Mesh4Linux

Last week my eyes lit up when I saw the following tweet from Miguel de Icaza, leader of the Mono project.

migueldeicaza

Miguel de Icaza

RT: @bradyanderson:is trying to authenticate my Linux Live Operating Environment using Windows Live Delegated authentication (Mesh4Linux)

4:21 PM Feb 11th from web

I immediately tried to find out more, but this is the only mention of “Mesh4Linux” I could find on the web.  Brady is a distinguished engineer at Novell who works on the Mono project.  I checked out his tweets, and he’s been talking about building a Live Mesh / Live Framework implementation for Linux ever since PDC.

bradyanderson

is attending the "What I learned building My first live mesh app" session at #pdc2008

11:35 AM Oct 28th, 2008 from twitterrific

is excited to start hacking on a Live Operating Environment for the Linux Desktop. Opens the door for some amazing applications

2:04 PM Oct 29th, 2008 from twitterrific

created his first MeshObject on Linux! Now DataFeed, DataEntry, Membership.... bows his head and goes away quietly

1:02 PM Dec 10th, 2008 from twitterrific

just implemented DataFeed creation and Mesh/MeshObject enumeration

4:06 PM Dec 11th, 2008 from twitterrific

"is hoping this is the first twitter message pushed from the sync framework (2)"

2:18 PM Jan 27th from web

is researching Differential Synchronization algorithms

10:04 AM Jan 28th from twitterrific

is catching up on the latest Live Mesh developments. I can't seem to find the January tools update :-(

8:11 AM Feb 11th from web

is trying to authenticate my Linux Live Operating Environment using Windows Live Delegated authentication - getting closer.

2:55 PM Feb 11th from web

the CTP versions of Live Mesh and Azure Services are so slow they're barely usable. *screams profanities*

3:10 PM Feb 11th from web

I’m guessing Brady is the guy Ori Amiga is referring to in the following quote from this PDC session (15:50 onwards):

The whole point I wanted to make, it's just plain good old HTTP, and if you can talk that, every device, programming language, stack is welcome to the party.

Some guy walked up to me after the stage yesterday, if you're here I'd love to keep chatting with you, said man I want to write Live Operating Environment for Linux. Can I do that?  I was like, hell yeah, we'll hire you, come write it even in-house if you want to.

But really the idea is the Mesh will never be, I can't imagine we'll be successful in making people's lives better if we only stick to a Microsoft stack.  That makes no sense.  let's say, I'd admit, most of my devices at home and my receivers, my TVs, all the media stuff we have, the car, they don't run Windows, and that's ok, there's nothing wrong with that. It's great that my Windows devices are gonna behave really well in the Mesh, but I'd love for everything else that's sort of net connected to behave that way as well.

It is worth noting that Ori Amiga, a Principal Group Program Manager on the Live Mesh team, has built multiple carputers, one using Linux and another using Live Mesh.

I pinged Brady and Miguel for details on Mesh4Linux but haven’t heard back yet.  There appears to be no connection to Mesh4x, another open source project with many similarities to Live Mesh, including FeedSync support.

Mesh4Linux is in the early stages at this point, but I’m already dreaming of the possibilities it will enable not just on Linux desktops but on the iPhone, Google Android phones, and embedded devices such as carputers.  Go Brady!

2/28/09 Update:

Scott Hanselman used kyte to live stream Miguel’s Mono on iPhone session at the Alt.NET conference in Seattle.  Via the online comments, I asked about Mesh4Linux (as well as Miguel’s communist C# Turkish flag t-shirt).  Scott got a chance to ask Miguel about Mesh4Linux at the end (50:08) right after Miguel mentioned the benefits of sync for disconnected scenarios:

SH: What about Mesh4Linux?

MdI: There is no Mesh4Linux as far as I know.  I know there is an engineer at Novell who wants Mesh4Linux.

SH: So it’s a dream, not a project.

MdI: Yes.