Re: Free Software-like equivalents of Google?

On Mon, Nov 07, 2005, Arik Baratz wrote about "Re: [hackers-il] Free 
Software-like equivalents of Google?":
> When there is no single entity governing those databases, and they
> will become popular, eventually commercial enterprises will start
> thinking up ways of making money off these databases, and subvert the
> integrity mechanisms that those databases have.

The fact that we're talking about open-source software, and about a
distributed database, does NOT entail that the database does not have a
single owner, or is not controlled by a single entity.

In fact, I can imagine a (free) software like NFS or AFS or GFS or whatever
on steroids, which enables one to build a huge multi-terabyte filesystem
using hundreds of separate computers; On this "file system", applications
such as a search engine or mail server could be built. The fact that such
a file system allows you to build on many separate computers doesn't
necessarily mean that you would give control of each computer to a different
person: rather, you'll allow every organization that has sufficient means
to buy 10, or 100, or 1000, or 10,000 cheap computers, and run a huge
search engine or mail server or whatever on these computers, just like Google
runs now.

In other words, the software will be free, but real cash will still be
needed in order to buy the hardware.

> They are trying to do it to Google today, and there's every reason to
> believe that they will try to do it to your futuristic distributed
> search engine. You could battle it with integrity algorithms and

The fact that a free software search engine will have the same problems
that Google now has (spammers, DoS attacks, etc.) is obvious. But there
is no reason why a free-software implementation should be MORE suceptable
to attacks than Google. I don't subscribe to the belief that just because
Google's algorithms are secret, spammers find it harder to manipulate their
ranking.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |       Monday, Nov 7 2005, 5 Heshvan 5766
nyh-TS7m/3hpY0sOpacJJkBjfT4kX+cae0hd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx             
|-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Willpower: The ability to eat only one
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |salted peanut.


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