

Chris Messina's Thoughts on Opera Unite - chris24
http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2009/06/16/thoughts-on-opera-unite/

======
SwellJoe
I'm surprised anyone (outside of Opera) went to this much trouble over Opera
Unite. It's just not interesting. It won't be particularly popular, very few
people will switch browsers in order to use it, and the people that do will
find that it just isn't all that great having your own web server running on
your PC.

I like Opera, and wish them the best of luck with their business and their
projects, but Unite doesn't change anything. It will be a barely used feature
in a barely used browser.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Ever heard of Dropbox? Potentially obsolete with Unite.

Ever wanted to share all the photos/videos on your 120GB hard-drive? Unite
does that too, bye-bye flickr.

Ever wanted to host online chat - it's already there in your browser now.

Ever wanted to listen to your music when all the files are on some other
computer? Relay via Unite, it's in your browser.

Want to host web-pages on your local computer? Don't want to install a web-
server .. no problem.

Really I find it awesome, I think we've only just scratched the surface here
too. A genuinely new paradigm IMO, <http://alicious.com/2009/opera-about-to-
change-the-world/>.

Welcome to the Peerweb.

~~~
joseakle
What happens if my computer is turned off?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Sorry, not quite catching you there, you do what to your computer? /sarcasm

Yes that is one of the down falls, pretty major too, but if you're family
wants to share from your computer they can just call, or you can look and see
the connections are 0 before turning it off. I can also imagine a caching/on-
line backup system (like Dropbox) - eg for your fridge notes.

Peerweb is not the www they have a lot of overlap but this is going to change
the way we use computers IMO.

------
blasdel
I agree with him, but he doesn't seem to understand how Opera's proxies are
intended to work -- they don't _want_ to have to tunnel all your traffic
except as a last resort: their main purpose is as a backchannel for
coordinating NAT hole-punching.

As dumb as Opera is, they're not stupid enough to pay for all your live
filesharing bandwidth, symmetrically.

~~~
factoryjoe
Actually, I do understand that. That's why I said that they were using a
"P2P-like" network... Given that it's an alpha, it's pretty awesome that it
works as it does, but this deficiency — tying you to an "operaunite.com"
domain — is primarily where my criticism lies.

And, that they used such confusing and contradictory terms in their EULA.

~~~
blasdel
Still, the claim in the next sentence that "you must push all your traffic
through Opera’s proxy service" isn't true.

I understand that you were primarily criticizing/debunking the reason d'etre
and social crap in the copypastad press-release -- not the technical
handwaving.

------
benburkert
Before unite, I thought of opera as an irrelevant company that did good work.
now I just see them as irrelevant.

One point that Chris didn't make in his post is that the problem they
identified as the reason for building Unite (or so they say), the loss of
ownership of one's data to third party services, is the same dilemma that
inspired DiSo.

The reason DiSo is relevant, and unite is not, is because the good folks (like
Chris) behind DiSo recognized that it's not just about where your data is
stored. Just as important is that the format is open and interoperable.
Although Unite has this quasi distributed model, it's formats/APIs are (AFAIK)
unknown, not based on open formats, and for all intents and purposes, as good
as proprietary at at this point.

Pushing the 3rd party into the browser is not a solution to the problem.

~~~
nissefar
Huh? Opera Unite is based entirely on open standards, AFAIK. All APIs are
public.

<http://unite.opera.com/support/#services_tech>
[http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-unite-developer-
pri...](http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-unite-developer-primer/)

~~~
benburkert
My point is that having a public accessible API or docs are no longer enough,
you need to adopt open standards whenever possible. Adopting open standards
ensures that the end user is free and able to move their data in and out of
your service. One of the ways Microsoft torpedoes open standards is by adding
creative extensions to them, so while 95% of your data is contained in an open
format, it's not portable b/c the extension makes it unusable to services
adhering to only the standard.

It's using XMPP vs. rolling your own chat protocol. Supporting oAuth for file
access vs. a custom authentication API.

Everything I saw browsing through the docs is about how to develop for the
unite platform. I don't see anything about interacting with a unite service
outside of an opera browser.

In this sense, unite is a creative extension to an open standard, browsers
with common functionality like firefox, ie, safari, etc.

~~~
jimboyoungblood
Following this line of reasoning, Twitter is horrible because it doesn't adopt
an open standard. Likewise Flickr. And delicious. And anything else with a
homegrown REST API.

If their API is well documented, who cares that it wasn't designed and rubber
stamped by a committee.

~~~
factoryjoe
I think if Opera provided an explanation of how to set up a "Unite server" on
your own server, than a lot of this controversy would be moot. That's why
Google was so epic with their launch of Wave.

~~~
Raphael
What kind of explanation are you looking for? You just download Opera, change
a few settings, and leave it running.

