Osiris |
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| Developer(s) | kodeware, srl |
|---|---|
| Initial release | March 17, 2010 |
| Stable release | 0.13 |
| Development status | Current/Active |
| Written in | C++ |
| Operating system | Windows, GNU/Linux |
| Available in | Multilingual |
| Type | Peer-to-peer file sharing, Forum |
| License | Freeware |
| Website | osiris.kodeware.net |
Osiris Serverless Portal System (usually abbreviated as Osiris sps or Osiris) is a freeware program used to create web portals distributed via peer-to-peer networking (P2P) and autonomous from centralized servers. It's available for Microsoft Windows and GNU/Linux operating system.
Unlike common tools used to "publish information" on the Internet eg CMS, Forums or Blogs which are based on a centralized system, the data of a portal created by Osiris are shared via P2P between all its participants. Thanks to this architecture in which all the contents necessary for navigation (both graphic and textual) are replicated on every machine you can use the portal without a central server (serverless). This prevents the possibility that the portal is not accessible due to DDoS attacks, Internet Service Provider limitations (like traffic shaping and censorship) or hardware failure. In this way a web portal can be operated at very low costs and free from external control.
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The project was born following a similar initiative KeyForum. At that time, Berserker contributed to that project, but he decided to start from scratch a new project (writing entirely in C++), following a radically different strategy, in order to develop something truly indestructible and decentralized. Another reason for this new project is that he wanted to develop a software not limited to the sole component of web forum. Clodo joined the project several months later. On October 2, 2006, after 2 years of development, Osiris was officially announced. At present time the team is composed of 2 developers (Clodo & Berserker), two employees (DanielZ and Rei.Andrea) and a group of supporters/beta-testers (many of whom were already on the team KeyForum).
Starting from version 0.12, Osiris has become multi-platform, this was possible by migrating from the Visual Studio to the wxWidgets library.
Osiris has many features that make it a unique product at present; it is the result of a union between peer-to-peer (P2P) technology and web portals.
Osiris differs from classic P2P programs in that it is focused on security and distributed data management.
The Reputations system and the subsequent generation of multiple points of view of a portal is one of the most innovative aspects of the program. Unlike "traditional" systems where the computational work (calculation of statistics, indexing of content, etc ...) is always made by a central server, Osiris use a distributed approach, where the majority of the works is made by users of a portal, due to this there may be more distinct points of view of a portal, depending on used account.
Each user is free to give reputation (positive or negative) to another user according to its contribution to the portal, based on these reputations, the system processes the pages by removing the contents of users evaluated negatively (such as spammers) and importing the reputations of users considered positively. This allow the creation of a network of assessments that allows management of a portal. Note that each client processes the data independently on its machine in a process that is called stabilization of the portal.
When you create an Osiris portal, you can choose between two systems of moderation "anarchist" and "monarchy", the choice must be made during the creation of the portal and can't be changed after its creation.
Isis is a web gateway to Osiris portals, written in PHP 5, through which it's possible to browse a portal without installing Osiris on your PC.
The particularity of Isis is the management of the workload and the data, which don't lie on the public server that is running Isis, but is managed by the various nodes running Osiris. Isis only forwards web requests from visitors to the nodes that have become available to it, minimizing the use of resources from the server through the load-balancing of requests.
Since it's not technically possible to guarantee anonymity in this type of architecture, all accesses by Isis are read-only. This has the dual objective of ensuring the privacy of users and encourage the use of Osiris to actively participate to a portal.