Re: [Social] Private Messaging Plugin

[Sean Corbett]

> I really think this should be a choice to the user.
>
> Sending a text message? Use the "push-style" method. Sending videos? 
> Use the "pull-style" method. Sending a big bunch of work documents and 
> pictures? Pick the "push-style" method manually before sending.
I don't think this should be a choice for the user, because this will 
make implementation much more difficult. While I'm pretty sure that push 
is how notices are distributed between StatusNet servers at the moment 
(someone please correct me if that's wrong), pull is probably the way to 
go, especially since this gels better with the Webfinger auth scheme 
(authorization happens on request of content). This might seem 
unnecessary for small bits of text, but I believe there should be a 
consistent means of content distribution irregardless of the content 
type to keep things simple.
> I'm also thinking a bit about using torrents for large files being 
> shared with multiple people. Is it reasonable? Would it be used? Is it 
> even useful? For private files, how do we manage permissions?
This gets around the point I brought up above, but then nodes will have 
to seed for a long time, unless there was some dichotomy to not 
distribute content through bittorrent when only sending large files to a 
limited number of people. But this complicates things on the server end, 
and does not really seem to have an apparent benefit to the end user.

Permissions will be based on the access lists established in the 
Relationship Manager. Content from the other GNU Social plugins will use 
those access lists to define who's able to access what content. A good 
idea might be ensuring that we have the ability to make temporary lists 
(to serve video to people scattered across relationship lists, for example).