The entire SAFE Network is the server

If it doesn’t require constant attention it’s not a server.

1 Like

Purpose != Service.

A hard drive is a component that has the purpose to store data.

The safenetwork is a service, it uses other people’s computing resources to serve data. That resource is acting as a server.

To call a server centralised is an old school view. With virtual machines, docker, aws, azure. Distributing your service over the world has never been easier or cheaper.

1 Like

Indeed.
I get why people don’t want a vault to be seen as a server, but comparing a vault to a hdd also seems odd to me, maybe as I’m not from a background that is used to using these terms.
I mean, try running a vault without a computer for it to interface with and its not going to work, so that comparison is just wrong, in my mind.

1 Like

The network acts like one giant server, but not it’s constituent parts. i.e. the vaults are part of a huge server like thing. I think server will be old world soon though. In any case network == server, parts of network != server.

5 Likes

If I hosted something like Consul or CockroachDB. I need a minimum number of 5 servers for the service to be available. Just because only 4 computers, nodes, containers, magic internet boxes are available doesn’t mean they all stop being servers, they are still attempting to establish consensus to resume the service.

distributed server is just that distributed servers. A vault on it’s own has no authority and cannot give you data, it must have authority provided by other vaults and so on. Semantically we can make a vault and elephant or zebra or something, but it’s all just playing with bad English I recon.

Perhaps in your example of consul /cockroachdb you can call them part servers or mini servers, not quite servers or serves that cannot alone serve you data, or confusingly call them servers. It’s just semantics.

We don’t want Are Safe Vaults servers or not: a discussion all over again :wink:

We could call bitcoin nodes servers and argue the point like mad to those core devs, but they will just be full nodes to them.

4 Likes

No comparisons are perfect, but a disk is just a small computer in itself, with a very specific purpose. A vault is to my mind very similar to that, whereas when I hear or use the term server, I’m in mind of a more complex multi purpose system, capable of many things, requiring configuration, ongoing monitoring and maintenance. Even shared hosting of a website falls into this bracket because it requires specialist knowledge that has to be learned, and ongoing effort to keep it running.

Vaults and disks are very much simpler. They demand little or no expertise or ongoing maintenance - you plug them in/download the app, and after that you can forget about them.

This is my viewpoint and others are free to have different ones, though I maintain it is useful because helps people to understand the reality, that server based infrastructure is the cause of many fundamental problems, and SAFE solves those problems by getting rid of the kind of platform which is responsible. IMO, calling vaults servers is confusing, implies that there’s no big difference, when actually the difference is enormous.

My main point though is to show that people are drawing arbitrary distinctions, none of which are definitively correct - but made in order to be consistent with a particular viewpoint, and which you choose may depend on the point you wish to make.

4 Likes

The difference is if someone referred to a bitcoin node as a server, everyone else would auto translate the meaning in their head and it would be synonymous.

If I call a vault/farmer a server I get roasted for lies, misinformation and that I must hate the safenetwork.

I’m saying it’s not a helpful point to make, that making it is both arbitrary and confuses an issue for no good reason, and in turn makes it harder to explain to people how SAFE can provide such enormous advantages over the existing ways of doing this.

4 Likes

And I’m saying it’s not even worth distinction because the safenetwork is far more significant than one word. The masses won’t allow the eradication of the word “server”, because it doesn’t fit some idea of marketing.

Yes, and I get why ppl don’t want that word used now.
I did say it was semantics many posts ago, but got an outright " no " as a reply.
To my mind, vaults serve chunks, now this may be bad terminology, but to my mind its what they do.

It most certainly is and worse it’s confusing semantics for semantics sake. We are building a serverless internet and not one made of servers no matter how we try and squeeze the word server into it. quic-p2p has a echo server in there as part of config and you can consider many parts of the system in a node/vault as a service or serving some stuff, but then every single bit of software or hardware passes messages or data around and we can say "Agh these are all servers, everything, your mobile phone, doorbell, video camera and … well every single electronic or electrical thing we can imagine. Servers everywhere, all we need to know is they serve something.

When serve means give/provide as is used here in this semantic debate then all mechanical things also serve something (force usually) so every mechanical device is a server. Then the horse that pulls the cart serves stuff on it’s cart, so it’s a server. Then the bus serving all those customers it carries, it’s a server and so on.

It’s all really the same argument, you can call almost everything a server, even the thing in your head you use to think that. It serves electrical signals along synapses and so on it goes.

So X serves Y does not in my opinion make X a server, unless we want total confusion in the world around us.

So yes a vault is a server, a bitcoin node is a server, a cart is a server and … you see :wink:

6 Likes

It’s not confusing at all. The word server doesn’t take away the significant merits of the safenetwork. You simply don’t like the word, because you think it devalues your achievement. I say, don’t be silly.

1 Like

No, it devalues the word server IMO, nothing do do with anyone’s achievement.

I don’t like centralised control and ability to manipulate data/people as you certainly can do with servers. I use the term server here to describe a computer acting as a server as defined in the current state of the art in computing.

5 Likes

Server != centralised control

Server is a generic term in computing. A miner is a server, the same as a vault is a server.

OK forget this idea that vaults “serve” chinkes therefore they are servers.
It is as valid to say vaults provide chunks on demand therefore they are providers.

1 Like

If you want to say vaults are servers and then expect Engineers to work on them like servers then you have created you own hell.

Even maidsafe have had engineers who don’t get “serverless” and think as though they were programming a server.

It’s not a server and that frame of mind will wrong foot any newcomer and make onboarding Engineering talent a nightmare.

A miner is not a server and neither is a vault. It can be in folks heads, but surely even you making that argument don’t think you would program such bits of software like you would program a server? This is a key point, you wont and cannot program a vault in that mindset, it’s very far from being a server.

A quick google says different

server
noun
noun: server; plural noun: servers

 1.
 a person or thing that serves.

2.
a computer or computer program which manages access to a centralized resource or service in a network.
7 Likes

From a marketing perspective, this thread proves again why saying ‘there are no servers’ is great - it draws all the pendants out to debate it, which generates publicity.

Sometimes you just need to be bold with your statements and let the radical claims sink in to the masses.

12 Likes

Maidsafe decide what to call things they make, similar to Microsoft or other companies, which for example calls their storage services clouds.

When most people talk about the SAFE-network they will call it vaults.

Just accept it! If you in the future design an new internet then you can name that solution whatever you want.

1 Like

Indeed, its probably best I use the term supply or provide.

1 Like