[NEW CONTENT] [BOUNTY] History of the IPFS Project

jessicaschilling commented 4 years ago

This issue has a bounty!

Successfully closing this issue by producing a production-ready piece of documentation can earn you not only the undying love of the IPFS community — it can net you a financial reward. See the current list of bounty issues and their values here.

The need in brief

A brief but interesting history of the IPFS Project. Inspiration: Every "history of respected tech lab X" story you've read, including tidbits on what it felt like in the early days and how a complex project organizes and iterates upon itself. Note that @jessicaschilling can help facilitate interviews with key IPFS folks if desired.

Deliverable

A factually accurate, features-story-style history of the IPFS project suitable both for the casual reader and for members of the media looking to excerpt dates, numbers, facts and quotes for their own work.

Include, when appropriate, photos of key individuals if they are referenced by name (ideally, use a live link to something like their GitHub profile picture, so it automatically changes if the individual changes it)
Link out from key concepts/institutions/projects to their appropriate websites so it's easy for readers to dig deeper

Content should take the form of a Markdown document, supplemented by diagrams as embedded images. File locations should be as follows:

MD content should live here (please make a PR against the existing placeholder document) https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-docs-v2/blob/master/docs/project/history.md
Images can live in the MD content's parent directory; we'll move them before final merge
For videos, just post temporarily on the platform of your choice, and we'll sort out on a case-by-case basis

Note that this story will eventually live on the main ipfs.io website (that's why it's in this repo) but will initially be published to the IPFS docs site (that's why you should PR against the .md document in ipfs-docs-v2).

Guidelines

Please use the IPFS Docs Contributor Guidelines as your north star — adherence to these guidelines are crucial when it comes to awarding potential bounty!
Also, please keep in mind our core user personae. If a piece of content serves one or more personae in particular, make sure it checks out with that persona's attributes.

momack2 commented 4 years ago

@daviddias and @whyrusleeping would be best for this IMHO. Could be a fun creative writing effort over the holidays!

gravenp commented 4 years ago

@jessicaschilling Looks like Johnny isn't part of this repo yet, but as we discussed, I'd love to take this one on. Thanks!

jessicaschilling commented 4 years ago

@gravenp - assigned to you!

johnnymatthews commented 4 years ago

Thanks for jumping on this one @gravenp! If you run into anything or have questions just ask them in here.

gravenp commented 4 years ago

@johnnymatthews I have a working draft here: https://github.com/gravenp/ipfs-docs-v2/commit/74efb25a6bbfd55ce279c2b555a078b2495d5929

The intro builds up the founding story. Let me know what you think of the tone and length. I leaned into the feature-story style and the p2p summer/winter analogy Juan has used in a few old podcasts. The Game of Thrones reference might be a bit too cheeky...
The section covering post-founding to the present day is just a bullet-point list of historical info that I've been able to gather at this stage.
To get quotes and dig into the feeling of working on the project, it'd be helpful to chat with a few of the early team members if you could help facilitate.
Are there any stats for the IPFS team, contributor, and network growth over the years? That'd be helpful for building graphics and telling the overall story.

johnnymatthews commented 4 years ago

This is a great first draft @gravenp! I've pinged a couple of folks within IPFS to see if they can set aside some time to have a chat with you. Should hear back shortly.

gravenp commented 4 years ago

@johnnymatthews Any feedback or availability to chat from within the team? Thanks!

johnnymatthews commented 4 years ago

Hi @gravenp, really sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I just emailed some instructions over to you.

jessicaschilling commented 4 years ago

Hi both -- just wondering about the current status of this? Thanks!

gravenp commented 4 years ago

Hi @jessicaschilling, I had my call at the end of May with Why to provide the historical context needed to round this out. Unfortunately, the timeline on this extended into other commitments that I had. I probably won't be able to get back to this until mid-July. If someone else wants to take the torch (or restart), I'm fine with that too.

jessicaschilling commented 4 years ago

@gravenp You've already done a ton of work on this -- if you feel good about hitting it in July we can hang on until then. 😊

gravenp commented 4 years ago

@jessicaschilling @johnnymatthews I completed a draft that now includes all the info I gathered from my interview with Why https://github.com/gravenp/ipfs-docs-v2/commit/87bb1087bd99409e20238c2e2c86ff7fb05f45f3 .

