[sugar] Sharing data between activities.

[Samuel Klein]

On 8/23/07, Ivan Krstić <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> wrote:
> On Aug 23, 2007, at 10:57 PM, Carlos Neves wrote:
>
> > Wait, does this mean I can't load an object from the datastore
> > programaticaly ?
>
> Yes.
>
> > There goes the neighborhood! So all my assumptions on using the
> > datastore to retrieve stuff based on tags is simply flawed? Why was
> > this decision made?
>
> The rationale is here:
> <http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Bitfrost#P_DOCUMENT:_file_store_service>

| Benign programs are not adversely impacted by the need to use
| the file store for document access, because they generally do not
| care about rendering their own file open dialogs...

Except for the common situation of a program that wants to read from
image, midi, media, text, game, or other files that the user has
explicitly chosen to share with the world.

| Malicious programs, however, lose a tremendous amount of ability
| to violate the user's privacy or damage her data, because all
| document access requires explicit assent by the user.

The case at hand seems to be a set of data explicitly flagged for
public consumption, as a property of the library it is part of [or by
its author].  A dedicated space for 'published' material produced
while running a given activity could be made world-readable, and
programmatically readable by other activities, without loss of privacy
or risk of data destruction.

SJ