Hi! The past months I've been working on an idea
for a distributed discussion forum. The protocol for
it is called POSTNET and version 0.1 BETA is ready.
It must still be considered an experimental
service. POSTNET is something like the USENET
with the difference that posters keep their posts.
So unlike the USENET where huge amounts of data
circulate the network, in POSTNET the data
remains in the poster. In POSTNET every user
has full knowledge of his/her posts and partial
knowledge of the replies to their posts. It pretty
distributed! This has advantages and
disadvantages. Some interesting good things: (-
) Spam free. Spammers like everybody else keep
their posts. They can have it. (-) Nobody owns
your posts. Posts are *really* owned by their
owners. Nobody can deny access to POSTNET. (-)
In postnet your are the moderator and
administrator of the replies to your posts (no hard
work, its automatic by default). (-) You can edit a
post AFTER submission, but others can tell you did
so (because the CRC is distributed). Not-so-good
consequences: (-) All data may not always be
available. If a poster is off-line, its not possible to
view their post. (-) Posters are responsible for
their backups! So it is a *different* thing with
*different* rules, and I'm not sure how it will
evolve and how it will be eventually used. What's
been done: (- The protocol is simple, efficient and
complete. (- The implementation of it IS tested but
the real testing will be done when many people
start using it and over slower connections. So in a
way it is not even BETA. (- The interface is HTML
from a WWW gateway of the POSTNET server. So
it may just look like slashdot or whatever the user
wants. Well, check it out and help in its
development. If you have a static IP you can just
start a new thread in POSTNET. Just announce the
thread and C-Ya in POSTNET!
