Hi, all.  I had a thought the other day and wanted to share:

What are the chances that the free software movers and shakers could 
successfully lobby CouchDB to be included in the Freedesktop.org system?

Consider DBus, which is a mandatory component of Linux (actually, 
Freedesktop) desktops, is now understood by all developers, leading to 
more and more apps talking to each other over DBus.  I suggest that 
having a document DB built in to all Linux desktops would be true 
innovation for Linux development (especially since the GNOME pundits 
want to move to "web-aware" desktops).

If there is any chance in Hell that it could gain traction (I'm 
enthusiastic but skeptical--IMHO "Linux desktop innovation" is a myth, 
but I digress), I'd definitely volunteer to write code, as I have 
relevant experience.  I'm thinking of two components:

1. Similar to DBus, you have one CouchDB process per user that runs when 
he logs on and exits when he logs out.  (Maybe have a system-wide 
CouchDB too but I'm not sure if there is a need.)

2. (I'm surprised this doesn't exist already) A DBus CouchDB client API, 
so that nobody has to learn or use HTTP in their code, just the 
well-known DBus.

Given 1 and 2, any desktop app could just assume a private (for that 
user) DB in the same way they assume a per-user-session DBus bus today. 
  So, in summary, I'm asking if it's desirable that modern distros 
bundle a document DB (Couch) for all apps to build from.

-- 
Jason Smith
Proven Corporation
Bangkok, Thailand
http://www.proven-corporation.com