamustard
>

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