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The Cr-48 and Chrome OS: Google's vision of the netThe Cr-48 and Chrome OS: Google's vision of the netPosted Jan 18, 2011 2:56 UTC (Tue) by jhs (guest, #12429)In reply to: The Cr-48 and Chrome OS: Google's vision of the net by akumria Parent article: The Cr-48 and Chrome OS: Google's vision of the net
You're welcome! I tried to identify the free-software-like philosophy without sounding like a shill. (For example, I removed all external links.) Data freedom is becoming a foremost concern of the free software movement leadership. I hope to promote emerging projects which are congruent with the GNU philosophy but concerning data freedom, even if I risk looking petty. To answer your question, the Couch App ecosystem is comparatively tiny, with no flagship, general-purpose products. CouchApp development can be tedious and slow, attractive mostly to early-adopter developers, like GNU was. The exciting thing is the philosophy behind the software, like GNU was. For example, the Kabul War Diary is a CouchApp based on the Afghanistan WikiLeaks data. It is a web application like any other: AJAX, data-driven, Google Maps UI, etc. However, you can replicate (anonymously, over HTTP) the entire free data set to your own server. One of the records in this database is the web app itself, which is free software and runs on CouchDB. Now you have a private copy—free software and free data. I hope my enthusiasm persuades you that I am not advertising; I just happen to work in a company with a worthwhile core philosophy.
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The Cr-48 and Chrome OS: Google's vision of the net Posted Jan 18, 2011 12:42 UTC (Tue) by marduk (subscriber, #3831) [Link]
But you did'nt provide an example of how now one could back up their personal data hosted elsewhere (unless you consider Wikileaks data as "personal data" ;-)
The Cr-48 and Chrome OS: Google's vision of the net Posted Jan 18, 2011 19:36 UTC (Tue) by jhs (guest, #12429) [Link]
With CouchDB, a database is at a URL, such as https://my.personal.oauth-protected.domain.com/photos. You can trigger push replication to any other URL, or pull replication from any URL (assuming you are authorized to do so). You can also specify a filter policy to replicate only a subset of the data as needed.
Therefore a web app which respects your freedom allows/encourages you to replicate your data to your own systems, in the same way a developer who respects your freedom allows/encourages you to take the source code and use it as you see fit. For example, you might pull all your data from https://awesome-app.com/your_username and keep it on your laptop's encrypted partition.
Where to replicate to/from, and what the filter policy does is application-specific. The replication plumbing is complete and useful; however, I concede that general-purpose applications are only now being undertaken. The point is, it's encouraging that there is free software which enables "free data" in the cloud-based future of applications.
The Cr-48 and Chrome OS: Google's vision of the net Posted Jan 22, 2011 1:20 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] A Chrome OS system can be backed up by providers other than Google. The answer is to use services which treat data the same way the free software movement treats code. What you're saying is that Chrome OS could hypothetically back up its data to providers other than Google if Chrome OS were based on applications that use CouchDB databases. But the point from the article is about Chrome OS that is actually available. For mail, for example, it uses Gmail. CouchDB notwithstanding, the user's mail cannot be backed by someone other than Google.
The Cr-48 and Chrome OS: Google's vision of the net Posted Jan 22, 2011 5:57 UTC (Sat) by jhs (guest, #12429) [Link]
You are correct, I should have said "could hypothetically." Or as an optimist, I might say, "will, one day soon."
And it's not simply using CouchDB. The application must also permit users to replicate. For example, a Couch app might be allowed for browser access but replication is blocked by a firewall. The developer must both use CouchDB *and* respect your freedom. Still, I think that day is coming.
The Cr-48 and Chrome OS: Google's vision of the net Posted Jan 19, 2011 15:19 UTC (Wed) by oever (subscriber, #987) [Link]
The term "Couch App" for an browser application that stores data on a Couch server is nice. Is there a JavaScript API that lets these applications also work offline from the browser storage, that is synced with the Couch server once that becomes reachable again?
The Cr-48 and Chrome OS: Google's vision of the net Posted Jan 19, 2011 15:52 UTC (Wed) by jhs (guest, #12429) [Link]
There have been projects to add Couch semantics to browser storage however I do not think any are production-ready. Progress usually halts when it's time to implement the replication protocol. It's not rocket surgery, however as I will say in another comment, the only "documentation" is the Erlang reference implementation.
However, the situation you describe is pretty much the primary objective of much of the CouchDB leadership, so I'm optimistic that this will happen. In the meantime, people simply run CouchDB on the local device or even as a browser plugin. Ubuntu does that, and CouchDB can be embedded in Android and other mobile apps. Optimizing for size is only beginning however they think they can make CouchDB quite small and painless.
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