[Freedombox-discuss] Freedombox's pursuit of perfection undermines its goals

Joshua Spodek joshuaspodek at yahoo.com
Sat Oct 22 16:31:25 UTC 2011


I hope the following blog post --
http://joshuaspodek.com/freedomboxs-pursuit-perfection-undermines-goals
-- is appropriate here.

I wrote it to help motivate and contribute to this project. I hope that
comes across. I don't claim the final word or best perspective, so I
welcome people pointing out things I missed or misunderstood.


-------------------------------

*Freedombox's pursuit of perfection undermines its goals*

A journalist covering Iran I saw speak last night that got me thinking
critically about the Freedombox in a way the Freedombox community would
benefit from, in my opinion.

Someone asked the journalist what people working for freedom in Iran did
about governments having access to data on Facebook and similar tools.
Being in the Freedombox community, I anticipated her saying something
like it was a big problem and people had to avoid it. She didn't. She
extolled the benefits of social networking and described how people
worked around problems and celebrated Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Since joining the Freedombox mailing list at its start, I've seen months
of discussions on how to make it perfect. Pursuing theoretical ideals
has some use, but I concluded the more meaningful comparison is not to
ideals but to alternatives people today are using.

People in Iran don’t need perfection. They have imperfect tools like
Facebook. They benefit from something better. Absent something better,
they appreciate the best they have, which means the people our community
wants to help end up supporting exactly the tools we want to leapfrog.

Does everyone see this irony? Until we create a device in any way better
than Facebook, the people we say Facebook is putting at risk *support
Facebook*! They don't just use it, they promote it and associate it with
freedom. Trying to perfect X or Y software component undermines support
for our own project when it delays creating a Freedombox.

Want more irony? The people we want to perfect the Freedombox for — the
ones at greatest risk — can best solve our challenges. How? By using
Freedomboxes. They are now solving current social networking problems.
They will solve shortcomings in Freedomboxes has better through
experience than we will through speculation, *as long as they have
Freedomboxes to use*.

Perhaps the worst thing we can do to support people working for Freedom
today is to delay producing code or working devices since it leaves them
vulnerable and gets them to use and support what we consider nonfree
tools.

I believe the best thing we can do for them is to create a Freedombox of
any sort, however imperfect, as long as the code is Free and it has any
advantages over alternatives like Facebook. Yes, it will have problems
that could put people at risk so we should publicize what problems we
know of so free software users can do what they do best — improve the
code themselves or report their problems so others can for them.

Without user input, we’re a rudderless ship. Without users, we can have
no user input. Without a device, we have no users. I believe to support
freedom through creating Freedomboxes, the best we can do is create any
Freedombox at all, however imperfect, and get it and its code to users.
Publicize the imperfections as loudly as possible so users at risk can
avoid them.

In the worst case users can use non-free alternatives like Facebook,
which is no worse than today’s situation.

In the best case they will solve the problems.


-- 
Joshua Spodek
My blog: www.joshuaspodek.com




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