8 ms·

Richard Stallman on Data Autonomy [video]

199 points by DoubleMalt 11y ago

informatix 11y ago
Nice
brennannovak 11y ago
Really cool project! As CloudFleet was one of the first backers of Mailpile (disclaimer, I co-founded it), I've always loved their concept and am stoked it's coming to light :)
- metakermit 11y ago
  Yeah, for the HN people interested in CloudFleet, I recommend you visit our technology overview at http://cloudfleet.readthedocs.org/en/latest/doc/technology/technology.html http://cloudfleet.readthedocs.org/en/latest/doc/technology/t...
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - mark_l_watson 11y ago
    Thanks for posting the link. I might try setting up Blimp on my Pi 2.
joesmo 11y ago
Trust is indeed a huge issue that seems to be misunderstood and misapplied in the software community. Stallman's views on trust may seem radical, but he's pretty much right. Over and over I see the things he warns about come true and I trust companies and other entities less and less. It's kind of disheartening to see the huge potential of cloud infrastructure, amongst other technologies, going to waste.
- kuschku 11y ago
  It’s always said when the worst dystopic visions become truth. [1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html [2] http://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/ http://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    It's a pretty hard stretch to qualify our society as dystopic because of John Deere and kindle
    - jacobush 11y ago
      Yes. There are much worse things going on. They are nice case studies though.
    - kuschku 11y ago
      The society as a whole is not, but in specific areas the most dystopic visions came true. Not overall, but in a few specific areas.
- such_a_casual 11y ago
  His views only seem radical because of the way he presents them. Easily his biggest mistake is naming his movement Free Software instead of something like Software Liberties or Software Rights, and then refusing to change the name at any point after the realization of this error. Then he says things like, "They're trying to put a cloud inside your head." Which is just laughable. Most of the time he's speaking very generally without citing specific facts to back up his arguments (In the video he mentions that software is malicious, why not mention one of them so everyone knows what he means by that). Which causes anyone who doesn't know what he's talking about to write him off, and the people who do know what he's talking about don't need to hear what he has to say. In a real debate about these topics, people usually hide behind capitalist ideals to explain the immoral use of software. As opposed to trying to argue that immoral use doesn't exist, or isn't prevelent.
hsnewman 11y ago
Couldn't have said it better and more clearly myself!
crististm 11y ago
Do you have an agenda or you just can't think on your own? By your own description you should up your game a little before writing off some argument as "laughable".
- _Simon 11y ago
  Wow. You do realise that you at part of the problem described? Zero tolerance of others views and a reluctance to listen to criticism followed by petty name calling? I'd love for there to be an adult discussion about software freedom, but that can't happen because Stallman and his followers won't engage in open discussion without posts like yours.
- such_a_casual 11y ago
  Did you actually read my post? What is my thesis? What was the argument I was presenting?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- dang 11y ago
  Personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News. We ban accounts that do this, so please don't do this. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10919602 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10919602 and marked it off-topic.
  - crististm 11y ago
    When the only criticism to "a cloud inside your head" is "laughable" I can't help to think it comes either from malice or ignorance. A real argument should carry more weight. (And I realize this goes both ways).
    - dang 11y ago
      I know, but the bias to think that it's malice or ignorance is much stronger than it ought to be, so if we don't all consciously practice the benefit of the doubt, things are guaranteed to get acrimonious.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
dajbelshaw 11y ago
It was my first time meeting Stallman at the Indie Tech Summit (where I also met the CloudFleet guys). He's a little eccentric, but he's one of the reasons I'm now on a Linux machine instead of a Mac!
- juraj24 11y ago
  You should then use Stalman-invented name gnu/linux. :-)
- 0xFFC 11y ago
  GNU/Linux?
  - whyever 11y ago
    If you do this, shouldn't it be GNU/BSD/Firefox/Linux?
    - xyzzy4 11y ago
      Don't forget the version numbers!
- nextos 11y ago
  I hope Stallman focusses on mobile now. Desktop, laptop & server are pretty satisfying free software platforms. But mobile is incredibly dissatisfying, and it's quickly getting a decent share of users. Incidentally, FSF is running a vision survey to establish strategic goals: https://my.fsf.org/civicrm/profile/create?gid=403&reset=1 https://my.fsf.org/civicrm/profile/create?gid=403&reset=1
  - pmoriarty 11y ago
    Another frontier that the Free Software community should set their sights on is virtual reality. The potential impact of VR is enormous, and one of the leading VR development and content creation tools (Unreal Engine) recently open-sourced thier product (though I'm not sure if it was done with an FSF compatible license). Unity, the real giant in the VR arena, and Oculus' own code are closed, if I'm not mistaken. I'm not sure how open Oculus' competitors are (HTC Vive, Playstation Morpheus, and Microsoft's Hololens), but I wouldn't be surprised if they're all closed. Making a difference in the openness of the ecosystem at this relatively early stage in its development could make a big difference.
autoreleasepool 11y ago
