Thoughts about seamless account moving
Joux
I have not contributed to the project yet but I think it's great and
would like to get to understand it a little.
D*'s main USP is the distributed nature and the free decision where you
host your account, in my opinion. So being able to change pod is
crucial. I don't know enough about the inner workings (crypto and
stuff), so I'll start from a user's perspective.
Scenario:
----------
We have three D* users:
Anna (an...@podOne.com)
Ben (b...@somePod.com)
Camilla (cam...@somePod.com)
Both Ben and Camilla have Anna in one of their aspects.
Now Anna wants to change to a different pod, because podOne.com is not
well maintained.
What Anna (the moving user) does:
----------------------------------
Anna exports all her data from the old pod podOne.com. She chooses
podTwo.com as the new home for her account. an...@podTwo.com is already
taken as a user name, so she opens her new account
theoth...@podTwo.com and imports the file with her old data. All
aspects are restored and the new pod can pull the updates from her friends.
Anna then deactivates her old account on podOne.com and enters her new
account theoth...@podTwo.com as a follow up address.
What Ben (who has Anna in an Aspect) does:
------------------------------------------
Annas old pod doesn't host her account anymore, but sees the follow up
address, similar to a "permanently moved" http redirect. Ben is
presented a question: "Anna has moved her D* account to a different pod:
theoth...@podTwo.com. Do you still want to get her updates?" with the
options "Yes" or "No, remove from my aspects".
Ben clicks "Yes" and Anna's contact is updated accordingly and is pulled
from the other pod from now on.
What Camilla (who has Anna in an Aspect) does:
----------------------------------------------
Camilla is also presented a question: "Anna has moved her D* account to
a different pod: theoth...@podTwo.com. Do you still want to get her
updates?" with the options "Yes" or "No, remove from my aspects".
But Camilla doesn't like the company that runs podTwo.com because there
have been reports that they sell private data. So she clicks "No" and is
not connected with Anna anymore.
What is important is user choice: Anna can choose whether to leave a
follow up address or not. Maybe the new pod can automatically offer to
close down the old account upon import. And Ben and Camille can choose
to get in touch with this different pod or not.
OK, this is how I would image it, quite naively. Feel free to add
technical stuff and tell me this won't work ;-)
Best
j
Martin Kepplinger
I'm also no developer but most of it sounds quite good. It's definitely
tricky to find a consistent way to switch from your diaspora handly to a
completely new adress.
In any case, thanks for bringing that issue up here. as I said so often:
This is _crucial_ to Diapsora. Literally one of the most important
features. Without it, Diaspora will never be distributed as intended and
people will never be save as intended. That's why I'd love to hear a
core dev's take on that :)
thanks!
martin