[Freedombox-discuss] http://politics.slashdot.org/story/11/07/18/0153204/Security-Consultants-Wa rn-About-PROTECT-IP-Act

[Ted Smith]

On Mon, 2011-07-18 at 17:13 -0400, James Vasile wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:14:37 -0400, Ted Smith <tedks at riseup.net> wrote:
> Non-text part: multipart/mixed
> Non-text part: multipart/signed
> > On Mon, 2011-07-18 at 12:19 +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> > > a non-centralised non-attackable truly peer-to-peer
> > > replacement for the existing DNS infrastructure. 
> > 
> > Is this something the FreedomBox Debian project or the FreedomBox
> > Foundation have committed to producing?
> > 
> > Such a replacement would be an extremely sophisticated product of the
> > conjunction of multiple technological advancements that simply don't
> > exist yet. It was my understanding that the Freedombox project was more
> > about integrating existing systems than attempting to develop novel
> > solutions.
> > 
> > Could someone with actual decision-making power (someone who works with
> > the FBFoundation in some officially-recognized capacity or someone who
> > has contributed packaging or code to this project) answer this
> > question? 
> 
> I have no decision-making power over tech issues, but am generally
> familiar with the state of discussion of tech issues.  No, we have not
> committed.  It is, as you say, extremely difficult.
> 
> The FreedomBox will depend in large part on what the community creates.
> We are interested in ways to create autonomy from centrally controlled
> structures.  As the possiblity horizon on this moves (e.g. because this
> community moves it), FreedomBox Foundation will of course consider new
> developments with great interest.  But so far no committments have been
> made one way or another.

Obviously the FreedomBox would include p2p DNS if it existed, and would
not commit to never building p2p DNS. So a commitment not existing to
build p2p DNS answers my question about whether such a commitment
exists ;-)

I think that the mistake being made most on this mailing list is the
tendency to devise solutions to complicated problems. Sadly, this is
just not a thing that can be done on a mailing list. If the FreedomBox
project exists to integrate existing software, devising solutions to
complicated problems is wholly outside the scope of the FreedomBox. I
wonder why such discussion is encouraged on this list when there are so
many better places to go for it. 

I also wonder why the low-hanging fruit of packaging and integrating
autonomy-enhancing technology (AET) has not been more aggressively
worked on. As Eben said, there is enough technology in existence RIGHT
NOW to build a FreedomBox v0, that just does self-hosted IM, email, and
blogging. Debian packages exist to implement all of those things. Why
does such a FreedomBox not exist yet? Why are people more attracted to
debating pet solutions to very hard problems that will not be solved on
a mailing list than to advancing the agenda of the FreedomBox by
creating stable configurations for existing software to actually
implement a FreedomBox?

I don't know if I haven't looked hard enough, but the only thing I
remember seeing from the FBF was a list of things the FreedomBox is/is
not. I don't remember seeing a set of tasks made to package Debian
software to do all the things the FBF want the FB to do, or a list of
Debian packages that already exist but need better default configuration
files, or actually, anything being done. I can put an equal part of the
blame for this on myself, since I haven't done anything towards these
goals, but it's distressing that in such a high-profile and obviously
popular project, nobody seems to have taken the low-hanging fruit.
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