If BTsync ever goes open source or SyncThing ever achieves the quality and functionality of BTSync, then achieving autonomy over our data will be easy. I use BitTorrent Sync with my FreeNas box. It's absolutely amazing. I am able to completely subvert the cloud and have all my data synced across devices. The mobile app is a user-friendly delight. I was able to share 15 GBs of vacation videos with 10 of my non-techie friends by sending them a read only key to a shared folder. All of them got it right away with no technical questions or issues. Most importantly, I have all my photos and videos synced as I take them. This means I don't lose precious photos from a trip if my phone accidentally falls in the ocean. My phone, laptop, NAS, iPad, all have my photos backed up providing good data redundancy. No cloud services involved, no risk accidental publishing something private, no risk of an account hack, and no expensive data storage plans. The only problem is I have to trust BitTorrent's proprietary software to do the heavy lifting for me. This is why I want the SyncThing project to catch up.
- bcrack 11y ago
  In what ways do you find SyncThing lacking when compared to BTSync? I started using it for work (cautiously) a couple of moths ago and have found it to be very similar (with respect to stability and ease of use) with BTSync, if not superior. Note though that I haven't used BTSync since its first days.
  - artlogic 11y ago
    My guess is this: > I was able to share 15 GBs of vacation videos with 10 of my non-techie friends by sending them a read only key to a shared folder. All of them got it right away with no technical questions or issues. I appreciate SyncThing's security first stance, but it would be incredibly helpful if it was a bit easier to share specific synced things with non-techies.
    - Liru 11y ago
      This is the one thing that I was looking for in an alternative to Sync. It made me sad that the main alternative to it didn't have this.
shmerl 11y ago
Yep. Add to that all kind of attempts to erode the ownership of digital goods by all kind of stores which pretend they sell you something, while really they only rent it (for no good reason). DRM and its kin come along with that. Support DRM-free stores and boycott DRMed ones to vote with your wallet.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
andygmb 11y ago
In the video stallman states that nonfree software is in the control of the developer who owns it, which is true, but isnt a developer of free software equally in control of their software? I dont look into the source of every program on my OS, even though if i was to use 100% free software, I could. This means I am equally depending on the developer of the free software not to be malicious as I am the nonfree software.
- dopu 11y ago
  The point is that even if you personally didn't look over the source code, you'd be able to if you'd like to, and it's likely that people other than you have already looked at it. This greatly reduces the opportunity for a developer or some other entity to introduce malicious code -- and even if that occurs, you reserve the right to remove it yourself and modify the programs you use as you see fit.
- n4r9 11y ago
  At least with free software there is the hope that malicious code will get picked up on by someone with an interest in reading the source, who would then make that functionality known to others.
  - krapp 11y ago
    To be fair, that hope exists with proprietary software as well, it's just that the end user is excluded from the set of eyes watching the code.
- jordigh 11y ago
  > This means I am equally depending on the developer of the free software not to be malicious as I am the nonfree software. You're typically not the only person who is capable of looking at the code. If there are malicious features you can, in principle, go and see what they are and disable them. More likely, you can depend on others to do it, or you can even hire someone to do it for you. These options are not even available with non-free software. There is a further purely psychological matter. People are more likely to behave nicely if they feel watched. If they are publishing the source code, they are less likely to be malicious, because they know that anyone can, in principle, inspect their malice. This results in fewer malicious features. In the case of Firefox doing things like Pocket or Hello or whatever, people can and do go ahead and replace Firefox with things like GNU Icecat or Debian Iceweasel that can remove these unwanted features. Or Firefox extension authors can provide extensions to modify almost anything about Firefox, a task which is facilitated by having access to all of Firefox's source code.
bl4ckdu5t 11y ago
Stallman just has a way of putting things that makes you feel doing otherwise is wrong. I never thought of data autonomy this way and I've been fine with using popular cloud services till now
- kordless 11y ago
  Stallman does a good job of calling out cognitive dissonance, as do most individuals with wisdom. The question is why are you and others "fine" with running your services on someone else's systems? I think the answer lies in what Stallman said about keeping your software and data "under your control". If someone has control of the services you use, or the data you store in those services, there exists a clear manner in which revenue can be generated, the product improved and their ability to run it better than you increased to the point they can market it as the only way to do it. In a way, the public cloud exists because people don't want to spend (or have) the time to understand how to run the services in a reliable way themselves, on their own equipment, in their own domain. The argument becomes exactly what you hear everyone from software interns to VC parrot: I trust Amazon to run my servers better than I can. By taking a bit of trust from a bank account, and giving it to someone else, users are able to "put off" having to understand how services and systems operate. They are, in a way, willing to ignore the fact the service and data is outside their control in some use cases that actually matter. This is what Stallman meant when he said "put a cloud in your mind". That "cloud" is actually cognitive dissonance. Literally believing your data is safer on someone else's servers because you could never run it better than they could, while at the same time being totally OK with not having any control over where it is stored or who has access to it. If cost (and the time associated with it) were no objection, where would you choose to run your services and store your data? If you had a choice between running it at my house and running it at your house, which would you chose?
