Packages in iCity

While pondering the concept of determining how to handle distribution of content in a community to other members it became clear to me that handling content distribution at a file level would probably be too complicated.  So, I decided to come up with the concept of a package, which would loosely be a set of one or more files that can be published by a particular member of the community.

This does several things to make publishing content easier.  First, multiple files can be published as a single group and allows versoning to be handled in the aggregate instead of on the micro level.  Second, it is often that a set of content that is published often is just a number of files that are associated with each other (such as an application or a set of songs from an album).

Third, it helps provide a type of identity in the network to the data instead of the actual users.  Conceptually, for others to find data it must be identified in the network, and by storing information through out the network as to what system is hosting what packages it will be easier to find and share content.