We are very excited about this new partnership which consolidates all the good work we have been doing together in the last few months
On June 1st, we partnered with Liberate Science (Germany) to develop open source software to support the peer-to-peer commons (p2pcommons). We are publishing a similar statement together with the Liberate Science team, you can read their entry on their blog.
Building Decentralized Infrastructure
Because the p2pcommons runs on peer-to-peer networks, it relies on distributed downloading and uploading content, instead of downloading content from a central service (e.g., Twitter). In that sense, the p2pcommons is similar to the peer-to-peer sharing using torrents (e.g., Academic Torrents).
The peer-to-peer nature means it is a direct form of sharing and also means that whenever somebody wants to download something, someone else must be ready to upload that same thing. This is not an issue if something is popular and widely available, but more of an issue if something is unknown or not available all the time. It is an even bigger issue with a new infrastructure.
Together with Liberate Science, we are developing easy to deploy permanent uploaders for large amounts of content. We are laying the groundwork for permanent uploaders across the world—in libraries and in people's homes, to help make the p2pcommons infrastructure resilient.
Next Steps
Phase 1 of this partnership is to develop the software to support the p2pcommons, and our intent is to initiate later phases to deploy these permanent uploaders in a sustainable manner. You can find our agreement here and follow the software development on GitHub.
As we progress throughout this partnership, we will share more updates with our findings. Stay tuned and see you soon dear reader.
This post has been brought to you in collaboration with Liberate Science team, thanks Chris!