The Zero Install filesystem is just another network filesystem, isn it?
Yes. It uses HTTP to fetch a small index archive, and can then use any other system (HTTP, FTP or various peer-to-peer and mirroring systems) to fetch the actual data (see the technical details page for more information). This means that providing software though Zero Install is easy, because pretty much everyone can put stuff on a webserver, whereas it’s often hard to find someone who will host other types of server. The main difference between this and standard shares is the way the paths use the Internet DNS system. This allows us to link to resources by fixed paths, in the same way that I can put up a link to ROX on this web page without worrying about where the user has ‘installed’ the web page.
