Trsst: a distributed secure blog platform for the open web

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1904431672/trsst-a-distributed-secure-blog-platform-for-the-o

by olafleur • 13 years ago

54 57 13 years ago

walid3• 13 years ago

Reminds me of App.net but with many price points and a Bitcoin twist. I hope they succeed because we need all kinds of new ideas experimented with.

mpowers20• 13 years ago

Our thing is that we: (1) extend RSS to support self-signed/self-encrypted entries, (2) specify rest apis for http servers to exchange RSS entries (kind of like NNTP).

We'll make a reference implementation, but we want and need many providers to experiment with price points and service options.

More importantly, anyone can roll-their-own provider on their server.

zeckalpha• 13 years ago

Their screenshots are of twitter.

jcoder• 13 years ago

WJW: https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/assets/000/499/002/9bbefc6069c0...

A hand-drawn sketch of the planned UI would look less vaporwarey.

mpowers20• 13 years ago

Well, it's a kickstarter, so it's by definition trying to get backing for a vaporware product. But fair point.

mpowers20• 13 years ago

Our use cases are of Twitter too, so it makes a certain sense. We haven't designed the UX yet, but it's meant to convey the idea.

That said, the architecture supports not only Twitter but FB-style friending and private group shares; we want to encourage different clients in different form factors, with the advantage being that they'd all interop. No more siloes.

skore• 13 years ago

Yeah, sorry, all of that is irrelevant. You use somebody elses UI on your kickstarter. That is a terrible, terrible idea.

It's an idea terrible enough that it will make people doubt your competence. For me, personally, "building strong crypto" and "lifting the twitter UI because too lazy to whip up some visualization of a simple roadmap" don't go together.

krcz• 13 years ago

What programming language do you plan to use for the reference implementation?

mpowers20• 13 years ago

JS on the client, and that's the important bit where all the crypto happens. Likely Java on the server, basically a drop-in servlet for any Tomcat, but still TBD.

e12e4• 13 years ago

I hope you at least consider a java client as well, so there will be one implementation that is actually usable - as javascript and crypto doesn't mix (unless something is happening wrt api-support in the various engines/browsers? But then I guess you'd say html5, not "javascript").

Should be much quicker to develop a common library for use by the server and a (webstart) client - than to do two separate implementations? Also some of the code (and most of the interfaces) could probably be used on Android as well.

If you are doing javascript wouldn't nodejs on the server make sense?

newman314• 13 years ago

Read "JavaScript Crypto considered harmful"

http://www.matasano.com/articles/javascript-cryptography/

Grue3• 13 years ago

Likely? So you don't even have a solid plan how to build your app?

yapcguy3• 13 years ago

Why do you need Kickstarter for this?

Why don't you build it first and if it gets popular then ask for donations?

What about the open source projects you're building on top of? Are you going to give any of those programmers some money?

Yes. We're starting with the critical bit - the client - out in the open in JS w/ off-the-shelf open-source. Needs many eyes.

Frankly, I'm sick of people jumping on the "open-source" bandwagon and diverting resources from those who truly deserve it or who have a track record in the field they are asking funds for.

You know, people like Stallman and Torvalds took risk and bore the opportunity cost of spending time to build things they believed in and had passion for.

It seems too many of todays entrepreneurs are afraid of taking risk and want to pass it onto the public. I especially dislike what App.net did, conning people into giving money to build a closed source platform and then selling part of that company to venture capitalists.

zedpm• 13 years ago

Java/Tomcat is an unsavory prospect for many folks. The options for building the server side are numerous; Tomcat is a clunky, resource-hungry PITA that many folks, myself included, go out of their way to avoid. If the devs are Java guys then that's their business, but the choice will almost certainly decrease the user base.

w1ntermute2• 13 years ago

Horrible name - please change it. People are going to have no idea how to pronounce that. Just because you were able to get a 5 character .com domain name doesn't mean you should use it for your new venture.

byoung2• 13 years ago

I guessed "tryst", but with a pun on RSS

mpowers20• 13 years ago

It's ending up either trust or tryst. Kind of like GIF vs. JIF. That said, we'd have probably half the mainstream press coverage without that name.

wahsd2• 13 years ago

ummm ... trust? I didn't find it that difficult. What does Facebook tell us about its service? Reminds me of a perpetrator log, which, I guess it has kind of revealed itself as with revelations that facebook is essentially a mass surveillance dossier system.

But I get your point, it will need some marketing to get people to understand what it is all about. But it's not like we knew what Twitter was at first. Did we?

w1ntermute2• 13 years ago

But I get your point

No, you don't. It's not a matter of understanding the meaning, it's a matter of pronunciation.

talles2• 13 years ago

The name is awful.

What it stands for anyway?

wahsd2• 13 years ago

Trust? Doesn't seem all that diffcult, especially with some marketing. Are you trying to say that Facebook and Twitter are better names?

talles2• 13 years ago

I'm not trying to say anything besides the name is not really good IMO.

But since you bring up, Facebook and Twitter are way better names.

IMHO it is not a good name because: * Not obvious at first glance that means 'trust' * How do you pronounce that? just say 'trust', spell it or try to say it in some bizarre way with a mute 't'? * Doesn't look pretty

For me the only good thing about the name is that is unique.

fatbat• 13 years ago

Play on the word trust + rss? tRSSt?

dholowiski• 13 years ago

Looks like you posted this back on 8/18 as well. I guess you can get around the rules by adding/removing a # from the URL.

mpowers20• 13 years ago

I didn't post this. But feel free to make unsubstantiated ad hominem attacks, because: the internet. :)

ctz• 13 years ago

'decentralized' yet needs $15000 PA for server hosting?

walid3• 13 years ago

As decentralized as WordPress. The project is open source.

aray• 13 years ago

So why not start out as an open source project, then kickstart the hosting/etc after its been built and tested?

Many open source software projects (some huge ones today) came out of the woodwork with no funding and little community support.

mpowers20• 13 years ago

Agree, wordpress is an apt comparable. Some of the KS tiers are that we're providing hosting for early backers, so we need to provide hosting for early backers.

The intent is to extend an existing standard, RSS, with an http protocol to support it. We need to one of many providers for the system to work as intended.

pokstad• 13 years ago

Create a CouchApp. Problem solved.

davignon• 13 years ago

You say backers would be opted-out "ads or sponsored posts if we ever have to resort to that". How would you implement ads in a decentralised, open standard?

Trsst: a distributed secure blog platform for the open web

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