LOAF: what's that?

2003-11-14 11:30:36  |  #  |  comments [11]
So many sites I regularly read are writing about LOAF today that I decided to check it out... only to meet several implementation, a Wiki (useless like 95% of the Wikis out there) and nothing that would actually care to explain:
  1. what exactly LOAF is
  2. who should use/implement it?
  3. why one should use/implement/embrace/etc... it?
When I browse the LOAF project home page all I see is:
Matt Croydon's LOAF Project

You have stumbled upon my LOAF project. The current release of LOAF.py is 0.3.1p3.

LOAF.py is released under a BSD license.
and then a license statement... I reiterate: what is LOAF and why should I care?

Comments

1. 2003-11-14 13:36:31   Ewan
LOAF is a Social Software system for passing round information, finding contacts, and allow pervasive advertising through the LOAFSpike and LOAFNumbers system (added to the Wiki).
2. 2003-11-14 13:53:48   Moof
I found, as is always the case with Open source software, that the code is the best documentation there is out there... As to why you should care: do you really want to be left behind?
3. 2003-11-14 14:57:54   Guillaume Laforge
LOAF is a revolution, no less !
4. 2003-11-14 15:25:12   Carlos E. Perez
I'm compiling a list of LOAF implementations written in Java. Check it out here: http://www.manageability.org/blog/stuff/open-source-loaf-in-java
5. 2003-11-14 16:27:01   Sebastiano
Thanks all, somewhat clearer now... The only thing missing from the picture is Hani biling about it :-)
6. 2003-11-14 17:02:23   bob mcwhirter
No no no... LOAF is all about distributed computation. I guess you could compute on LOAFNumbers, but that'd be non-sensical. Such a young technology, and already it's being bastardized by the ignorant masses. I've proposed an extension/fork of LOAF in the form of QOAF, in order to clarify these issues and separate ourselves from those who are mislead.
7. 2003-11-14 17:25:58   Ivar Vasara
Presumably, LOAF selectionally introduces contextual features in a rather different method from the accepted social software standards. Conversely, the natural general principle that will subsume this contact resolution can be defined in such a way as to impose the levels of acceptability from fairly high to virtual gibberish.
8. 2003-11-14 17:30:12   Ewan
To Bob, It's got *nothing* to do with Distributed Computers, that's half the problem when yuo all agree to a standard and one person comes in at the end and goes make it do something it was *never* designed to do! Stop freeloading on all our work with QOAF, and stop leeching on our time and effort.
9. 2003-11-14 18:31:53   bob mcwhirter
Ewan-- You absolutely must be a pawn of Microsoft's to be spouting this drivel. This "standard" hasn't even been presented to the w3c yet. For what it's worth, I've already started the procedure to submit QOAF to the ISO in addition to creating CORBA bindings for it. LOAF will never succeed because you don't even have an IDL. QOAF is the way.
10. 2003-11-14 19:17:32   glenn1you0
http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~pvg/loaf.txt
11. 2003-11-15 01:16:33   Jonathan Feinberg
Ha ha ha! LOAF is apparently the internet meme equivalent of that paper that got published by that scientist in a "respected" semiotics journal. There's no there there. Good work, Joi Ito and the other navel-gazers who populate the "blogosphere". Ha ha ha ha!