points by crabmusket 1 year ago

Thanks for those citations, they look really interesting!

> hence also the name, conflict-free replicated data type

When I was introduced to CRDTs the acronym stood for commutative replicated data types (eg in the paper by Shapiro et al). I prefer this actually, despite it being harder to pronounce.

A conflict is a complicated idea, and while "conflict free" is a technically correct way of describing the result, it can be misleading as evidenced by this post and your comment.

Commutativity is the property that when Bob applies changes in the order [Bob, Alice] and Alice applies changes in the order [Alice, Bob] that they both end up with the same document. It doesn't imply that the document is somehow "free" of "conflicts" in a sense that may be meaningful at a higher level of abstraction.