What is Localhost?
Localhost is a program that lets you access a shared, world-wide file system through your web browser. This file system is maintained in a fully decentralized way by all of the computers running Localhost. The program uses BitTorrent technology, and new Distributed Hashtable technology called Kademlia.
Every user accesses the system from the same root folder. You can change any folder (including the root folder) by adding files and/or folders to it. When you make changes to a folder, a new version of it is created. This results in each folder in the file system having any number of alternate versions. Each user can view any version of each folder. The default version of a folder displayed to users is the most popular version, where the popularity of a version is determined by the number of users that have chosen to view that version. If you make some changes to a folder, which makes a new version, other users will view that version, and if they are good changes, they will continue to view that version, rather than any other version. Your version will become popular, and it may become the default version of that folder for everybody to see. You can include your name on the description of the version. (But you need to keep the program running on your computer until at least one other person chooses to view your new version. When no-one online is viewing a particular version, it dissapears.)
Every time you enter a folder in the file system to view it, or download a file, you help serve it, so it becomes easier for other users to access it.
You can think of this program as a decentralized index for files distributed via BitTorrent; one that naturally evolves to keep the most popular files, and remove the unpopular ones. You could think of it as a Wikipedia for files. You could also think of it as one big shared network drive, built using BitTorrent so as to reduce network strain from a central server.
Confused? Try it out from your web browser without installing anything right now! There aren‘t many files on the file system right now, but hopefully you can see the potential of this program, and add some useful / interesting files for other people to download.
Aim: Hopefully people will build up a useful and interesting archive of files for people to download. The files could be Open Source software, Creative Commons licensed works, or any other file that is legal to distribute.
Download: If you like it, please download the program to use it fully. If you do download the program, I invite you to make a different version of the root folder, one that suits the type of files that you think this program would be useful for. If it is good, it will be the version seen by everyone else using the system, including users viewing the web-preview.
Azureus: Technically, Localhost is a modification of Azureus. You can use Localhost as a replacement for Azureus if you wish.
