From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: "John E. Barham" <jbarham@jbarham.com>
Subject: Re: [9fans] WebDAV file system
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
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References: <e37d02a183b422d3963023618770a396@collyer.net>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 11:13:20 -0800
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Geoff Collyer wrote:

> > the way yet another thing gets hacked in on top of another hack and
> > so on ...
>
> I thought FTP was an overly-complex botch of a protocol, but when I
> was told what WebDAV was (HTTP as [lousy] remote file system
> protocol), I felt sick to my stomach.  Apple claim that they developed
> this abomination, but they could have just used IMAP, which clearly
> already is a [rotten] remote file system protocol but doesn't know it.

Give WebDAV some credit...  It does have several nice benefits over FTP:
easier custom authentication (assuming you're using something like Apache),
encryption via SSL, HTTP caching.  Being able to attach artitrary properties
to WebDAV resources also opens up some interesting possibilities:  for
example, I'm writing a unified POP3/IMAP/Webmail system that uses WebDAV as
the mail repository which means I can pre-parse the message headers and
store them as properties, somewhat reminiscent of how the Plan 9 mail file
server works.  It also makes remote, cross-platform development of the
servers trivial and I can browse the mail repository in my web browser.

> HTTP was a hack to transport the much worse hack of HTML and now
> they're piling kludges on top of hacks.

So the web is a hack.  Maybe several hundred million people can be wrong,
;), but it's easier (technically and politically) to make Plan 9 interop w/
what's out there in wide use than vice versa.

> (Is there really any point to
> using XML?  Maybe I'm missing the obvious, but I don't see that it
> buys one anything.)

It does seem gratuitous to use XML for WebDAV properties.

> How many awful, truncated remote file system protocols are people
> going to invent before they just bite the bullet and use a real one?

How many journaling file-systems does Linux really need?  People will insist
on re-inventing wheels (maybe badly) but for whatever reasons some of them
do pick up momentum and I might as well go along for the ride.

    John