  - Frondo 11y ago
    I'm fine with relying on other people because I do it for every other part of life already. I don't grow my own food, I don't produce my own medical supplies, I don't build my own wifi devices and I don't pave my own roads. No one engaged in modern western-civilization does; we all rely on everyone around us all the time to live and do things. Cloud backup services, VPSes, photo-hosting sites, Twitter, whatever, they're the exact same thing. If something about these services isn't fair or just, the answer is to find an alternative, inform our friends and neighbors, work to change laws, etc., whatever, not just try and do it all ourselves in some pointless attempt at individualism. If cost and time were no object, I'd pay someone else to manage every single bit of my infrastructure, and task them with the responsibility for making sure it kept working. I wouldn't ask how, it'd be their job, the thing I'm paying them for. (If I had any knowing of the details, I probably wouldn't want them to build a server and buy colo space, though, because of the resource consumption that would imply. All that electricity for redundant server hardware to endure disk crashes and so on? What a waste!)
baldfat 11y ago
Anyone find it funny that the video is on a non-Stallman CC-ND License? > Q6: Can you comment on the Creative Commons licence? Richard Stallman: The thing is, it's meaningless to talk about Creative Commons licence. The bad thing about Creative Commons is that it has produced a broad series of licences that have nothing in common. In fact, if you look at these licences and determine what is the freedom that is common to all these licences, the answer is: nothing. EDIT: Reference https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/transcripts/rms-fs-2006-03-09.en.html#q6 https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/transcripts/rms-fs-2006-03-09....
- RansomTime 11y ago
  There was a link on the FSF's site about using ND for opinion: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-and-globalization.html#opinions http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-and-globalization.ht...
- metakermit 11y ago
  Actually, Stallman himself asked us to mark the video under that license (he proof-read the post).
  - baldfat 11y ago
    Really????? Well that is pleasantly surprising.
nbadg 11y ago
I'm sorry, but this is profoundly naive. If the name "Richard Stallman" weren't attached to it, you wouldn't have watched this video. The world doesn't have time for everyone to deploy their own server. I mean, honestly, ask yourself if you even have time to do this, or if it's just yet another project that's going to get piled on top of the Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone Black you have sitting in your projects box. Plus, everyone operating their own server is an indescribably large security catastrophe waiting to happen. IoT is a perfect example of this. Those exact same massive companies opaquely hosting your data struggle with security issues on a daily basis and even they can't always get it right. The answer to data autonomy is end-to-end encryption. Full stop. We need a protocol that gives exact, one-to-any (one-to-none, one-to-one, one-to-many) control over sharing. That can be enforced cryptographically. It would be nice if that same protocol also had a consensus algorithm for data deletion, so we could avoid this whole "right to be forgotten" vs "free speech" debate. There is at least one example of such a protocol. I know, because I'm the one developing it [1], and I've been incredibly frustrated at how difficult it's been to build awareness, because my name isn't, for example, Richard Stallman. [1a] https://github.com/Muterra/doc-muse https://github.com/Muterra/doc-muse [1b] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3wFU4VIhww https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3wFU4VIhww [1c] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ethyr-modern-encrypted-email https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ethyr-modern-encrypted-em...
- castratikron 11y ago
  It doesn't sound like he's advocating that everyone run their own server. He said that if you require your data be available all the time, then you should run your own server; otherwise, you should keep your data on your computer. That being said, I don't see a problem storing data on someone else's computer as long as that data is encrypted and I alone have the ability to decrypt it. Trusting someone to encrypt your data for you when you give them your data is essentially the same thing as giving them access to the unencrypted data.
  - nbadg 11y ago
    > Trusting someone to encrypt your data for you when you give them your data is essentially the same thing as giving them access to the unencrypted data. Absolutely agreed, which is precisely why it's so important to be end-to-end, which implies client-side encryption. Unfortunately, this is a totally different environment than we're used to; it doesn't break the internet, but it definitely breaks the web. Part of the challenge of the work I've been doing on this problem has been to envision exactly how this new thing would work. It's really cool stuff, but it's a dramatic departure from what we're accustomed to. > It doesn't sound like he's advocating that everyone run their own server. He said that if you require your data be available all the time, then you should run your own server The problem is, total availability is exactly what we've come to expect from the vast majority of internet use. This is particularly true of the most popular websites. Facebook, google, etc wouldn't work with totally intermittent data availability, but for a growing number of people, they are the internet.

