Group: GNU Social/Project Comparison

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Group:GNU Social Project Comparison

In "The Cloud"

Commodity webhosting approach

Pros

  • Deployable on commodity PHP webhosting.

Cons

  • Commodity webhosting happens on virtual machine farms. Encryption, security and privacy are not safe on virtual machines.
  • A federation of such PHP-based servers cannot handle as much traffic as applications using optimized protocols rather than HTTP.

Projects

Commodity hosted services Code maturity Distributed protocols used Features
StatusNet Production OStatus, OpenID Microblogging
Crabgrass Production Invented Collaboration tools including task list management, meeting scheduling, asset management, wiki, and decision making
Diaspora Starting (OAuth, OpenID, ActivityStreams planned) Planned
Elgg Production None Profiles, microblogging, streams, groups
Pinax Production OpenID Wiki, groups, forums, bookmarks
Open Atrium Production Planned? Blog, calendar, group collaboration, docs, case tracking
SMOB Production FOAF Microblogging
BuddyPress Production None Members, groups, blogs, forums
Daisychain Proof of concept Proof of concept Proof of concept
Partuza (Apache Shindig) Proof of concept OpenSocial Profile
The Appleseed Project Development halted Planned ?
DiSo In development ActivityStreams ?
Knowee Alpha OpenID, FOAF Address book
Dutch Alpha OpenID Group blogging
Safebook Brainstorming ? ?
Lorea Brainstorming ? ?
SIOC Brainstorming ? ?
HelloWorld Brainstorming OpenID ?

Suggested protocols: MINE Project, NoseRub, OpenSocial for apps

Non-free software

  • iSocial: supports OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial, etc.

Federation of Servers approach

Pros

  • Existing infrastructure of servers. Familiar traditional Internet architecture.

Cons

  • Still putting a certain degree of trust into servers, but we don't want unencrypted trust networks stored on servers, and can we trust SSL keys to be safe on servers in future?
  • Even if we only let them see encrypted messages, we would still trust our servers to carry our social graph.

A way to solve this dilemma is to allow for more servers to run on the user's computer – then it is fine if the server is involved in group encryption maths, storage of the web of trust and personal data of our friends or even private key encryption on the user's behalf. Essentially bringing XMPP and PSYC into a more P2P mode of operation. This works with PSYC – for XMPP it may need some tweaking.

Projects

Federated services Code maturity Distributed protocols supported Features
XMPP Production XMPP Instant messaging, supports extensions
OneSocialWeb Beta XMPP Microblogging, profiles
Google Wave Beta XMPP Messaging, microblogging, instant messaging
Mycelia Development XMPP Wiki, bookmarks
PSYC Production XMPP, IRC Conferencing

On Your Computer

Peer-to-peer (P2P) / Distributed Hashtable (DHT) approach

Pros

  • No doubt peer-to-peer is the approach that respects privacy the best, as it allows any social interaction to be end-to-end or group encrypted.

Cons

  • Needs a special strategy for message delivery when a source goes offline (servers, DHT and/or group communication redundancy)

Projects

P2P services Code maturity Distributed protocols supported Features
GNUnet Production None Filesharing
Tahoe LAFS Production None Filesharing
CSpace Production Invented IM
Angelapp Beta None Filesharing
RetroShare Beta Invented Filesharing, chat, forums
The Circle Ceased development Invented IM, IRC
Syndie Alpha None Forums
Netsukuku Not in production Invented Wifi mesh network

Non-free P2P networks

P2P services Code maturity Features
LifeSocial Proof of concept Profiles, photos, etc.
Opera Unite Production Photos, wall, music and filesharing. Capability for groups or global news pages is quite limited

Social desktop applications

Pros

  • allows for end-to-end encryption for people and groups, without browser
  • heavy integration in the computer desktop experience
  • allows for much richer interactions beyond traditional social networks (like file sharing)

Cons

  • could be done in an unsafe client/server way, so be careful to get it right! Get it right probably means to do it in a P2P way (see section above)

Projects

P2P services Code maturity Features
Nepomuk for KDE Beta? Metadata sharing
Social Desktop for KDE Beta? Authentication to issue tracking services, KDE forums, news feed

In-browser profile + certificates approach

Pros

  • Authenticate at any website using a secure profile stored in the browser.
  • Profile is always stored locally; external websites can't fake it.

Cons

  • Adds a layer of complexity without solving the problem, since creating a forum/microblogging still requires some kind of hosting.
  • You need to surf to web sites to pick up profiles and information waiting for you, there is no real-time notification stream.
  • You cannot do group encryption.

Protocols

  • FOAF+SSL for RESTful p2p authentication - libraries in php, java, perl, python, and Apache module available.

Projects

  • No browsers implement FOAF+SSL so no projects have been initiated

Distributed Node Architecture

This architecture entails separating an end-user's GNU Social node into five components. See here for more. This essentially brings all of the approaches (and thus existing solutions) mentioned above into a big picture and defines a framework for them to interact.

Pros

  • Allows end-to-end encryption for people and groups and anything else
  • Allows the use of arbitrarily many transport protocols such as HTTP, XMPP, or PSYC for relaying data between nodes
  • "Future proofs" by defining protocols between components and not making assumption about the structure of other aspects of the node
  • Allows users to access the same account using different client programs (web browser, dedicated app, MeMenu, etc.)

Cons

  • Possibility of over-design

Projects

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