Distributed Server (rant)

I've been thinking about making the DUMB MUD server support distributed servers / distributed worlds. I have some ideas of how this could be implemented quite easily and universally, but I have some concerns about performance. Is scalability worth lower performance at low usage? Maybe, maybe not. But more interesting is the capability to have users host their own parts of the mud world. Questions abound. How would this work? Would there be one 'ruling server' or rather a single meta-server which all servers connect to? Both are easily implementable, actually, the issue is which is desirable. In addition, what the heck do we do with the semantics of #Load and #Save? I'm thinking of switching right now to ftp/scp instead of using a local file system, to nip this problem before it becomes an issue. Of course, I'd write a simple and slightly secure FTP server in java first, just so no one would have to go out and get external software unless they wanted to.

Obviously, I'm excited about this idea. Just as obviously, I'm not exactly sure where it would lead, or what the costs would be. If this were to be considered, it would be introduced at or before release 0.5.0; if we haven't entirely struck down the idea, I expect to move to ftp/scp at or before 0.4.0. Please please please give me feedback on what you would like to see.