Re: Proposal: gnome-user-share

[Quinn Kronifontes <mightyquinn letterboxes org>]

On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 12:10 +0000, Jamie McCracken wrote:

> Well returning to the previous thread about having a standard set of
> folders on the desktop, would it not make sense to include a "Shared
> Files" folder among them (I believe we mentioned having things like
> Documents,Pictures,Downloads etc as standard folders with their
> respective paths defined in GConf so that it can be internationalised
> and clean Desktops like Ubuntu could have those folders in Home whilst
> other distro's have them in ~/Desktop etc).
> 
> Having the ability to make shareable other folders is of course a nice
> feature to have but having a universal shared folder which requires no
> config is important for novice users who might not know how to share
> other folders. And surely having the folder named "Shared Files" makes
> its function pretty obvious to most users too.

The default-shared folder might be a nice idea, provided it can be
implemented in an i18n-compatible way. I say might because a default
behavior of opening world-accessible ports to a service (and
file-sharing services have a history of security vulnerabilities-- it's
just the nature of the beast) may be a bad idea-- Windows has been
criticized many, many times in the past for this sort of behavior. 

But in the meantime I don't see any reason why "share arbitrary folders"
can't be implemented, with nothing shared by default. There doesn't seem
to be anything inherently un-usable about it. A properties page in
folder properties, and a desktop preferences applet that shows all
available shares seems like a pretty workable setup.