Political and Technical Implications of GitTorrent

lkcl writes "The GitTorrent Protocol (GTP) is a protocol for collaborative git repository distribution across the Internet. Git promises to be a distributed software management tool, where a repository can be distributed. Yet, the mechanisms used to date to actually 'distribute,' such as ssh, are very much still centralized. GitTorrent makes Git truly distributed. The initial plans are for reducing mirror loading, however the full plans include totally distributed development: no central mirrors whatsoever. PGP signing (an existing feature of git) and other web-of-trust-based mechanisms will take over from protocols on ports (e.g. ssh) as the access control 'clearing house.' The implications of a truly distributed revision control system are truly staggering: unrestricted software freedom. The playing field is leveled in so many ways, as 'The Web Site' no longer becomes the central choke-point of control. Coming just in time for that all-encompassing Free Software revolution hinted at by The Rebellion Against Vista, this article will explain more fully some of the implications that make this quiet and technically brilliant project, GitTorrent, so important to Software Freedom, from both technical and political perspectives."

This is why people don't take you seriously.

[Anonymous Coward]

The hyperbole makes you look like a frothing idiot.

Re:Serve Documentation from GitTorrent

[ooglek]

Hmm. Except that the problem of SQlite being updated by two or more people at the same time would create problems. Unless BugIDs were md5 hashes, an insert would likely cause problems. And even md5 hashes have collisions, though pretty unlikely even if you have 100,000 bugs.

if your product is so useful

[circletimessquare]

you don't need the hype. linking it to the downfall of vista makes us laugh at you

just describe what it does, dryly, concisely, technically. if it is worthy of the hype, we will supply the hype for you

but when you supply the hype, we are inclined to believe there's not much really going on with your project. which might not be true. so change your tone, for your own sake

re:

[NigelT]

I could see this being used to distribute harmful source code...code that would otherwise violate the terms of service of such sites as sourceforge or Google Code. -- http://nigelt.blog.com/ [blog.com]

Rebellion you say?

[Jamie's Nightmare]

I would rather see a rebellion on Slashdot against articles that announced FOSS news as if it was predicting the second coming of Christ.

This story is in no way related the the Microsoft's (perceived) loss in market share, not to mention the fact that those who are dropping windows are moving to Apple, not Linux. But hey, gotta go for every low blow you can get while the news is still fresh, right?

Re:Serve Documentation from GitTorrent

[Free the Cowards]

What is it that prevents you from putting the documentation into git as well? Does git somehow refuse to store plain English text?

Re:Why?

[lkcl]

The primary purpose of peer to peer systems are to either avoid censorship or provide lots of cheap/free bandwidth.

the primary purposes _now_ are to avoid censorship and to provide lots of cheap/free bandwidth.

the last major upgrade of debian REDLINED the world's internet backbone infrastructure for a WEEK.

with the total linux usage only being - what... 1% of the world's desktop systems, and debian being a small fraction of that, the debian mirror system are ALREADY creaking under the load.

Neither of these really apply to source code management.

why not?

Hosting is easily sponsored and the files aren't very big anyway. Few projects will face censorship anywhere other than the most regressive regimes (ie, China or the US).

i don't _want_ "sponsorship". i don't _want_ my pet project hosted by a large corporation. i want it completely independent.

i want my web site content hosted and automatically mirrored across the world, along with its bugs database and its wiki all linked together.

i want people in the emerging markets and the third world to be able to have exactly the same kind of luxury that we do - and they DO NOT have "continuous access to the web site or access to the lovely sponsored hosting".

think much bigger and you will start to see why this is so damn important.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

"the files aren't very big anyway."

Speak for yourself. Ever work on a game or film project?

bandwidth and a website in the FIRST world

[lkcl]

across most of europe, america and asia, internet access is near-unlimited.

have you considered the implications of receiving linux on a CD, and being cut off from the rest of the internet?

how would a group of 100 developers, or 1000 developers, or 10,000 developers - all of them "used to" the current levels of internet access and speed, cope in a situation where the access to the internet was restricted to intermittent 56k dialup?

