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by ibgib 3385 days ago
> What is ibGib?

This is a broad question, as ibGib is many things. To be precise, it is its own question and answer, so the answer to this would be "ibGib". This would encompass your definition of ibGib, Bob's definition, etc., but this would probably overly pedantic. Basically it's different things and has many use cases.

As for ibGib WRT software, it's an engine/architecture that I'm implementing (https://github.com/ibgib/ibgib, https://www.ibgib.com). It's probably easiest to think of the engine as a graph database (but it isn't) and the web app as one interface to the engine. The data store architecture has only four fields: ib, gib, data, and rel8ns. The ib is user-controlled variable "name"; the data is internal state as a key-value store; gib is a sha-256 hash of the ib, data, and rel8ns fields; and the rel8ns is a list of named relationships to other ibGibs. So the ib+gib (ib^gib) acts as a content-addressable URL to the ibGib itself. The rel8ns turns the graph into what is now thought of as a merkle graph - or possibly forest, since the rel8ns allow for multiple single graph paths/projections to be created.

So any ibGib has internal data and relationships to other ibGibs maintained via ib^gib pointers. Since these pointers contain the gib hash, this provides integrity and verification of the structure. I've seen a lot of similarities in ibGib's structure with things like IPFS and others, but unlike such systems, ibGib is not file/folder-centric. Those are like two specific roles of ibGibs: files are focused mainly on the internal data, and folders are focused on the relationships (but they have only one type of relationship: hierarchical/containment).

> What does the name represent?

That is an extremely interesting question for me personally. Suffice to say that the acronym was first conceived with the phrase "i believe God is being" (I was agnostic borderline atheist at the time). Since it has a religious context, I avoid speaking too much to it in others' forums. (But for me, it's about logic.)

I'm planning on doing a Show HN here in the future once I have a couple more features implemented! I'd love to talk to you (or anyone) about it in more detail if you're interested. :-)

1 comments

That tells me much of what I need to know, thank you.
:-)