I Was Wrong. CRDTs Are the Future
Metadata
Highlights
- At its heart, OT is a glorified for() loop with some helper functions to update character offsets. In practice, this works great. OT is simple and understandable.
- The big problem with OT is that dependancy on a centralized server.
- Its not perfect though. We wanted Wave to replace email. Email is federated. An email thread can span multiple companies and it all just works. And unlike facebook messenger, emails are only be sent to the companies that are CC’ed. If I email my coworker, my email doesn’t leave the building. For Wave to replace email, we needed the same functionality
- Since then, researchers have been busy trying to make OT work better. The most promising work uses CRDTs (Conflict-Free Replicated data types). CRDTs approach the problem slightly differently to allow realtime editing without needing a central source of truth.
- OT’s one advantage is that it fits well in centralized software - which is most software today. But distributed algorithms work great in centralized software too. (Eg look at Github). And I think a really high quality CRDT running in wasm would be faster than an OT implementation in JS. And even if you only care about centralized systems, remember - Google runs into scaling problems with Google Docs because of OT’s limitations.
- I increasingly don’t care for the world of centralized software.
Software interacts with my data, on my computers. Its about time my software reflected that relationship. I want my laptop and my phone to share my files over my wifi. Not by uploading all my data to servers in another country. Especially if those servers are financed by advertisers bidding for my eyeballs.
- Philosophically, if I modify a google doc my computer is asking Google for permission to edit the file. (You can tell because if google’s servers say no, I lose my changes.) In comparison, if I git push to github, I’m only notifying github about the change to my code. My repository is mine. I own all the bits, and all the hardware that houses them. This is how I want all my software to work. Thanks to people like Martin, we now know how to make good CRDTs
- CRDTs would let us remake Wave, but simpler and better. And they would let us write software that treats users as digital citizens, not a digital serfs. And that matters.
title: “I Was Wrong. CRDTs Are the Future”
author: “josephg.com”
url: ”https://josephg.com/blog/crdts-are-the-future/”
date: 2023-12-19
source: hypothesis
tags: media/articles
I Was Wrong. CRDTs Are the Future
Metadata
Highlights
- At its heart, OT is a glorified for() loop with some helper functions to update character offsets. In practice, this works great. OT is simple and understandable.
- The big problem with OT is that dependancy on a centralized server.
- Its not perfect though. We wanted Wave to replace email. Email is federated. An email thread can span multiple companies and it all just works. And unlike facebook messenger, emails are only be sent to the companies that are CC’ed. If I email my coworker, my email doesn’t leave the building. For Wave to replace email, we needed the same functionality
- OT’s one advantage is that it fits well in centralized software - which is most software today. But distributed algorithms work great in centralized software too. (Eg look at Github). And I think a really high quality CRDT running in wasm would be faster than an OT implementation in JS. And even if you only care about centralized systems, remember - Google runs into scaling problems with Google Docs because of OT’s limitations.
- I increasingly don’t care for the world of centralized software.
Software interacts with my data, on my computers. Its about time my software reflected that relationship. I want my laptop and my phone to share my files over my wifi. Not by uploading all my data to servers in another country. Especially if those servers are financed by advertisers bidding for my eyeballs.
- Philosophically, if I modify a google doc my computer is asking Google for permission to edit the file. (You can tell because if google’s servers say no, I lose my changes.) In comparison, if I git push to github, I’m only notifying github about the change to my code. My repository is mine. I own all the bits, and all the hardware that houses them. This is how I want all my software to work. Thanks to people like Martin, we now know how to make good CRDTs
- CRDTs would let us remake Wave, but simpler and better. And they would let us write software that treats users as digital citizens, not a digital serfs. And that matters.