Re: Question collaborative editing.

[Karl Fogel]

On 29 Sep 2020, Ergus wrote:
>1) On one hand such services require some servers (to work like google
>spreadsheet) and need to be provided somehow... something difficult as I
>don't think gnu or fsf have resources to maintain a service like that
>and provide it.
>
>2) On the other hand it will be better if the service is somehow
>distributed in order to give more privacy-security but also to reduce
>the load of the servers... I still can't find any infrastructure we can
>use, cause most of the peer-to-peer libraries are for C++, javascript,
>Node.js and so on (example: webrtc). Just on yesterday I found
>n2n... But I am not a web specialist so it requires a lot of
>experimenting time for me.
>
>3) The other workflow (create a local server for others) is the
>"simplest" approach at the moment. But that is a problem for many use
>cases due to dynamic ip addreses, firewalls, opening ports and so on. It
>is fine for a class room or company, but not for working from home.

It's okay if a central server is required, as long as it's free software.  In 
practice, there would be a few "well-known" central servers that people use 
(the way many people just use https://pad.riseup.net/ for Etherpad today).  One 
of those well-known servers can even be set as the default in the client code 
in Emacs.  If some people want to use a different server instance to 
collaborate, all they have to do is set that variable, or specify the server 
through some interactive prompt.

This doesn't necessarily imply OT instead of CRDT or vice-versa.  Still, 
despite the "CRDTs are the future" message at 
https://josephg.com/blog/crdts-are-the-future/, I suspect that for Emacs's 
purposes OT might be the better solution: simpler to implement and maintain.  
In any case, I hope development of this feature doesn't block on 
decentralization.  While decentralization would be nice, it's not required; 
people can set up their own servers when they really need to.

Best regards,
-Karl