199 points by DoubleMalt 11y ago

Nice

Really cool project! As CloudFleet was one of the first backers of Mailpile (disclaimer, I co-founded it), I've always loved their concept and am stoked it's coming to light :)

metakermit 11y ago
Yeah, for the HN people interested in CloudFleet, I recommend you visit our technology overview at http://cloudfleet.readthedocs.org/en/latest/doc/technology/technology.html http://cloudfleet.readthedocs.org/en/latest/doc/technology/t...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- mark_l_watson 11y ago
  Thanks for posting the link. I might try setting up Blimp on my Pi 2.

joesmo 11y ago

Trust is indeed a huge issue that seems to be misunderstood and misapplied in the software community. Stallman's views on trust may seem radical, but he's pretty much right. Over and over I see the things he warns about come true and I trust companies and other entities less and less. It's kind of disheartening to see the huge potential of cloud infrastructure, amongst other technologies, going to waste.

kuschku 11y ago
It’s always said when the worst dystopic visions become truth. [1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html [2] http://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/ http://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  It's a pretty hard stretch to qualify our society as dystopic because of John Deere and kindle
  - jacobush 11y ago
    Yes. There are much worse things going on. They are nice case studies though.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    The society as a whole is not, but in specific areas the most dystopic visions came true. Not overall, but in a few specific areas.
such_a_casual 11y ago
His views only seem radical because of the way he presents them. Easily his biggest mistake is naming his movement Free Software instead of something like Software Liberties or Software Rights, and then refusing to change the name at any point after the realization of this error. Then he says things like, "They're trying to put a cloud inside your head." Which is just laughable. Most of the time he's speaking very generally without citing specific facts to back up his arguments (In the video he mentions that software is malicious, why not mention one of them so everyone knows what he means by that). Which causes anyone who doesn't know what he's talking about to write him off, and the people who do know what he's talking about don't need to hear what he has to say. In a real debate about these topics, people usually hide behind capitalist ideals to explain the immoral use of software. As opposed to trying to argue that immoral use doesn't exist, or isn't prevelent.

hsnewman 11y ago

Couldn't have said it better and more clearly myself!

crististm 11y ago

Do you have an agenda or you just can't think on your own? By your own description you should up your game a little before writing off some argument as "laughable".

