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Das P2P-Handbuch
Das P2P-Handbuch : Übersicht
15-Apr-2002/14-Jan-07
Übersicht
Das "P2P-Handbuch" (Arbeitstitel) ist work in progress;
der Band soll einen umfassenden Überblick über das gegenwärtige Spektrum
der P2P-Anwendungen und –Technologien geben, das P2P-Paradigma im
Vergleich zum Client-Server-Computing verorten, einen Abriss zu den
damit verbundenen Problemfeldern bieten und kursorisch auf
wirtschaftliche Aspekte eingehen.
Als Erscheinungstermin war ursprünglich Ende 2002 avisiert, dieser
Termin verschiebt sich jedoch voraussichtlich um einige Wochen oder gar
Monate; möglicherweise wird die Publikation auch nie realisiert werden.
Die Entwicklung des Textkörpers soll nach der Zusage durch den Verlag
online als offenes Buchprojekt
erfolgen...
Motivation
Vor allem drei Gründe sprechen für das Projekt:
- P2P ist ein Thema mit enormem technischen Potential, spannenden
Anwendungen, grosser Popularität bei den Anwendern und hoher
Medienaufmerksamkeit. Wir gehen daher davon aus, sowohl seitens der
potentiellen Leser als auch bei der Fachpresse auf
überdurchschnittliches Interesse zu stossen.
- Es gibt bisher keine deutschsprachige Buchpublikation zu dem
Thema; selbst im englischsprachigen Markt gibt es nur eine Handvoll
Titel. Wir sehen hier eine klaffende Lücke am deutschen Markt.
- Mit Besorgnis nehmen wir zur Kenntnis, dass eine Technologie mit
zahlreichen Facetten in der Presse auf die Rolle eines subversiven
Werkzeugs zur Verbreitung von Raubkopien reduziert wird. Wir wollen
daher versuchen, der beginnenden Mythenbildung im Umfeld des Themas
P2P handfeste, konkrete und praxistaugliche Informationen
entgegenzusetzen und damit einen Beitrag zur Versachlichung der
öffentlichen Diskussion zu leisten.
Zielsetzung und Anspruch
An die möglicherweise erste deutschsprachige Publikation zu einem
Thema werden sicherlich hohe Ansprüche gestellt; wir möchten uns dieser
Herausforderung stellen. Unser Anspruch ist daher, ein
anwenderzentriertes Referenzwerk zum P2P-Computing und möglichst das
beste Buch auf dem Markt zu schaffen.
Wir sind überzeugt, dass es in der Verantwortung von Autoren liegt,
den Lesern Bücher an die Hand zu geben, die gleichermassen einen hohen
Praxiswert wie auch dauerhaften Bestand haben.
Inhaltliche Schwerpunkte
Voräufige inhaltliche Schwerpunkte:
- Einführung: P2P-Grundlagen, Kontext, Vergleich des
P2P-Paradigmas mit dem Client-Server-Computing und Darstellung des
Spektrum der möglichen P2P-Anwendungen.
- Infrastruktur: Schlüsseltechnologien, P2P-Netzwerke,
-Protokolle und
–Topologien.
- Anwendungen und Projekte: Umfassenden Überblick über
konkrete P2P-Anwendungen und –Projekte mit aufgabenorientierter
Gliederung.
- Problemfelder und Alternativen: Technologische Probleme,
Copyright- und Urheberrecht, Interoperabilität, ökonomische und
politische Kontroversen, al-ternative Ansätze wie Open Content.
- Business/ Markt: Wirtschaftliche Aspekte wie
Geschäftsmodelle und Vergü-tungssysteme.
- Ausblick und Perspektiven.
- Anhang: Chronologie, Index;
Evtl. Glossar und Charakteristik der Akteure.
Schlagworte
Peer-to-Peer, P2P, verteilte Systeme, File-Sharing (»Tauschbörsen«),
Internet-Communities, Resource-Sharing, kooperative Rechnernutzung,
kooperative An-wendungen, Instant Messaging, Kommunikation, Interaktion,
Koordination, Kol-laboration, Kooperation, Groupware, Authoring,
Publishing.
Zielgruppe
- System- und Netzwerkadministratoren, CIOs, CTOs, IT-Manager und
IT-Leiter.
- Ambitionierte Anwender mit hoher Technikaffinität und gutem
Technikverständnis.
- Informations- und Kommunikationswissenschaftler, Informatiker.
