Ubuntu One: sharing files with people

Registered by Stuart Langridge

How do people want to make their files available to others? There's the "you can see some of my files" model (letting user B "follow" user A), the "everyone can see some of my files" model (making a file "public"), the "work together on a project" model (users A and B can both see and edit the files for a project), the "collaboration" model (users A and B can see and edit the files for a project and can both edit the same file simultaneously), and others. How can Ubuntu One help with these models? What other models are there?

Blueprint information

Status:
Not started
Approver:
None
Priority:
Undefined
Drafter:
Stuart Langridge
Direction:
Needs approval
Assignee:
Stuart Langridge
Definition:
New
Series goal:
None
Implementation:
Unknown
Milestone target:
None

Related branches

Sprints

Whiteboard

----------- cwayne

How about using something similar to weblive to do realtime collaboration? Like having any collaborators logged into the same session editing a doc in LibreOffice? Is that even possible?

---------- fagan
Ok so initial thoughts on this are that we can do this in 3 ways of doing it with moderate levels of difficulty and cost.
1. We could implment some telepathy tube that says im on Ubuntu one and your friends machine and your machine can query that and we could get this more or less for free. Also an added benefit would be that users would already have friends and family added on jabber and the like so it would be already set up for them. Problem Windows, mobile and any future platform will be excluded from this system (It would be a linux only thing). Cool benefit is we get people's pictures from empathy too so it looks more professional.
NOTE: We can do some magic in the u1cp UI for this by grabbing the contacts that can be shared with and listing them for quick access.

2. Use u1 contacts and choose the person from the list. This would mean we update make contacts visable in the u1cp so share with X who is already added as a contact on the list.

3. Add to the server an API for people so query people's names or email (so the server would be asked if there is X person) and add them to a db on the computer (desktopcouch) and be listed in the "friends list".

In my opinion id like option 1 even though the tubes are a little bit slow for stuff at times.

(?)

Work Items