Article:		Hailstorm: Open Web Services Controlled by Microsoft
Subject:		Web Services are not P2P!
Date:		2001-05-31 02:03:41
From:		cilux
First, the September P2P conference is to include 'Web Services', and now an article appears in openp2p about HailStorm - a Web Service. But Web Services are not P2P! Look: Web Services are client-server. P2P are client-client. The only, tenuous, link Clay Shirky provides is in this vague notion of 'de-centralization'. So running Linux to access Hailstorm - the use of open access standards like email addresses, Kerberos, XML and SOAP - is somehow 'de-centralizing' and therefore somehow related to P2P. But P2P and SOAP are quite different: P2P is client-client and SOAP is client-server. DNS (used in email) is very client-server oriented. Kerberos is primarily a client-server protocol. Perhaps because, in Clay Shirky's lights, P2P is defined as 'giving autonomy to the devices on the edge of the network'? But P2P is about much more than the autonomous right of these devices not to be owned by Microsoft! I would be very eager for someone to show me where I'm missing the point here. Or to promise me there'll be no Web Services presentations in Washington!

Showing messages 1 through 1 of 1.

• Web Services are not P2P!
  2001-06-01 17:15:57  cshirky [View]
  
  
  Of _course_ there will be Web SErvices presenations in DC -- its too early to take anything but a big tent attitude here. I have worked as hard as anyone to provide a coherenet definition of P2P, but even I am not interested in a litmus test that would exclude technologies likely to be of interest to developers interested in decentralized applications.
  
  Adn don't get hung up on narrow definitions of client/server -- that would exclude Napster and a number of other P2P apps that use client/server architectures. The real question is: cabn the same machien be both client *and server. And if the answer is yes, its interesting to us.
  
  SOAP is important here because it has the potential to turn _all_ clients that use it into servers of a sort, because anything that speaks XML can now both invoke and receive procedure calls remotely. For that reason if No other, HailStorm is worth watching, because its embrace of SOAP for end-user devices sets up a potentially huge corporate battle over how open or closed uses of those SOAP-compatible devices will be.
  
  -clay