Fwd: Ripple

I should do this as a homework, I apologize,
but I'm currently pretty busy.

Would someone be so kind and answering these questions about Ripple:
- Is the code open source?
- Is the protocol they use openly documented,
  as openly as bitcoin is?

thanks


2013/11/17 Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>

> On 11/14/2013 04:30 PM, Andrew Miller wrote:
>
>> 2. But this doesn't work for public/anonymous networks.
>>
>
> Why doesn't it work for public/anonymous networks? Link? This is Web of
> Trust stuff we're talking about, isn't it (chained trust metrics)?
>
>
>  3. Ripple, on the other hand, takes yet another approach. There's no
>> global administrator, but nor is there a well-understood public
>> competition. Instead, individual users are supposed to configure
>> their clients to identify particular servers they have determined
>> they trust.
>>
>
> Isn't this a good thing? If you allow anyone to pick who they trust, you
> force cooperation in the system, don't you? The idea being that for the
> system to be useful, people need to coordinate and thus won't pick
> participants with whom they entirely disagree with.
>
>
>  Here's where it gets really murky, and I can't figure out any set of
>> assumptions that actually lead to robust functioning of the network.
>> What if users entirely disagree with which servers they trust?
>>
>
> Why would someone deliberately do this? If you have to pick from 32
> servers, why would you pick from 32 servers that are in a completely
> different trust set? It would be incredibly difficult to do that in a
> dependency chain based system, wouldn't it?
>
>
>  Are they on two different networks or the same one?
>>
>
> No idea.
>
>
>  If an individual doesn't do their due diligence, and carelessly
>> approves bad servers, are they individually affected or does it
>> affect the overall network?
>>
>
> I'd expect that in the worst case, the overall network suffers. However,
> the likelihood of this is in the 51% attack against the Bitcoin network
> category, isn't it?
>
>
>  I really wish more people were looking into this rather than ignoring
>> it, because I suspect it's not sound (although I haven't come up with
>> a super clear explanation why not), and if the underlying assumptions
>> aren't sound then does it matter if the frontend UI is great?
>>
>
> Well, yeah, if the algorithm is broken then no UI in the world is going
> to save it. However, I don't think you've explained quite why Ripple's
> consensus algorithm is broken. Why is allowing individuals to pick whom
> they trust a bad thing (when the number of servers is large enough)?
>
>
>  Unfortunately the only set of assumptions I can think of that lead
>> to this actually working is where every one essentially picks the
>> same default list, and the servers on that list are actually
>> trustworthy.
>>
>
> I think the problem surfaces when a group of servers create a trust set
> that has no intersection with another set of servers. With that said,
> why would anyone do this? What's the attack?
>
>
>  This is the "centralized" option, where the default list determines
>> who participates, and no user has any incentive to deviate from the
>> default list, either by adding some newcomer they individually trust
>> or by removing default servers they don't trust.
>>
>
> I thought that only a subset of the list needs to be trusted for Ripple
> to function, and all trust sets that all servers choose have to overlap
> by at least a small degree. Is that not true?
>
>
> -- manu
>
> --
> Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
> Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> blog: Meritora - Web payments commercial launch
> http://blog.meritora.com/launch/
>
>