Locking the Web Open: A Call for a Distributed Web

Re:Locking the Web Open: A Call for a Distributed Web by wwwtyro on Monday August 17, 2015 @08:35AM (#10072546)

I'm all for this, and consider it to be inevitable in the long run. In the short term, however, it seems like the major hurdle will be getting one of these projects into the mainstream: for the most part, the web already does what most people want it to do, and those people aren't going to be bothered to install a new web browser so that they can do things they're already doing. Especially if it lacks the features, performance, or ease-of-use of their current browser.

So, how do we address this? Is there a "killer app" for the distributed web that will motivate people to move to it? Can we use existing web tech like Web-RTC to bootstrap the system? Maybe a workable avenue is mobile, where people are pretty comfortable installing new applications - what if we built the next social network into an app based on the distributed web?

I don't know the answer, but I'd love to hear any ideas/brainstorming you clever people have to offer.

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Re:Locking the Web Open: A Call for a Distributed Web by simon_vetter on Monday August 17, 2015 @09:57AM (#10072960)

Implementing other protocol handlers into existing web browsers and operating systems would be a good start IMO.

Taking ipfs/ipns [1] as an example, having handlers inside web browsers would allow people to link from http[s]:// to ipfs:// and vice versa in a seamless way, lowering the barrier to migrate.

From there on, there's nothing preventing you from distributing your application code (html/css/javascript/whathaveyou) over ipfs, and make use of WebRTC for user-to-user interactions.

Obviously http[s] is going to stick around for a while as it has its use cases (basically anything that deals with a centralized service, from online banking to search engines to apis), but having a secondary, peer to peer means of distributing content and applications would be a major plus.

[1] http://ipfs.io (they have a working implementation in Go with an HTTP gateway as well as a FUSE filesystem)

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Re:Locking the Web Open: A Call for a Distributed Web by petrosh on Monday August 17, 2015 @10:36AM (#10073243)

WebRTC seems the weakest point to me: WebRTC still needs servers for clients to exchange metadata to coordinate communication http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webrtc/infrastructure...

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Re:Locking the Web Open: A Call for a Distributed Web by lsjroberts on Monday August 17, 2015 @08:58AM (#10072630)

You may be interested in https://ind.ie/about/vision/

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Re:Locking the Web Open: A Call for a Distributed Web by molsongolden on Monday August 17, 2015 @01:15PM (#10074532)

https://indiewebcamp.com/ is a bit more interesting and open.

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Re:Locking the Web Open: A Call for a Distributed Web by gagege on Monday August 17, 2015 @09:45AM (#10072880)

I love the idea of doing a distributed social network via a mobile app. Being a native app, it could be kind of seamless as well, for the user.

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Re:Locking the Web Open: A Call for a Distributed Web by mtgx on Monday August 17, 2015 @09:54AM (#10072945)

Going mainstream would probably require something like Firefox or at least Ubuntu integrating IPFS.

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