_Simon 11y ago
Wow. You do realise that you at part of the problem described? Zero tolerance of others views and a reluctance to listen to criticism followed by petty name calling? I'd love for there to be an adult discussion about software freedom, but that can't happen because Stallman and his followers won't engage in open discussion without posts like yours.
such_a_casual 11y ago
Did you actually read my post? What is my thesis? What was the argument I was presenting?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
dang 11y ago
Personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News. We ban accounts that do this, so please don't do this. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10919602 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10919602 and marked it off-topic.
- crististm 11y ago
  When the only criticism to "a cloud inside your head" is "laughable" I can't help to think it comes either from malice or ignorance. A real argument should carry more weight. (And I realize this goes both ways).
  - dang 11y ago
    I know, but the bias to think that it's malice or ignorance is much stronger than it ought to be, so if we don't all consciously practice the benefit of the doubt, things are guaranteed to get acrimonious.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

dajbelshaw 11y ago

It was my first time meeting Stallman at the Indie Tech Summit (where I also met the CloudFleet guys). He's a little eccentric, but he's one of the reasons I'm now on a Linux machine instead of a Mac!

juraj24 11y ago
You should then use Stalman-invented name gnu/linux. :-)
0xFFC 11y ago
GNU/Linux?
- whyever 11y ago
  If you do this, shouldn't it be GNU/BSD/Firefox/Linux?
  - xyzzy4 11y ago
    Don't forget the version numbers!
nextos 11y ago
I hope Stallman focusses on mobile now. Desktop, laptop & server are pretty satisfying free software platforms. But mobile is incredibly dissatisfying, and it's quickly getting a decent share of users. Incidentally, FSF is running a vision survey to establish strategic goals: https://my.fsf.org/civicrm/profile/create?gid=403&reset=1 https://my.fsf.org/civicrm/profile/create?gid=403&reset=1
- pmoriarty 11y ago
  Another frontier that the Free Software community should set their sights on is virtual reality. The potential impact of VR is enormous, and one of the leading VR development and content creation tools (Unreal Engine) recently open-sourced thier product (though I'm not sure if it was done with an FSF compatible license). Unity, the real giant in the VR arena, and Oculus' own code are closed, if I'm not mistaken. I'm not sure how open Oculus' competitors are (HTC Vive, Playstation Morpheus, and Microsoft's Hololens), but I wouldn't be surprised if they're all closed. Making a difference in the openness of the ecosystem at this relatively early stage in its development could make a big difference.

autoreleasepool 11y ago

If BTsync ever goes open source or SyncThing ever achieves the quality and functionality of BTSync, then achieving autonomy over our data will be easy. I use BitTorrent Sync with my FreeNas box. It's absolutely amazing. I am able to completely subvert the cloud and have all my data synced across devices. The mobile app is a user-friendly delight. I was able to share 15 GBs of vacation videos with 10 of my non-techie friends by sending them a read only key to a shared folder. All of them got it right away with no technical questions or issues. Most importantly, I have all my photos and videos synced as I take them. This means I don't lose precious photos from a trip if my phone accidentally falls in the ocean. My phone, laptop, NAS, iPad, all have my photos backed up providing good data redundancy. No cloud services involved, no risk accidental publishing something private, no risk of an account hack, and no expensive data storage plans. The only problem is I have to trust BitTorrent's proprietary software to do the heavy lifting for me. This is why I want the SyncThing project to catch up.

