An essential question has been on my mind for a while. I’m aware that the primary goal of IPFS is to facilitate sharing of files as well as website hosting, which is of course the most important functionality we currently require. However I would like to know how well it can handle other uses of data hosting and alternative forms of transmission. The ones I’m explicitly curious about are the following:
- Git / SVN / Mercurial repositories: Software is also in good need of a decentralized space on which it can be hosted. As developers know, nearly all open-source programs are updated using revision management tools… the most common being Git, followed by SVN and Mercurial. Will IPFS support hosting such repositories directly, with complete ability to push / pull across origins and branches, as well as allowing website interfaces such as those of GitHub / GitLab to work with the repositories?
- rpm / deb repositories: Those repositories are used to host the software packages of Linux distributions, and are essentially the Windows update tool of Linux. It might someday become important to decentralize some Linux distros or components. Does IPFS make it easy to host *.rpm and *.deb directories, compatible with the software managers of distributions (eg: YaST / Zypper in openSUSE)?
- Video / Audio streaming: IPFS allows users to store any files into the system, including image and sound and video. But what about realtime streaming? Will the system support propagating a constant stream from one machine throughout the node network? This will be essential if, for example, people will attempt to make a video service like Youtube or streaming service such as Twitch… also any online television or radio stations that you can listen to in software such as VLC.