How FrogNet compares.
You already know things this resembles. So first, the measuring stick: a real, full FrogNet is a complete network that installs itself onto whatever hardware is present — discovery, elections, routing over any transports multiplexed together, shared memory as the programming model, a media ladder, and the applications, complete on a LAN with no broker and no tunnel in it. Every comparison below starts there: the whole of them against the whole of us. We will not compare a part of FrogNet to the whole of something else. No matrix — each neighbor gets the one honest statement, and where a question is settled elsewhere on this site, it says so and points there.
Automerge, Yjs, and the local-first world.
The whole of a CRDT library is a data structure inside your application — a merge law and its bookkeeping, linked into a program you already had to build, on a network you already had to have. The whole of FrogNet is the network, the memory, and the application platform, installed onto bare hardware. The resemblance lives in one corner of one layer — both ends hold the same structure and only differences cross the wire — and even there the two are built toward opposite goals. A CRDT's goal is convergence: every replica must provably arrive at one identical merged state, so it carries the machinery of merge — causal history, tombstones, a merge law per data type. UnREST doesn't have that goal. Its goal is operation: each node acts now on the current value of what it can reach. Current value wins, stale values are reaped rather than reconciled, and nothing ever blocks waiting for agreement.
The diff on the wire isn't consensus machinery; it's economy — the reason a live picture fits over links where full payloads never did. A CRDT is a data structure that guarantees agreement. FrogNet is a fabric that guarantees operation — and the fabric, not the merge law, is the product: discovery, elections, routing, media, and the applications, running on a LAN pond that is complete with no tunnel and no broker in it.
The closest neighbor.
The whole of Reticulum is a networking stack — addressing, encryption, routing — with no IP, no sockets, and applications written natively to its API. It is the strongest thing anyone can bring to this table: genuinely transport-agnostic, encrypted at the foundation, infrastructure-free, and respect where it's due. The whole of FrogNet is that layer and everything above and below it: it hosts the applications you already have on the addressing you already use, elects its services, ships its media, and installs itself. Reticulum could ride under FrogNet as one more transport, the way Wi-Fi or a LoRa radio does — but FrogNet doesn't need it.
On amateur radio, both stacks are out — the same rule, for the same reason — and the full treatment of that, along with how ham traffic actually crosses distance today, lives where connectivity is settled: Connectivity — what's in, what's out, and why →
Tailscale, Nebula, ZeroTier, Yggdrasil.
The whole of an overlay is a private wire between your machines plus the coordination service that arranges it — and that service is the network's center; without it, so much for the network. The whole of FrogNet is a network that is complete before any of that exists. The resemblance is the WireGuard underneath, and it ends there. FrogNet's tunnels are one bearer among several, used for one case: crossing the public internet. The broker introduces nodes and gets out of the way — never the authority, never a party to the data — and the network is complete on a LAN with no tunnel and no broker anywhere in it. An overlay connects your machines. FrogNet operates them: discovery, elections, services, media, applications.
Linda — named, honored, extended.
The whole of Linda is a coordination model — a brilliant idea that lived inside programs. The whole of FrogNet is that idea grown a body. UnREST is a Linda homage and says so in its name: the tuple space was right in 1986 and it is right now — programs coordinate by reading and writing shared values, not by addressing each other. What Linda never had is everything around the idea — election of the space's host, discovery of who shares it, a wire codec that ships differences instead of payloads, a media ladder, and a network that installs itself onto whatever hardware is present. The tuple space grew a body. If someone else has shipped that whole combination in production, we'd genuinely like to meet them — the dare is standing.
Four filing errors, preempted.
Each of these, taken whole, is one instrument. FrogNet, taken whole, is the bench they'd sit on.
Meshtastic, whole, is text and telemetry over LoRa — and FrogNet carries it as a friend, not a competitor: Meshtastic and LoRa bridges write radio-delivered readings straight into shared memory as sensor rows.
MQTT, whole, is a message bus. FrogNet is memory, not messages — nothing subscribes, nothing queues, nothing replays; every node acts on the current value of what it can reach, and stale is reaped.
Syncthing, whole, synchronizes files — durable artifacts, eventually. FrogNet's transient plane is the opposite instrument: the always-there current value, with the permanent store standing separately as the authority.
Secure Scuttlebutt, whole, is an append-only log that gossips history. FrogNet keeps no history on the wire at all — the present is the protocol.
Still filing it somewhere?
Then take the standing dare: reproduce the result with the stack you'd file it under, or name the assumption you're defending.