Re: Proposal: gnome-user-share

[Tom von Schwerdtner <tomvons gmail com>]

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 21:04:33 -0500, Rodney Dawes <dobey novell com> wrote:
> Try epittance. With it you can can just right-click on a directory in
> nautilus, and open the properties, and go to the "Sharing" tab. You can
> currently only share a directory as read-only, but there are plans to
> add support for read/write access, and multiple users, so some people
> can write to a directory, and others can only read from it. A plug-in
> API is also started, so that additional backends, such as iFolder,
> samba, or appleshare could even be used. This is all still a work in
> progress, but I think it better fits into the ideology of what
> people want to do when sharing files, and it will allow integration with
> multi-OS environments better. It also doesn't require any admin set-up
> of apache with mod_dav, since it is a simple web server using libsoup.

I may be missing the point of what we are trying to accomplish here a
little bit, but I have to say:

Huge +1 for epittance.  

I don't think a single share folder makes much sense at all.  I don't
want to have to copy/move/link files to a single location in order to
share them, I'd rather just right-click my ~/Desktop/Documents/Work
folder and select a 'sharing' option or tab in the properties dialog
to allow my co-workers access to things I've been working on.

1) If I have to copy the file then I have to worry about keeping
things in sync.

2) If I have to move the file then I no longer have it in the original
"properly organized" location.

3) If I have to link the file then I a) cant easily tell what is
shared by looking at the original document location and b) have to
middle-click-drag it to the share (which I'll surely forget on
occasion) and that doesn't seem idiot easy enough for me.

A single location is generally okay if I only want to share 1 file for
a brief period of time (eg, "here, I'll toss that into my share"), but
for that I might as well use email.  What happens when a co-worker and
I want to share a few hundred megs of graphics (eg, company branded
artwork)?  What if I'm working on a project about the Swedish
Conspiracy and I want to share the documents I've gathered with some
classmates?

Really, being able to share on a per-folder basis solves the problem
driving this thread since if the user wants to they can go ahead and
create a ~/Desktop/Public folder and share it for those quick-and-easy
shares...it doesn't matter what its called.

Really what I want is what iFolder promised[1] to deliver and what
Windows already does; the ability to easily share any folder with
anyone or any subset of "anyone" with relative ease.  I think
epittance moves in that direction.

[1] I don't know if iFolder is still going to provide this kind of
functionality or not really.

Kind Regards,
Tom

-- 
Tom von Schwerdtner
Etria, LLP :: Open Source Solutions
Baltimore, MD
http://etria.com/