From: p2p-hackers@zgp.org (Brad Neuberg)
Date: Mon Jul 15 20:13:02 2002
Subject: [p2p-hackers] Everything as a page

Glenn McGrath wrote:

>Everything as a file is a mantra of the unix world. Everything as a file
>doesnt mean everything is a file, its more like everything has a file
>handle. For this to be true, the file handle must be independent of the
>content that it processes.
>
>I think the Content Addressable Web (namespace based on content hash)
>approach used by many systems hinders efforts to see everything as a file
>becasue the file handle is derived from the hash of the content. It makes
>every file read-only, if a file is modified it becomes a completely new
>entry (sometimes this is wanted).
>
>If we abstracting the transport layer from our p2p systems in a generic
>way then individual p2p systems can implement there different
>search/retrieval system ontop of that, you could have a CAW system ontop
>of the generic transport layer, maping the hash based filename to an
>independent file handle.
> 
>The trasport layer would need properties such as content independence,
>security, (limited?) anonymity, accountability, intelligent routing...
>other ?
>
>Does anyone know of any projects attempting to create such a network
>layer, anyone interesting in trying to design such a beast if there is
>nothing else around ?
>
>
>Thanks
>
>Glenn
>
The alternative to the Unix file philosophy is the web philosophy: 
everything as a URI.  You could call this the REST philosophy.   When you 
are interacting with a URI, you can assume that most of the HTTP 
semantics work with it: GET, POST, PUT (maybe), etc.  This URI could in 
fact be a file, an operating system process, a web page, an object, a 
distributed object, etc.

Brad Neuberg