[tahoe-dev] organizing the notes about accounting/quotas/invitations

[James A. Donald]

On 2012-03-23 1:24 PM, Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 6:27 PM, James A. Donald<jamesd at echeque.com>  wrote:
>>
>> I notice that the accounting system is still centralized,

On 2012-03-23 1:24 PM, Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn wrote:
> I don't think so. Although, of course, I'm not entirely sure because
> there are too many accounting designs. However, I don't think *any* of
> Brian's accounting designs so far have been centralized, unless I'm
> misunderstanding what you mean by that word. Could you please be more
> specific?
>
> Regards,
>
> Zooko
>

You want to be able to answer "how much does Bob store", which can only 
be answered by a unitary authority for the relatively small group to 
which Bob belongs.

If the system is truly decentralized, one cannot answer the question 
"how much does Bob store".  One can only answer "How much does bob store 
with me?"

If the system is truly decentralized, if it is peer to peer, there are 
no separate storage grids, just sea of peers.  Files are stored on the 
peers with which one's software has generated relationships, not on the 
system with which the human has opened an account.

In one of the proposed accounting systems, each storage server accepts 
storage authority from a single account server, or a small number of 
account servers.  Thus each account server represents a single tahoe 
storage grid, a single place where one may put files, a single thing 
that is rather like a single file system.

With the proposed accounting systems, difficulties will ensue should one 
wish to spread a file in k of m shares across n such systems, in part 
because one has the right to store data because of a relationship with 
the human authority in charge of an account server.  To store data 
across n such systems, even if the software allowed it, and I don't 
immediately see how it could, it would be necessary to manage n sets of 
human relationships, which is prohibitive.