If it's any consolation, LocalNames is free (public domain), implemented in Python, and works by XML-RPC.

I haven't put any nifty string matching algorithms inside the server yet, though.
Posted by Lion Kimbro at Mon Oct 11 07:57:35 2004

I'm not sure that this is a solution for Software Update....
Posted by Ted Leung at Mon Oct 11 23:28:27 2004

I like the approach that [Azureus http://azureus.sourceforge.net/] takes for updates: all updates are distributed using bit torrent (makes some amount of sense given that it is a BT client ;)

This would probably be very useful for open source /  freeware apps, given that the users of said products problably wouldn't mind sharing their bandwidth.

Commecial/Shareware application users may, however, object to giving away bandwidth for a product they've already paid for. Thus, shareware  authors would probably have to create their own Software Update Coop as you've suggested.
Posted by Tom Weir at Tue Oct 12 13:24:56 2004

Oh, sorry. I didn't read carefully enough.

A friend told me that Quicksilver (and Launchbar) do similar things to Local Names. I've been working on making such functionality so that you can use it in blogs and stuff. I figured that's what you were talking about.

Rereading, I see that you were talking about auto-updates and auto-upgrades.

I totally agree. There are a lot of apps now working on being super-easy to install, and then self-upgrading (or super-easy to upgrade), once they are installed. Firefox security fixes and extensions are amazing.
Posted by Lion Kimbro at Tue Oct 12 21:05:08 2004