-This draft could use some more polish on the conclusion, but I wanted to get it out for general feedback (length, style, etc.). I'll do another turn this coming week and can incorporate any feedback. -I tried to give it some personality with GoT/Spiderman references plus personal anecdotes from Why. Protocol Labs team, do you think this style/tone is "on-brand?" -Need to fact check a quote from Why: "fast food in Juan's living room" or was it some other living room? Were there other contributors working full-time on that effort to build go-ipfs alpha? -Are there other early contributors to call out at different points? David Dias? Does this do this version give a full enough picture of the history?

johnnymatthews commented 4 years ago

This is excellent writing and really fun to read! Nice work @gravenp! I like your style, and the length is good. @whyrusleeping and @daviddias might have some thoughts.

jessicaschilling commented 4 years ago

@gravenp, this is great -- I learned a lot of things! 😊 I'll leave it to you and @johnnymatthews to wrap up, but two quick things:

Happy to give this a fine-grained copy edit when you're closer to done (and add a few more contextual links; for example, we're also working on a case study for OpenBazaar, and will want to cross-link that). Johnny, just @ me when you're both ready.
Regarding the conclusion, it's probably worth hinting that the Filecoin mainnet launch will be the next big chapter in this story; that might also give you a peg to hang the ending on overall. Just keep in mind that this is designed as evergreen content, so we don't want to have anything that seems embarrassingly outdated a year from now.

Thanks again!

momack2 commented 4 years ago

Looking good! I'd love to to see a little more about the improvements landed in 0.5 (https://blog.ipfs.io/2020-04-28-go-ipfs-0-5-0/) and ecosystem growth seen in Q1 & Q2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxJSUBeqOKU & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhbht93ln0w) added to the second to last paragraph to translate the "making it work" from a TODO to an actively underway. =]

gravenp commented 4 years ago

@johnnymatthews, I took another pass that incorporates Why, Jessica, & Molly's feedback (https://github.com/gravenp/ipfs-docs-v2/commit/ec0015f19ee67ea124e63e9a27c3f1569ecbf32d). Let me know what you think!

And yes, I'd definitely appreciate some professional copy editing when the time is right @jessicaschilling :)

johnnymatthews commented 4 years ago

Looks great from my end! Left a couple of minor comments in there, but I'm not too fussed if they don't get merged.

@jessicaschilling ready for your pass!

jessicaschilling commented 4 years ago

@johnnymatthews @gravenp -- I left comments with copy edits 😊 Johnny, there's also a question in there about needing to generate some sort of evergreen link to the ecosystem diagram. Not sure what the best way to take care of that might be -- maybe we just stop versioning the ecosystem diagram by name, and just overwrite it in the website repo under an evergreen name so that ipfs.io/ecosystem-diagram.png (or whatever) is always the latest. (If so, please make a quick PR to the website repo?) Thanks both!

johnnymatthews commented 4 years ago

maybe we just stop versioning the ecosystem diagram by name, and just overwrite it in the website repo under an evergreen name so that ipfs.io/ecosystem-diagram.png

Haha, didn't realize you'd also posted here. Great minds. I'll make the PR now.

Edit: PR here

jessicaschilling commented 4 years ago

Thanks - merged the website PR.

gravenp commented 4 years ago

Thank you @johnnymatthews & @jessicaschilling! I have all your changes and suggestions queued up except for the all-important Philz Mint Mojito link. After that's squared away, I'll submit the final draft!

gravenp commented 4 years ago

I committed the changes discussed above here: https://github.com/gravenp/ipfs-docs-v2/commit/c78cbbbb450a597e3060f86911030576f57acf9c. Just went with a simple link to Philz menu for the Mint Mojitos. If a good contemporary picture of Juan or Why shows up, I think that'd be great to replace it. It looks like the linked OpenBazaar case study is still WIP, so I assume this doc should only be published after that.

Let me know if you have any other suggestions or comments!

jessicaschilling commented 4 years ago

Thanks @gravenp!

@johnnymatthews, the OpenBazaar case study is out for final review but I'm hoping to hear back from them today. Your call as to when you want to merge this history 😊

johnnymatthews commented 4 years ago

Let's wait until the case study is live. Once it is, this is good to be merged!

jessicaschilling commented 4 years ago

@johnnymatthews Actually, just pushed the case study live 😊 it's all yours to merge!

johnnymatthews commented 4 years ago

Excellent! Where is this history going again @jessicaschilling? On the main ipfs.io website, or in docs.ipfs.io?

jessicaschilling commented 4 years ago

@johnnymatthews There's already a "nothing here" placeholder here: https://docs.ipfs.io/project/history/ 😊 Drop it in there please!

johnnymatthews commented 4 years ago

Nice! I manually merged this over instead of having you create a PR @gravenp. Your content is in GitHub, and it should be showing up in docs.ipfs.io shortly :)

gravenp commented 4 years ago

Thanks @johnnymatthews & @jessicaschilling! It was fun to learn and write about this!

jessicaschilling commented 4 years ago

Closing this issue, since https://docs.ipfs.io/project/history/ is live.

ipfs-inactive / website