On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 9:26 PM, Clint Adams <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:clint@debian.org">clint@debian.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 03:27:11PM +0000, Bjarni Rúnar Einarsson wrote:<br>
> Can that be done at all? Or should we assume that any infrastructure<br>
> required by the FreedomBoxes will be managed and owned and run by the<br>
> foundation? Deciding whether the project as a whole is business hostile or<br>
> not is a pretty fundamental question.<br>
<br>
</div>Personally, I think the only centralized infrastructure the<br>
FreedomBoxes should need is the distribution of software security<br>
updates, and that anything else should be regarded as a stopgap<br>
measure as we move toward proper decentralization.<br></blockquote><div><br>I agree that that would be wonderful! And it's a worthy goal, and something to work towards. But I also don't think it is at all realistic given the tools we have to work with today and more importantly, I really don't think it's a good idea to throw out the entire existing set of Internet protocols and standards because they aren't compatible with this goal.<br>
<br>Backwards compatibility with the existing standards of the Internet should not be a "stopgap" second choice, it should be a #1 priority, first class feature. Because without it, FreedomBox users will only be able to communicate with each other and it will become incredibly hard to build up the kind of network effects needed to get these devices widely distributed enough to help the average non-technical person. That's the ultimate goal, right?<br>
<br>And as far as I can tell, such backwards compatibility is almost impossible to obtain without some help from "the cloud", and much of the help which is available, comes from commercial sources.<br><br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
Should we not do that, and say "Here are three different<br>
service providers you can choose from to sacrifice your<br>
personal privacy to, but you are free because you have<br>
choice," I think we are missing the point.<br></blockquote><div><br>I think if you design something that people can't use to actually communicate, then it will never go anywhere and will also miss the point. :-)<br>
<br>Anyway, I think you just made a straw-man argument - just because you receive help from the cloud, does not mean you have to sacrifice all your privacy at once.<br><br>The obvious example is the routers that make up today's Internet. Although technically any (or all) of them could spy on your packets, if you make careful use of things like SSL or SSH or GPG or Tor (as appropriate), you can happily use these centralized routing devices without sacrificing your privacy or freedom. To varying degrees, things like SMTP relays, proxies and VPN providers *can* all be fine as well.<br>
<br>In my opinion these are all clear examples of the types of "business" that FreedomBoxes could comfortably coexist with, services which are as close to being dumb pipes as possible, and are easily interchangeable so you don't get locked in.<br>
<br>But the question still remains - assuming such things were useful and needed, would people want these services to be provided only by non-profits or volunteers, friends and family, or is there room for businesses as well? Most likely we're not really ready to answer that question yet, but I think it is one we should be thinking about.<br>
<br>-- <br></div></div>Bjarni R. Einarsson<br>The Beanstalks Project ehf.<br><br>Making personal web-pages fly: <a href="http://pagekite.net/" target="_blank">http://pagekite.net/</a><br>