bcrack 11y ago
In what ways do you find SyncThing lacking when compared to BTSync? I started using it for work (cautiously) a couple of moths ago and have found it to be very similar (with respect to stability and ease of use) with BTSync, if not superior. Note though that I haven't used BTSync since its first days.
- artlogic 11y ago
  My guess is this: > I was able to share 15 GBs of vacation videos with 10 of my non-techie friends by sending them a read only key to a shared folder. All of them got it right away with no technical questions or issues. I appreciate SyncThing's security first stance, but it would be incredibly helpful if it was a bit easier to share specific synced things with non-techies.
  - Liru 11y ago
    This is the one thing that I was looking for in an alternative to Sync. It made me sad that the main alternative to it didn't have this.

shmerl 11y ago

Yep. Add to that all kind of attempts to erode the ownership of digital goods by all kind of stores which pretend they sell you something, while really they only rent it (for no good reason). DRM and its kin come along with that. Support DRM-free stores and boycott DRMed ones to vote with your wallet.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

andygmb 11y ago

In the video stallman states that nonfree software is in the control of the developer who owns it, which is true, but isnt a developer of free software equally in control of their software? I dont look into the source of every program on my OS, even though if i was to use 100% free software, I could. This means I am equally depending on the developer of the free software not to be malicious as I am the nonfree software.

dopu 11y ago
The point is that even if you personally didn't look over the source code, you'd be able to if you'd like to, and it's likely that people other than you have already looked at it. This greatly reduces the opportunity for a developer or some other entity to introduce malicious code -- and even if that occurs, you reserve the right to remove it yourself and modify the programs you use as you see fit.
n4r9 11y ago
At least with free software there is the hope that malicious code will get picked up on by someone with an interest in reading the source, who would then make that functionality known to others.
- krapp 11y ago
  To be fair, that hope exists with proprietary software as well, it's just that the end user is excluded from the set of eyes watching the code.
jordigh 11y ago
> This means I am equally depending on the developer of the free software not to be malicious as I am the nonfree software. You're typically not the only person who is capable of looking at the code. If there are malicious features you can, in principle, go and see what they are and disable them. More likely, you can depend on others to do it, or you can even hire someone to do it for you. These options are not even available with non-free software. There is a further purely psychological matter. People are more likely to behave nicely if they feel watched. If they are publishing the source code, they are less likely to be malicious, because they know that anyone can, in principle, inspect their malice. This results in fewer malicious features. In the case of Firefox doing things like Pocket or Hello or whatever, people can and do go ahead and replace Firefox with things like GNU Icecat or Debian Iceweasel that can remove these unwanted features. Or Firefox extension authors can provide extensions to modify almost anything about Firefox, a task which is facilitated by having access to all of Firefox's source code.

bl4ckdu5t 11y ago

Stallman just has a way of putting things that makes you feel doing otherwise is wrong. I never thought of data autonomy this way and I've been fine with using popular cloud services till now

kordless 11y ago
Stallman does a good job of calling out cognitive dissonance, as do most individuals with wisdom. The question is why are you and others "fine" with running your services on someone else's systems? I think the answer lies in what Stallman said about keeping your software and data "under your control". If someone has control of the services you use, or the data you store in those services, there exists a clear manner in which revenue can be generated, the product improved and their ability to run it better than you increased to the point they can market it as the only way to do it. In a way, the public cloud exists because people don't want to spend (or have) the time to understand how to run the services in a reliable way themselves, on their own equipment, in their own domain. The argument becomes exactly what you hear everyone from software interns to VC parrot: I trust Amazon to run my servers better than I can. By taking a bit of trust from a bank account, and giving it to someone else, users are able to "put off" having to understand how services and systems operate. They are, in a way, willing to ignore the fact the service and data is outside their control in some use cases that actually matter. This is what Stallman meant when he said "put a cloud in your mind". That "cloud" is actually cognitive dissonance. Literally believing your data is safer on someone else's servers because you could never run it better than they could, while at the same time being totally OK with not having any control over where it is stored or who has access to it. If cost (and the time associated with it) were no objection, where would you choose to run your services and store your data? If you had a choice between running it at my house and running it at your house, which would you chose?
- Frondo 11y ago
  I'm fine with relying on other people because I do it for every other part of life already. I don't grow my own food, I don't produce my own medical supplies, I don't build my own wifi devices and I don't pave my own roads. No one engaged in modern western-civilization does; we all rely on everyone around us all the time to live and do things. Cloud backup services, VPSes, photo-hosting sites, Twitter, whatever, they're the exact same thing. If something about these services isn't fair or just, the answer is to find an alternative, inform our friends and neighbors, work to change laws, etc., whatever, not just try and do it all ourselves in some pointless attempt at individualism. If cost and time were no object, I'd pay someone else to manage every single bit of my infrastructure, and task them with the responsibility for making sure it kept working. I wouldn't ask how, it'd be their job, the thing I'm paying them for. (If I had any knowing of the details, I probably wouldn't want them to build a server and buy colo space, though, because of the resource consumption that would imply. All that electricity for redundant server hardware to endure disk crashes and so on? What a waste!)