Re:if your product is so useful

[Jamie's Nightmare]

What you did was take a boring description and dumped in two whopping spoonfuls of hype. As if that wasn't enough, you put a spiteful cherry on top of the Slashdot submission.

This was my favorite part:

A government or an organisation decides that it doesn't want free software to be used, as it undermines their ability to exert "control".

Great. Not only do I have to worry about Chemtrails and controlled demolition conveniently disguised as terrorism, now I learn the government might want to keep me from getting my free copy of KOffice.

Re:Piracy

[compro01]

Observe the Ubuntu website this coming April when they release a new version and see if you still feel that a website is appropriate to the task. The site gets hammered so hard that it's problematic to even get the .torrent files directly from them, nevermind the ISOs, and it's not feasible to have that kind of bandwidth sitting around unused except for a few days every 6 months, nor is it currently feasible to get that much bandwidth on-demand for a website, but bittorrent allows for just that, as you're pooling the bandwidth of everyone downloading it. You can easily gets amounts of bandwidth that would cost tens of thousands of dollars to have in a conventional manner.

I want a Choke Point of Control

[jdh3.1415]

This sounds like a nice way to take the load off of the central servers. I don't think it will replace them or make them unnecessary.

From a technical standpoint, with Git, there's nothing about the central server that is unique. Instead, it's a social convention. Everyone knows where to get the code. Linus discusses this here. http://lwn.net/Articles/246381/ [lwn.net]

Perhaps, my imagination is failing; but, I don't think this will change. Most people want to go to a well known trusted place to at least get a secure hash of the code they are downloading.

For instance, the Debian distro is available via bit torrent. No sane person, downloads the latest Debian .torrent posted by 1337_KeRNeL_haxor on the pirate bay. They get it from debian.com or some other trusted site.

Also, we really need those central servers. Without them you'll constantly run into distribution problems. Just imagine having to post a message like,"Will someone PLEASE seed the repository. I need to grab the latest kernel."

[Citation Needed]

[Rix]

Proof or it didn't happen.

Why don't you want your pet project hosted by a large corporation? You really just sound like you're whining about nothing.

I'm pretty sure neither Google Code nor Sourceforge discriminate against the third world.

Re:Serve Documentation from GitTorrent

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it. How does this really make the development process any more free?

Since when did the existing model of git ever hamper freedom to develop? This just makes the download slightly faster and cheaper, but practically speaking, I can't see a big change coming from this.

Re:Serve Documentation from GitTorrent

[SanityInAnarchy]

Using sqlite would probably not work very well.

For issue tracking, a better example would be ditz [rubyforge.org], which stores issues as plain text. YAML, actually, but close enough. Thus, rather than thinking about this whole separate layer of SQL transactions, you deal with changes to the bug tracker with the same tools you use for managing the code.

For instance, rather than Trac's retarded behavior of refusing to let you modify an issue when someone else already has (and refusing to let you see their changes without opening a new tab), you'd let Git try to merge them, and fix it manually if necessary.

PHP would not be a good idea, either, unless it was very well secured -- you'd probably want static files for your wiki, or a safer templating language (Markdown, etc). In fact, no need to make it a wiki -- again, just keep it flat, and use git as the mechanism for distributing changes.

Vista rebellion?

[Vamman]

You mean someone else supports cleartype fonts now?

I'm not a Microsoft fan but this shit about a vista rebellion has nothing to do with bringing two technologies together (that also have their warts).

I'm petty sure the frustrated Vista users won't be benefiting from peer-peer distributed source code anytime soon.

Re:Dead project

[shutdown -p now]

So, how about truthfully saying that in TFA, instead of blathering about the winds of change and the impending revolution?

Big Binaries: I hate them

[hachete]

Given that a fair proportion of most of the firms I've worked for do not know how to use SCMS, a lot of the SCMS I've maintained contain rather large binary snapshots. Also, distributed firms. So this might be a useful tool if I could get people to use it. Which is unlikely.

but the politics? In this case, leave it out. Just a distraction.