Decentralized Trello for SAFE

The first thing I can think of that would be valuable on SAFE, is a decentralized alternative to Trello, the site which I currently use to organize absolutely everything. It’s always seemed a little weird that I’m trusting this company to keep securely hosting all my notes and attachments indefinitely.

I can see myself being able to implement a simple form of Trello-like organization software for SAFE and expanding it in increments to achieve feature parity. Is it something anyone else would be interested in?

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The JAMS project would definitely use it when it is close to parity! Trello is very handy. I can see a github and trello on SAFE being some of the most popular apps for development.

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+1 would be awesome :slight_smile:

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I’m guessing based on @happybeing’s guide to building apps, my first step is gonna be to learn Rust.

You probably don’t need to learn Rust for what you’re planning. See this recent thread.

I’m not a developer but my impression is you only need Rust if you are doing the system-level stuff.

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I certainly wouldn’t recommend Rust for this - not saying its a bad idea, but there are several options.

For beginners I think web apps rather than desktop might be worth considering. See this post:

You can use the Web app (HTML/CSS/JavaScript) approach for desktop apps too (as with Web Hosting Manager example by MaidSafe and also @Shane’s Safe-CMS.

Using other languages is a matter of language preference really, so Rust is also good but maybe not as easy as JavaScript or Python.

Part of the problem for newcomers is I think having so many options. This also makes it hard to say X is best, because unless you know what somebody will want to do once they’ve learned a bit, how can you know what would be their best starting point? Generally people tend to recommend what they know and like - so listen and look around, then jump in and ask for help!

I chose the Web app route myself because I was out of touch and thought that would be the quickest and easiest way for me to create something useful - that proved a good decision for me, and I think not having to deal with targeting different operating systems can make starting out a lot easier for beginners, but if they then decide they want to build system level apps obviously I’d have recommended something else and Rust would be top of my list if I wanted to do that. Also, at the time I didn’t realise how much work there would be for me in learning what git, github, nodejs, npm, webpack (and next yarn :-/ ) were and how to use them - but having got the basics they are incredibly powerful so I’m glad I did. But all these approaches and tools can be bewildering even for somebody who spent many years in software development, so it’s a big hill for anybody new to climb - so be prepared for parts of this journey being tough and getting disheartened. Dealing with that is part of the skill IMO. But the view from the summit is terrific :smiley:

@Shane is planning some live streaming of his development, so check that out too. Sitting next to a programmer and watching them is a great way to learn. Ultimately, the key skill is problem solving, and learning to stay with a problem that you don’t yet know how to solve, but that takes time. To start with, learning how to tackle different tasks, and how to put things together, how to test, how to design etc are all building blocks. Oh, and how to debug!

None of that depends on language choice - those skills will be useful forever… until AI that is :slight_smile: - but I will probably still code even then, it is such fun!

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Thanks Mark! :slight_smile:

With regards to my streams for desktop app development, the first stream will be Sunday 25th February at 12:00 GMT - I’ll publicly post the link to the Twitch channel before then with some more information - but that’s when it will be.

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yeah Trello is awesome.

I definitely use it all the time as well

I know some of these features were sort available on a past version of Listy. Has that app been updated for the newest Browsers? no pressure @Joseph_Meagher just wondering, since people are asking for exactly that, like a Trello here

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It seems like a huge leap of faith, as a user, to trust that a non browser based app does not have some backdoor that can be used to unmask me. I personally don’t intend to use any apps that are not loaded through the Peruse browser for this reason.

As I understand it, Independent (non-browser based) Apps will be independent executables, which, while protected from learning your SAFE credentials by the layered authentication scheme (as long as they didn’t install a key-logger), they are still executables that could be doing things on the legacy internet or with my harddrive, behind the scenes. As such, their authors will have to really jump through hoops to convince me to install them.

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Would you be happy with self-compiling the open-source code?

I think that credibility and trust for a specific publisher can be earned and the ability for people to self compile source from github would be one of the things that would help earn that. The people interested in SAFE will skew towards the very security conscious end of the spectrum, so trust in random executables will be hard fought.

I would of course, trust binaries from the MAIDSAFE team, and suspect other publishers will earn that trust as well. But web apps that are sandboxed through the Peruse browser will enjoy easier adoption from me.

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Listy and the rest of the safey websites have all been updated for alpha 2 for the latest browsers (though demoy isn’t uploaded on the network but its working code on github is). Though listy’s main focus is keep track of uploaded safe websites by the community and not keep track of bugs or features for projects that being said trello would be one of the easier website/app to bring over to the SAFE Network and if there seemed to be demand for it I would it as an option for a future poll.

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Do you have a scheme in mind for group access? If I want a set of people to be able to interact with the board, but have it private from others, what sort of architecture would allow this?

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One of the simplest approaches would be to create a MD (this can be random) and then accessing it with its MD name, this MD would keep a list of the issues/features and progress in a JSON format making it easier to make changes like changing progress:“to-do” to progress:“done”. There would still need to be more work done but that should give the gist of one way to go about it. It is also possible to save any projects MD name to the user using the app container or using local storage so they can access it without having to type in anything.

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So, as long as you know the name of the MD, you must be in the group that is allowed to view/change it. Is that it? I guess that’s good, as long as nobody shares that name with others.

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Not necessarily as you can set permissions for who can read the MD as well as inserting and updating entries. The Permissions subsection of Mutable Data from the SAFE API Overview goes into more detail and could answer other questions that you may have.

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Thanks for the link. It talks about permissions and how they can be set for “yourself, another user, or everybody”. Imagining a large user list of say, 1000 users that are allowed to read an item, 100 users that are allowed to change the item, and all other users are disallowed from seeing the item, I wonder where all this permissions data is stored. I have lots of research to do.:wink:

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just wanting to mention your SAFE API Overview is unbelievable awesome! I’ve seen many todos but it’s already an extraordinary impressive collection of valuable data presented in a structured manner and easy to read! Thank you very very much for this!!

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Well, I hate to say this after all that interest was expressed, but I think I’m more passionate about working on this other idea I had. If anyone else wants to run with a Trello-type project, feel free to do it.