Re: rfc: gnome-inetd

[Mike Hearn <mike navi cx>]

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 21:06:50 -0500, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> > (Man, it's hard to describe g-u-s accurately and concisely, without
> > confusing it with things like Samba or NFS. Maybe "Web File Sharing"?)
> 
> "What do you mean, Jeff?  It uses WebNFS?"  ;-)

There's a looming terminology/UI problem here w.r.t real world systems
that exist on a Windows network. On most desktops there will be at
least two different ways of sharing files:

a) The GNOME (or hopefully, freedesktop.org/gnome+kde) way
b) The Windows (Samba) way

>From the POV of the user they are identical: you drop files in a directory
and they appear in other computers file managers. The main difference is
that Samba shared files appear in Windows and I guess Mac machines, and
g-u-s shared files do not.

Even though the user model for both is identical, and they both
"share personal files".

There are a few separate issues here. The first is how to describe the
difference to users in a way that doesn't instantly descend into
techno-babble. The second is how to make g-u-s or 'Free Desktop File
Sharing' inter-operate with other systems: realistically a GNOME only
network is going to be rare. The third is should the GNOME project care
about this, or should it be pushed off onto distributors.

Now Server Message Block is a dogs breakfast of a protocol that I'm sure
we all want to kill but it has the *major* advantage of working on all 3
big platforms (Windows, MacOS, Linux/free desktop). 

Any attempt to replace it, which let's face it is exactly what g-u-s is,
will have to be better than it is. Wire-wise this isn't hard, SMB is a
textbook case of how *not* to design a protocol. 

User-wise it's trickier: 

a) On mixed networks how do you represent the difference between "Web File
   Shares" and "Network Neighbourhood Shares" in a sensible way in the UI

b) Is it easy to implement this g-u-s protocol on Windows?

c) If the answer to b is yes, who is going to do it?

No real questions in this email, just food for thought.

thanks -mike