[cap-talk] request for comments on capability design

[Sandro Magi]

Peter Amstutz wrote:
>> Are you familiar with Tyler Close's web-calculus services model:
>>
>> http://www.waterken.com/
>>
>> ?  Perhaps you could explain how what you are working on differs?
>>     
>
> This looks very interesting.  I'll have to study web-calculus to be able 
> to answer that question properly -- I certainly could be treading over 
> similar ground.  But the easy answer is that I'm not designing a web 
> system, and web-calculus seems to be at least web-oriented, so at most I 
> would borrow their ideas to use in the context of my own system.
>   

The web-calculus is not necessarily tied to the http model. It 
implements a distributed object semantics that currently has a binding 
to http. Your use case seems to require low-latency, and potentially 
high bandwidth, so it would be interesting to see whether the 
web-calculus can scale. The Java server with the relevant web-calculus docs:

http://waterken.sourceforge.net/

> Okay, to briefly explain what I am working on, I am designing the next 
> iteration of the Virtual Object System (VOS, http://interreality.org).  
> VOS which is a free software distributed object system designed to serve 
> as a platform for multiuser 3D virtual worlds.  Virtual worlds have a 
> peculiar set of requirements that tends to cut across a lot of fields, 
> of which robust security is often overlooked.
>   

See also the sidebar of:

http://wiki.erights.org/wiki/Walnut/Secure_Distributed_Computing/E_Capabilities

It briefly discusses the Croquet project (essentially what you're doing) 
and how capabilities can be used in such an application.

Sandro