I watched the Alpha Demo and briefly read through the comments on this thread and description on the github, but still am a bit confused.
I mean, there already are multiple file-sharing protocols. There are video-streaming protocols. There are p2p data-exchange protocols. Some of them need more friendly end-user tools to become widespread, but still, they do their job and usually are introduced as having some feature, which "all the previous stuff" lacked.
So what exactly is IPFS and why I would use it over… whatever else I can use to share files? After all, it's a protocol, and not an end-user tool yet, right? So what does this protocol present us? What exactly all that "p2p, decentralized" stuff means in the case of this very protocol?
Why I'm asking it here and not seeking answer in documentation and source-code? Well, there's quite a real reason beyond my laziness: from what I've understood so far, it seems like some pretty ambitious project. And ambitious projects need one short, clearly expressed idea, to avoid becoming a mess during the development process. I don't see one.
I mean, there already are multiple file-sharing protocols. There are video-streaming protocols. There are p2p data-exchange protocols. Some of them need more friendly end-user tools to become widespread, but still, they do their job and usually are introduced as having some feature, which "all the previous stuff" lacked.
So what exactly is IPFS and why I would use it over… whatever else I can use to share files? After all, it's a protocol, and not an end-user tool yet, right? So what does this protocol present us? What exactly all that "p2p, decentralized" stuff means in the case of this very protocol?
Why I'm asking it here and not seeking answer in documentation and source-code? Well, there's quite a real reason beyond my laziness: from what I've understood so far, it seems like some pretty ambitious project. And ambitious projects need one short, clearly expressed idea, to avoid becoming a mess during the development process. I don't see one.