Abstract
Peer-to-peer networks have become extremely popular over the last decades for one major reason. They make the exchange of files between users easy and fast. Peer-to-peer systems have been proved to be the basis for the creation of worldwide networks where users exchange read-only files freely and efficiently. However, users have started using applications that need more than what the exchange of immutable files can offer. Collaborative Wikis have emerged as a phenomenon of people's behavior to communicate and collaboratively create and maintain large collections of documents. Communities that do not want to rely on centralized servers and legacy applications would benefit from using peer-to-peer systems for their purposes. The immutability of files that peer-to-peer systems can support however, cannot possibly serve this purpose. This paper makes three contributions towards the advances in theoretical foundations of P2P. It analyzes existing peer-to-peer systems supporting mutable files and indicates their successes and failures in this direction. It describes the characteristics that a mutable peer-to-peer file system should have in order to be able to support applications with characteristics of collaborative Wikis. Finally, it proposes an architecture for the creation of a new peer-to-peer system with the desirable characteristics, based on already existing systems.