I'd argue that "Public IPFS DHT", if less catchy, is far more precise than "Amino".
With a specific name for the specific implementation of a general concept, others could provide alternative implementations implementing the same concept.
Specificity >> descriptiveness, when you're aiming for a distributed future with multiple parties
As much as I hate AWS' jungle of names, I get why they did it. And it's probably better than any alternative
Most of the interesting things I want to do with ipfs involve the dht, any sort of file transfer is usually a secondary concern.
Yes :) There can be multiple implementations using the same specification and still be compatible. For example, the new "facelift" they talk about in the submission article would be a new implementation, but still compatible with the old one, as they would (publicly) mostly have the same interface, so they can still talk.
There are many IPFS and libp2p implementations already, and they mostly aim first to be compatible with each other, so even if they work differently inside, they can communicate.
Similarly as with BitTorrent where many clients implement the same specification and can therefore exchange data still, just like TCP or basically any protocol.
- Filecoin is not interesting. IPFS and lip2p are interesting.
- Renaming IPFS-the-application to Kubo is confusing
- Naming the IPFS DHT "Amino" is confusing. Why does it even need its own name?
I really wish PL would go through the occasional contraction phase where it prunes the bulk of its initiatives and re-focuses on what it does amazingly well. IPFS and libp2p are truly amazing.
So that other DHT implementations can exist and potentially replace the existing one.
Same for go-ipfs being renamed. We generally don’t have web browsers named after the protocol they use. And with multiple ipfs clients, one of them being named “ipfs” is itself confusing.
Frankly, both should have probably happened years ago.
What's wrong with e.g. "The IPFS DHT was using Kademlia and is now using Coral"?
The result is that there are now more names for the same thing, and the old names have changed. This is more confusing, not less. Ditto for "IPFS" and "Foo's IPFS implementation".
Because that’s not what is happening.
The Kademlia-like DHT is not going away. It just has a name (“Amino”) so you can refer to its as an implementation relative to other implementations that will coexist, not necessarily replace, the original.
> The result is that there are now more names for the same thing, and the old names have changed.
They gave a name to a thing that didn’t have a formal name, because it can compete with other implementations. Having distinct names for a service and an implementation isn’t uncommon. The only criticism is that they didn’t do it sooner.
All of this seems pretty academic. The majority of developers and vast majority of users won’t know or care about the branding or abstractions allowing for different implementations. The tools work the way they did, hopefully faster. That’s it.
It was an example, but I think my point still stands: there is no confusion other than the one created by changing the names of things in-flight.
>All of this seems pretty academic.
Agreed :/