[P2P-F] Our proposed plugin architecture for diaspora: Keep it distributed and outside of the application

[Paul B. Hartzog]

I added this to it as well:

As Sam Rose and I presented in 2009 in a conference on network ecologies:

"How can I make this work with other systems?"
produces more value than
"How can I make this work best for me?"
(Slide 21 : http://www.slideshare.net/paulbhartzog/flows-2009-uk-media-ecologies
)

Your API is more important then your internal features. For example,
being able to post to twitter and Facebook right from Diaspora status
is an incentive to use Diaspora over other interfaces.

The future is full of interfaces, and people will choose which ones
they'll use when and where. The more things the Diaspora interface
lets you do, the more advantageous it is.

Your API is simply another interface. And a crucial one.
In addition, if the extensions/plugins structure is an API-based
ecology using REST and/or other methods, then this insures ease of
development and ease of adoption.



-p


On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 10:05 PM, Aaron Huslage <huslage at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a great idea...extend from without.
>
> I've got a newbie question though. How does diaspora maintain network
> integrity? What's the federation model? What maintains security and
> integrity of referential or replicated data?
>
> Specific links to documentation are fine if you don't have time to compose a
> full answer.
>
> --
> Aaron Huslage
> +1.919.600.1712
> huslage at gmail.com
> Via mobile device
>
> On Mar 9, 2011 9:40 PM, "Samuel Rose" <samuel.rose at gmail.com> wrote:
>> http://bugs.joindiaspora.com/issues/311
>>
>> Here's what I wrote:
>>
>> "We're experimenting with "plugin" architecture ideas for diaspora.
>>
>> We have a simple idea that is based off of the
>> http://flows.panarchy.com draft RFC
>>
>> Our idea is to basically keep the "plugins" completely outside of the
>> diaspora application. We think it could be worth thinking about making
>> plugins/extensions that work with diaspora across a plurality of
>> application layer protocols. "Plugins" could be coded in any
>> programming language, provided that they conform to the diaspora API
>> in terms of how they deal with data objects, and the plugins would run
>> as a webservice with a variety of access/availability rules. The
>> advantages here are that the problem of "my diaspora pod does not
>> support that plugin" is effectively eliminated. As new types of
>> content are available for sharing, if special functionality is
>> required for making the new type of content viewable or usable in
>> diaspora, it can live as one or more services available on servers to
>> accomplish the needed processing. Diaspora instances could be set to
>> use specific "plugin" services/sources, or could look for next nearest
>> service available from a distributed registry for instance.
>>
>> I thought that now is a crucial time to think about a scalable way to
>> allow people to develop extensions for diaspora in parallel. Keeping
>> them outside of diaspora codebase keeps the code clean and lean and
>> easier to refine without the burden of keeping extensions and plugins
>> up to date because they are tightly integrated into the application.
>> The extensions can instead be joined via external-facing API that
>> supports multiple protocols. What do you all think?"
>>
>> --
>> --
>> Sam Rose
>> Future Forward Institute and Forward Foundation
>> Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
>> Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
>> skype: samuelrose
>> email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
>> http://forwardfound.org
>> http://futureforwardinstitute.org
>> http://hollymeadcapital.com
>> http://p2pfoundation.net
>> http://socialmediaclassroom.com
>>
>> "The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
>> ambition." - Carl Sagan
>



-- 
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The Forward Foundation
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paul.b.hartzog at forwardfound.org
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PaulBHartzog at PaulBHartzog.org
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PaulBHartzog at panarchy.com
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University of Michigan
PHartzog at umich.edu
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The Universe is made up of stories, not atoms.
                 --Muriel Rukeyser

Perceive differently, then you will act differently.
                 --Paul B. Hartzog
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