baldfat 11y ago

Anyone find it funny that the video is on a non-Stallman CC-ND License? > Q6: Can you comment on the Creative Commons licence? Richard Stallman: The thing is, it's meaningless to talk about Creative Commons licence. The bad thing about Creative Commons is that it has produced a broad series of licences that have nothing in common. In fact, if you look at these licences and determine what is the freedom that is common to all these licences, the answer is: nothing. EDIT: Reference https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/transcripts/rms-fs-2006-03-09.en.html#q6 https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/transcripts/rms-fs-2006-03-09....

RansomTime 11y ago
There was a link on the FSF's site about using ND for opinion: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-and-globalization.html#opinions http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-and-globalization.ht...
metakermit 11y ago
Actually, Stallman himself asked us to mark the video under that license (he proof-read the post).
- baldfat 11y ago
  Really????? Well that is pleasantly surprising.

nbadg 11y ago

I'm sorry, but this is profoundly naive. If the name "Richard Stallman" weren't attached to it, you wouldn't have watched this video. The world doesn't have time for everyone to deploy their own server. I mean, honestly, ask yourself if you even have time to do this, or if it's just yet another project that's going to get piled on top of the Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone Black you have sitting in your projects box. Plus, everyone operating their own server is an indescribably large security catastrophe waiting to happen. IoT is a perfect example of this. Those exact same massive companies opaquely hosting your data struggle with security issues on a daily basis and even they can't always get it right. The answer to data autonomy is end-to-end encryption. Full stop. We need a protocol that gives exact, one-to-any (one-to-none, one-to-one, one-to-many) control over sharing. That can be enforced cryptographically. It would be nice if that same protocol also had a consensus algorithm for data deletion, so we could avoid this whole "right to be forgotten" vs "free speech" debate. There is at least one example of such a protocol. I know, because I'm the one developing it [1], and I've been incredibly frustrated at how difficult it's been to build awareness, because my name isn't, for example, Richard Stallman. [1a] https://github.com/Muterra/doc-muse https://github.com/Muterra/doc-muse [1b] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3wFU4VIhww https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3wFU4VIhww [1c] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ethyr-modern-encrypted-email https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ethyr-modern-encrypted-em...

castratikron 11y ago
It doesn't sound like he's advocating that everyone run their own server. He said that if you require your data be available all the time, then you should run your own server; otherwise, you should keep your data on your computer. That being said, I don't see a problem storing data on someone else's computer as long as that data is encrypted and I alone have the ability to decrypt it. Trusting someone to encrypt your data for you when you give them your data is essentially the same thing as giving them access to the unencrypted data.
- nbadg 11y ago
  > Trusting someone to encrypt your data for you when you give them your data is essentially the same thing as giving them access to the unencrypted data. Absolutely agreed, which is precisely why it's so important to be end-to-end, which implies client-side encryption. Unfortunately, this is a totally different environment than we're used to; it doesn't break the internet, but it definitely breaks the web. Part of the challenge of the work I've been doing on this problem has been to envision exactly how this new thing would work. It's really cool stuff, but it's a dramatic departure from what we're accustomed to. > It doesn't sound like he's advocating that everyone run their own server. He said that if you require your data be available all the time, then you should run your own server The problem is, total availability is exactly what we've come to expect from the vast majority of internet use. This is particularly true of the most popular websites. Facebook, google, etc wouldn't work with totally intermittent data availability, but for a growing number of people, they are the internet.