Viewstamped replication came first, and defined the same core replication mechanism as paxos. but it was presented in the context of a replicated database system, together with a bunch of other stuff. Lampport's analysis of the core algorithm caught people's eyes -- with some amount of marketing on his part, and possibly because it was much more clearly focused on just the consensus problem, which made it somewhat more friendly as a theoretical building block.
rather, he pioneered many of the fundamental techniques that underlie both viewstamped replication and Paxos (and a boatload of other things; it was a very well-deserved award!) But Barbara invented the actual consistent replication algorithm first.
and yes, raft is in many ways a restatement of viewstamped replication. The thing that makes both of them a better pedagogical basis is that they present the common case of having a working master direct replication, and then handle the failure case explicitly. It ends up being exactly the same thing that multi paxos does, but for most people, it ends up being a much more intuitive way of thinking about the system and algorithm.
Or, at least that's been my experience in teaching it for 15 years.
> But Barbara invented the actual consistent replication algorithm
Do you know anything about Brian Oki's subsequent career? I was curious as to what he did after his VSR thesis and found a '93 paper of his (The Information Bus [1]). Interesting to see again he was a bit ahead of his time, this time anticipating 'Eventual Consistency'.
The title of his talk not withstanding, lampport's turing award was not for Paxos: https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/lamport_1205376.cfm
rather, he pioneered many of the fundamental techniques that underlie both viewstamped replication and Paxos (and a boatload of other things; it was a very well-deserved award!) But Barbara invented the actual consistent replication algorithm first.
and yes, raft is in many ways a restatement of viewstamped replication. The thing that makes both of them a better pedagogical basis is that they present the common case of having a working master direct replication, and then handle the failure case explicitly. It ends up being exactly the same thing that multi paxos does, but for most people, it ends up being a much more intuitive way of thinking about the system and algorithm.
Or, at least that's been my experience in teaching it for 15 years.