Re: Proposal: gnome-user-share

[Mikael Hallendal <micke imendio com>]

Alexander Larsson wrote:

> 1. Public folder vs share-this-folder
>
> There are two major use cases for accessing files over the
> network:
>
> The first use case is wanting to copy a file from one user on
> one machine to another user on another machine. Historically this has
> been done by copying the file to a floppy, moving the floppy to the
> other machine and copying it to the harddisk there. Another option
> theese days is to mail the file, but this is not always sensible, mail
> might not be set up, you might have no, or a slow internet connection
> etc. Really, "File sharing" is not the ideal name for this, perhaps it
> should be called "network file transfering".

However, this use case would be much better solved by getting a list of 
people in the neighbourhood and click send file to. Than to add it to a 
shared folder for everyone around to see.

For example I'm planning to add to Gossip so that you can see and talk 
to people with on the same net without having to connect to a server to 
do so. Also sending a file to one of them should be supported. This 
would for example be a better solution for this use case.

So I think that this sharing of files should be more targetted against 
the second use case. Ie. you want to share some files for a longer 
period with more people than to do a

1) Add file to shared folder
2) Tell the other user that he can now retrieve it and what the name is.
3) User downloads
4) Tells you that it's downloaded
5) Remove the file.

Also, this telling will probably be done through some kind of instant 
messaging (unless you sit in the same room).

*However* I think that having a shared folder where you copy things into 
  is better than sharing folder a'la windows anyway. We could also have 
a "Share this file" that automatically copies the file to the Shared 
directory (or creates a symlink to it in case we want to support 
symlinks out of the shared folder).

Just something to consider,
  Mikael Hallendal

> The second use case is setting up a network file share so that several
> people can work on the same set of files (or sometimes so that the
> same person can access it from several machines). Often you set up a
> folder for some specific project, or for a specific type of
> documents. The files are generally on a server-style machine which is
> always on, is commonly backuped automatically and the shares support
> things like ownership of files and access rights. This form of network
> file access can more correctly be described as "file sharing".

--
Imendio AB, http://www.imendio.com/