I’m a trained and experienced editor, including a fair bit of experience with glossaries.
I volunteer to put myself in the cross hairs as the clearing house and coordinator of a glossary for the SAFE network.
I’ll gather terms that need to be defined, get input on definitions, coordinate with @dirvine and others of the Maidsafe team and others in this community to ensure accuracy.
The goal is to have a set of definitions of SAFE network and related terms which are clear, complete, as simple as possible and accurately reflect the realities of the network, so that we can have a central point of agreement as to what we’re talking about, and a way to bring others up to speed.
This may be more ambitions than I’m ready for, but what the heck, I think it will help.
So, here’s the start of the list, please let me know what other terms really need to be understood and agreed upon to help us think and communicate better.
Anyone who wishes to suggest definitions, please do so. I’d much rather have to edit and coordinate a lot of this than have to figure it all out and write it myself.
Yeah, the wiki will likely be the central repository for the glossary, as well as maybe a downloadable version somewhere. Wiki is great because it’s an ongoing project.
Farmer - A person (human who runs a vault process on the network) Vault - A software program that connects to the network and shares part of the farmers disc space (and other resources) with the network. This is like the farmers tractor and data being the crops. Node - A network connected device User - A human, who uses the network (producer or consumer or both) Account - The ‘state’ held for humans and network entities (i.e. usage info, messaging post box, login information etc.) A typical user will have many associated accounts, but will probably think they have a single account, the one they log into. Safecoin - A currency unit created by the network and paid in reward to farmers, app builders, core developers and potentially other actors as the network evolves (thinking artists, content producers etc.) xor - a mathematical or logic function that acts on binary data, of two inputs exclusively one of them must be a 1 to have a 1 as the answer. (so A OR B can be set, but not A as well as B, it has to be exclusively A or B).
This might help, you know me and my weird ways of explaining. I think the easy way is to liken xor space like the differences in number bases, or perhaps like the shortest distance on earth between two points is a curved line, not straight. Or something like that, its not intuitive to our linearly trained minds (like logs and exponents).
“NFS” should be explained too.
Because NFS is NFS and this NFS doesn’t seem to be that, I suggest that we call it “Nfs” and maybe even something completely different because it’s going to remain confusing in both writing and speech (MaidFS, whatever).
Unless Nfs is the same as NFS which doesn’t seem to be the case.
Here are some other terms we are using in discussions. Feel free to refine the words/definitions for clarity. Some of these need to be ironed out anyway.
ANT = (Autonomous Network Technology) A network technology that is able to self manage, store and manipulate all network data and communications in a manner that requires no human intervention. Also known as “Ant Tech”.
The SAFE Network = (Secure Access For Everyone) An autonomous network of connected devices, using Ant Tech.
Here’s the one from our MaidSafe wiki. The SAFE Network = A decentralized network of users, communicating through the distributed self-encryption technology created with MaidSafe.
PUT Request = User function, requesting to store data on the SAFE Network.
GET Request = User function, requesting data from the SAFE Network.
GET Reply = Vault function, replying to data requests by the SAFE Network.
NSL = (Network Storage Limit) The maximum amount of data a user can store on the Network.
NSL Balance = (Network Storage Limit) The current amount of data a user has stored on the Network.
For our purposes, here and now, I think SAFE network is okay to use. Though I definitely think we need to do some thesaurus work and see if we can come up with something that is unique.
On the other hand, “SAFE network” is in use in a completely different context so I don’t think we are in danger of much confusion between this activity and the other(s), especially if we use all caps (SAFE or S.A,F.E.) consistently. So it may be fine anyway. I’m not a trademark lawyer, so for what it’s worth . . .
We’re also not using the term to represent a specific legal company, entity, etc., so legal targeting from outside isn’t much of a factor, I think. In that case it’s a free speech issue. We, as now corporate actors, can call things whatever we want as far as I’m concerned.
I think @Lost_Hero was being specific to “Safenet” which is a close source company that also does cloud storage encryption. “The SAFE Network” is not the same name. We always capitalize SAFE to acronym “Secure Access For Everyone.”
There are infinite ways common words are put together to form names/titles/acronyms. I’m sure somewhere on the internet someone is calling their network the safe network as well. Child protection services comes up often. So it is impossible to avoid.
But when two identical names overlap and both companies provide very similar services, it becomes sticky. We discussed it here MaidSAFE Tee Shirt - #73 by dyamanaka. To avoid getting close to sticky situations, it would be best not to use “Safenet” but rather “The SAFE Network”.
Yes, he was, but below in that topic HB said “The Project Safe Network” is the correct name (I should have linked to that specific comment). Okay, the SAFE Network!
