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by jff 3161 days ago
Brad Fritzpatrick's response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13700968
1 comments

Ah, thanks for the speedy response.

> The main difference I see is that Camlistore can model POSIX filesystems for backup and FUSE, but that's not its preferred view of the world.

This makes me want to throw things. I'm actually mentally discounting both projects now on the charge that core authors seem to care more about bickering over technical details than implementing working solutions to these society-breaking problems.

Andrew Gerrard worked on both and apparently didn't think Camlistore was the right basis for what they wanted in Upspin. But I'm sure you, who I'm not sure has used either project, know better than Andrew and Brad and Rob.
I am claiming I do, yes, and would happily make my case to any of them for why they should do the hard work of agreeing on minor technical details and merge the two projects. It is the easiest instinct for engineers to "split off and code their own version" over technical disagreements, and why we have a dizzying array of incompatible, half-completed decentralization projects while Facebook and Twitter continue to eat society.

Thank you again for the info/backstory, though. I am just a naysayer who has sat through 1000 pitches of Fitzpatrick's basis thesis back in 2010 and seen excruciatingly minimal progress in the space of "actually making these things work for normal people".

I know both projects intimately and they are not "minor technical details" but rather fundamental architectural differences.
I'm happy to discuss this further -- my life-passion-project is to see decentralization through -- but fear I've overstepped my bounds in this thread and am taking away focus from the project at hand, which I am a supporter of.
"I'm actually mentally discounting both projects now " "the project at hand, which I am a supporter of"

Which is it?

(Gerrand)
Well that's embarrassing, I've been reading his name online for years and always read it as Gerrard. I'll just blame small fonts, that's it.