Overlapping Projects and Companies

Social Framing
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Perhaps we should create a new category for companies and projects that have goals overlapping those of Spritely.

I’ll start with Cortex, which has some overlap but is on a blockchain.

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I wonder if “competitors” is the right framing; it seems to start out with more of an adversarial position than is necessary. I’m not sure what the right phrasing is to use. “Adjacent and near-adjacent organizations and projects”?

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Renamed to Overlapping Projects and Companies.

I was tempted to name it something like “What about [THIS] company/project?” which is something we all hear all the time and should have a clear FAQ-like answer for.

And in the rare case that there is a lot of overlap - we should talk about teaming up!

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One high-profile project that we get casually compared to is Solid.

It’s data-centric, and backed by MasterCard (!?). I’d be interested in hearing if anyone in this community has done a deep dive on Tim’s work and (written anything on) how it compares to an ocaps approach.

He’s got the name recognition, and a knighthood…

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One thing I know for sure is that Solid uses ACLs.

from GitHub - solid/solid: Solid - Re-decentralizing the web (project directory).

I cornered Tim at a conference a few years ago (10? now) and asked him to consider using capabilities. He was not receptive to the idea.

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I just ran across Matrix which describes itself as a decentralized conversation store. It is used to host FOSDEM.

Their business model might be interesting, too, since they are managed through a non-profit foundation.

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Though Matrix has some interesting ideas re: distributed messaging, it also very much falls into the ACL camp… I recall hearing the devs gushing about how it enables “distributed ACLs” and so on. So there may not be as much overlap as you might like.

The DAG data structure they use for rooms and the way it’s replicated across servers is very cool, though. And as you mention, they seem to have managed to keep governance of the protocol pretty open despite the company that employs the core team being for-profit.

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Another one to look at. They recently raised $30m.

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By my reading they adapted zcap-ld for a blockchain. The writeup provides a good explanation of capabilities and why they chose them over ACLs.