[Freedombox-discuss] Finding a good place to start

[paxcoder]

On 10/07/2010 11:17 AM, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 07, 2010 at 10:13:24AM +0530, Abhishek Dasgupta wrote:
>> Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
>> [snip]
>>> As I see it, this is the priorities:
>>> 1) put together a (virtual) core system
>>> 2) embed the system in small cheap iron
>>> 3) make the box dead simple to configure/personalize
>>
>> So, essentially 3) is the only non-trivial part, right now.
>
> Apparently not so trivial that anyone has taken the time and attention 
> to do 1) or 2) yet!

My sentiments exactly. :-/

> If you mean to say that we have decided to not use DNS then I disagree.

Dehierarchicalization being a goal is a fact, there's nothing to decide 
there: We can only kick it out if we decide we (well, you people) won't 
respect it. I hate what is sometimes done to Debian's community's 
agreement, and I'd hate to see us make the same compromises. Having an 
option is fine, but settling for lesser solutions is not what FB is 
about. It really isn't, and if you can't see that, I can't help you see 
that any more than I already did.
However, DNS is something so common and perhaps - at this stage - 
unavoidable, so I don't think there's any point in suggesting to keep it 
out - disconnected FB is of no use. But I would have it off by default 
wherever possible, just to keep reminding us where we're heading. It 
would hopefully be disposed of in due time (this is a DNS exception, it 
does not apply to other centralized things we can do without). In other 
words, build this with that in mind, as if your DNS records will 
disappear tomorrow, and/or an alternative will become available.

I hope we won't wait that long, there are people who seem to know things 
about the subject, perhaps there's someone working on this as we speak?

> I certainly am interested in relaxing dependency on all things 
> central, including DNS.

Good, what are we fighting about then? I wanted us to agree about our 
goal: Choosing distributed services *over* centralized ones is an 
imperative - wherever possible.

I'll continue giving you a hard time,
--Luka Marčetić