#4797 NORM Future : sharing is too easy and dangerous

Zarro Boogs per Child bugtracker at laptop.org
Mon Nov 12 11:15:20 EST 2007


#4797: sharing is too easy and dangerous
-------------------------------+--------------------------------------------
  Reporter:  AlbertCahalan     |       Owner:  Eben          
      Type:  enhancement       |      Status:  new           
  Priority:  normal            |   Milestone:  Future Release
 Component:  interface-design  |     Version:                
Resolution:                    |    Keywords:                
  Verified:  0                 |  
-------------------------------+--------------------------------------------
Changes (by Eben):

  * type:  defect => enhancement


Comment:

 Replying to [ticket:4797 AlbertCahalan]:
 > Sharing appears to be read-write by default, not read-only. In fact
 there does not seem to be any read-only sharing at all.

 "Read-only sharing" is planed in the form of "bulletin board posting."
 That is, sharing an ''activity'' is explicitly about sharing in a
 collaboration; read/write is implicit in this.  On the other hand, posting
 to the not-yet-existent bulletin boards is about making an object
 available for others to view, edit, modify, redistribute, etc.

 > With hardly more than a click, one can share the Terminal activity to
 the world. (it shows up in network view) Assuming that there isn't a bug
 to make this non-functional, everybody can start typing commands.

 Well, this activity isn't networked at all, which means the fact that it
 can be shared is a bug. (Well, more importantly the fact that it isn't
 networked is a bug...)  In any case, the meaning of a collaborative
 Terminal activity is unclear to me at the moment.  It will likely ''not''
 be the case that this acts as an SSH tunnel for anyone to run commands on
 the creators machine.  Perhaps we implement tabs here, with each
 participant in their own tab?  (Allowing, of course, copy/paste to work so
 commands can be shared.  Or, better still, adding a little sidebar so that
 a single click in the margin of anyone else's terminal tab will insert the
 command on that line into your own, etc.)

 > There does not seem to be a decent way to stop sharing an activity. One
 must first shut down the activity, then delete the journal entry.

 This is a tricky issue indeed.  It was planned, though I'm not sure it's
 really going to happen or not.  In the attitude of equal sharing, there is
 no "owner" of an activity who would reserve the rights to change the
 scope.  Anyone can invite, anyone can share, etc.  We're leaving the
 details of trust up to social interactions rather than imposing technical
 limitations on who can do what.  This does mean, however, that reducing
 scope is a scary thing, since in the above model anyone would have power
 to do so.  While it seems alright, if quite liberal, to allow anyone to
 increase the sharing scope, allowing anyone to decrease it, which
 potentially excludes the creator, is a real problem.  We need to think
 more about how the collaboration is managed and how the scopes can be
 adjusted.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/4797#comment:4>
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