Milestones
| Date: |
Project Status: |
Comments: |
| 2002 |
May |
15 |
Vorabversion |
Die Reorganisation der
P2P-Subsite ist weitgehend
abgeschlossen |
| 2002 |
Apr |
14 |
Exposé |
Dateiformat: PDF, ca. 102 kB (auf
Anfrage). |
| 2002 |
Apr |
19 |
Gliederung |
Erster Entwurf: 7 Abschnitte, ca.
500 Unterkapitel; Dateiformat: TXT, ca. 15 kB (auf Anfrage). |
| 2002 |
Apr |
15 |
Reorganisation |
Beginn der Reorganisation der
P2P-Subsite |
| 2001 |
Nov |
01 |
Recherche |
Beginn der (Vor-) Recherchen. |
| 2001 |
Feb |
25 |
Online |
Eine erste Vorabversion der
P2P-Subsite geht online. |
 Details
zum Projektstatus (access restricted).
Einige Autoren experimentieren mit "offenen Buchprojekten", die
bereits während ihrer Entstehung online publiziert und diskutiert
werden.
Einige Beispiele:
Donald E. Knuth: »The Art of Computer Programming« (TAOCP)
sunburn.stanford.edu/~knuth/taocp.html.
Volume 4, Combinatorial Algorithms, in preparation. Present plans are
to publish 'Volume 4'' as at least three separate subvolumes [...]:
"The material will first appear in beta-test form as fascicles
of approximately 128 pages each, issued approximately twice per year.
These fascicles will represent my best attempt to write a comprehensive
account, but computer science has grown to the point where I cannot hope
to be an authority on all the material covered in these books. Therefore
I'll need feedback from readers in order to prepare the official volumes
later. The publishers have pledged to make the fascicles available in an
inexpensive form, essentially at cost. (Of course, the paper and binding
will probably be designed to self-destruct in a few years, so that you
will have to buy the real book after it is debugged :-) If all goes as
planned, Volumes 4A, 4B, and 4C will be ready in the year 2007.
Some "pre-fascicles" are now available for beta-testing:
Pre-fascicle 2a (Generating all n-tuples); Pre-fascicle 2b (Generating
all permutations). I've put them online primarily so that experts in the
field can check the contents before I inflict them on a wider audience.
But if you want to help debug them, please go right ahead."
Donald E. Knuth - Hompage:
sunburn.stanford.edu/~knuth.
Philipp Greenspun: »Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing«
www.arsdigita.com/books/panda.
"What was it like to write? People kept asking me this about
the first book. Originally I limited my comments to the words of Winston
Churchill (1949, speaking at Britain's National Book Exhibition about
his World War II memoirs):
"Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy
and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a
master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are
about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and
fling him out to the public."
Then I took to quoting Steven Wright: "I'm writing a book. I've
got the page numbers done."
But I got so much email asking for more detail that I wrote The
book behind the book behind the book...".
The book behind the book behind the book...,
philip.greenspun.com/wtr/dead-trees/story.html.
Bruce Eckel - »Thinking in...«
Bruce Eckel, Mindview, Inc.,
www.bruceeckel.com.
"Why do you put your books on the Web? How can you make any money
that way?" (www.mindview.net/Etc/FAQ.html#BooksOnWeb)
"I think we're clearly in the brave new world of the
Internet here, and as far as I know I may be the first to do what I
did -- publish the book as I was developing it, and leave it as a
free book in perpetuity, after it was printed. Personally, I was
prepared to have low sales but the book brought people to my web
site and to the CD Rom and seminars, so I felt it was worth the
risk. Prentice Hall did a low first printing because they were
worried about the online book cannibalizing sales. However, this
book has done better than all the other books I've written — for the
first time I've gotten royalty checks that have made a difference
(book publishing in general is a pretty high-risk business; the
figures I've heard are "10% break even, 1% are profitable).
At this point I would never go back to the old model of
print publishing. All of my future books will be electronically
published on my site first, and will stay on the site. The reasons
for this are many:"
- (Possibly most important) I get extremely valuable
feedback during the development of the book. I've never had any
useful feedback to speak of from the so-called technical
reviewers hired by a publisher, but I got an endless stream of
incredibly valuable corrections from readers.
- Readership is built throughout the development of the
book.
- Publication dates are not so critical: if you are only
printing the book, then it's either available or not available,
whereas if it's on the web it's always available in some form,
so there's not so much of a compulsion to rush out a
half-finished piece of work in order to meet the needs of the
readers.
- Books can be adopted by universities before they are
printed. I give permission for universities to print copies of
the book for their classes, as long as they sell to the students
strictly at the cost of printing (no profits == no hassles,
nobody battling over profits, etc.). When the book is actually
printed by the publisher, the university has already decided to
use it for their classes, and they tend to be reluctant to
change.
