opencaching.com

CoyoteRed · Joined: 18 Sep 2003 Posts: 220

From the looking around on the forums here, it seems to me that most are thinking about a web-based system. While it way be distributed to a certain extent, most of the action takes place on one or more central servers.

Wouldn't a standard be more independent if it was client-based? It would not rely on any server.

I'm not a programer, not much of a web designer, don't have nearly the skills as a lot of people here, but let me present my vision.

I see a program like Watcher that holds a list of cachers (and cacher hosts for those who don't want to do it themselves) and goes out and searches through these lists to see what's been recently updated. If updated, the cache data is downloaded and added to the local cache list. This program will allow one to select various caches and upload them directly to the GPS and PDA.

Once found, the cacher has the option of logging the cache and publicly displaying the log.

A tool for this program is one that will Google for cacher pages to add to the list. Plug-ins could include posting logs to public repositories, and whatever.

What I see as open source is the primary function of one hiding a cache and someone finding that cache. No one else should need be included into that formula. With my vision, even if Google goes down, people can still hide and find caches. How? With the network of cachers already in place, anyone who wishes to get started only needs to know about one cache or one cacher, download a client, a list, and go from there.

I firmly believe an open standard shouldn't rely on a third party to function. Yes, I know it would a nightmare for stats, but stats aren't the core function of caching, caching is.

CR

hmarq · Site Admin Joined: 15 Sep 2003 Posts: 351

Yikes. A completely distributed, client based caching system. It may happen one day (as will lots of peer data sharing), but yes the thought here is web based with syndication of the dataset ... so in the event of failure of one site, person, node, organization or whatever, someone else should always have the data if nothing else.

Personally a geocache listing version of Napster I would find a nightmare as a user, and certainly not newbie, just experiment with a couple caches on a whim, friendly. But thats just me.