- I get a fair amount of mail from 3rd world countries
saying "we could never afford to buy this book here, but because
it's electronic we can still learn." I know this is of no
interest to publishers (pardon my cynicism) but if you're like
me and you want to reach people this really does the trick —
you're making a big difference. On a more practical level, folks
who may not have money now but eventually will get to know you,
and when they can purchase they're much more likely to purchase
your book.
- In general, the fallout from doing this has been all
positive and nothing negative.
However, I've also heard the refrain — mostly from
publishers who were interested in "Thinking in Java," trying to talk
me out of leaving it on the web — that "we've tried this and it
negatively impacts book sales." Upon closer inspection, though, what
one discovers is very interesting. The experiments I heard about
turned out to be with books that weren't doing very well in the
first place, and lo and behold, if you put them on the Internet then
people get a chance to see what the book is before buying it, and
amazingly enough fewer people buy a book if they discover it's not
very good before buying it.
Another issue is the type of book. As Elliotte Rusty Harold
pointed out, "The Java Programming Language Specification" isn't
exactly the best litmus test. Personally, it's not the kind of thing
I need in paperback; in fact, I would much prefer to have it
electronically since I'm not going to read it cover to cover, but
rather search through it when I'm trying to figure out some
particular language quirk. In that case, I would have a free version
and then sell an enhanced electronic version that somehow made it
easier to use, and then finally a printed version. But "Learning
Python" is a book that I want to read, away from the computer.
That's what many, many folks said about "Thinking in Java": they
wanted the paper version of it, some folks got quite belligerent
when they couldn't get it after awhile.
I think there are books that you want to read as books and
others that make more sense as electronic books. But my experience
is that if people download the book (even the whole book; I know
some books publish a chapter or two, but giving the whole book away
doesn't seem to make any difference) and they like it, then they
want to buy it, and it doesn't seem to me that they buy it because
they want to give something back to me (like the 2 dollars or
whatever makes that big a difference to me) but because they want
the thing printed out for them on paper (and it's nicer, and in most
cases cheaper, than if they printed it out on their printer).
I think this is the wave of the future. In the past,
publishers controlled publishing because they controlled trucks and
printing presses, but now that is not (so) necessary. Which means
that publishers now must re- evaluate themselves and say "what do we
really offer" (of course, this includes publishing of everything
including conferences, which I am also involved in — but that's
another story). That's a good thing, I think.
To Quote John Perry Barlow, former Grateful Dead Musician
and founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
The Grateful Dead invented viral marketing without
really meaning to...We gave our music away. At the time, we did
it because we felt there was no way to stop Deadheads from
taping it, and besides, we weren't in it for the money, because
we weren't making any. But those tapes became the androgen of
our success. They spread that virus all over the damn place, and
by the time we died, we were the largest-grossing entertainment
act in the business because of performances, but not
exclusively."
"Why do you think open source works?" (www.mindview.net/Etc/FAQ.html#OpenSource)
"This is the question that comes up a lot with open
software: "If we give away the cow, how do we make money?" So far,
the only answer is in cow maintenance: people really just want the
milk from a reliable cow. If you sell them a cow in a closed box,
then they don't really know what's going on, whether the cow is sick
or dead (Microsoft has been selling sick cows — some would say with
mad cow disease -- for a long time now, and getting away with it
because they are in boxes), or most importantly whether the cow can
be healed or not. So it appears customers are all for just having
the whole cow. But now they have the thing and don't know how to
service it. Since it's working so well, people don't seem to mind
paying for upgrades, for example (and upgrades haven't been that
expensive -- the latest version of Red Hat, 6.2, is something like
$25 at Costco), and service agreements from companies like IBM. You
get a better cow for free, and you can get support if you want to
pay for it. One of the nice things about this model is that you
actually pay for support, whereas with the old model the company
would already have your money when you bought the product, and sure,
sure, we provide support too -- but that actually appeared to cost
them money, so they tried to minimize those costs and you end up
with difficult and not-very- useful support systems. Whereas if
support IS the product, then it had better be good or the customer
won't pay for it.
Because the source is open, a company can build on it
rather than creating a product from scratch, so add-ons become a
possibility. Autodesk was so successful because it allowed third
party add ons to enhance the product.
Is that all? I have the sense that there might be something
else that would be a way to make money with free stuff. The key, as
we know but the marketing people always seem to miss, is to try to
figure out "what do people want?" The answer in the computer arena
is that they want work done for them (that's what computers do). I
suppose the other area has something to do with services, possibly
like those services that provide you with things like databases for
your web site, and email list managers, etc., so that all you have
to do is hook these pieces together without doing the programming or
maintenance yourself."
Anmerkungen
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