FooPlug -- GNU social on a plug computer

[Matt Lee]

http://foocorp.net/projects/fooplug/

[Melvin Carvalho]

Post by Matt Lee
http://foocorp.net/projects/fooplug/

Awesome!!

Post by Matt Lee
--
Sent from my computer

[Avery M.]

Post by Matt Lee
http://foocorp.net/projects/fooplug/

I appreciate Foocorp's work on libre.fm, but I feel like this is a
little premature. GNU Social has not yet diverged from Status.net, and
it doesn't even have an upgrade scheme to migrate users into any
future GNU developments. I guess if it tricks people into donating
$200 then it's all for a good cause.

Avery
http://www.diaspora-news.net/

[Rob Myers]

Post by Avery M.

Post by Matt Lee
http://foocorp.net/projects/fooplug/

I appreciate Foocorp's work on libre.fm, but I feel like this is a

Thanks. We want to do even more work on GNU network services, and this
is a way of trying to make sure that we can.

Post by Avery M.
little premature. GNU Social has not yet diverged from Status.net, and

A lot of work is being done on social, have a look at the commits in
gitorious. social is being built on StatusNet because StatusNet rocks
and we can stand on the shoulders of giants rather than reinvent the
wheel. Mixed metaphors aside, staying close to StatusNet means we can
contribute back upstream so everyone wins. That's how Free Software
should be.

Post by Avery M.
it doesn't even have an upgrade scheme to migrate users into any
future GNU developments. I guess if it tricks people into donating
$200 then it's all for a good cause.

The current state of plug computers, Debian on plugs, and GNU social are
all public knowledge. No-one is trying to trick anyone. The plug is a
cool thing that gives you a taste of the future now. It's for early
adopters who want to help build out that future.

- Rob.

[Thomas Cort]

Post by Matt Lee
http://foocorp.net/projects/fooplug/

I live in Gatineau, Québec, Canada, and the Terms of Service for the
ISPs in my area prohibit residential/home users from running servers.
Is anyone doing anything on this front? Either coming up with a way to
securely push data to a server somewhere out on the net or trying to
persuade ISPs to loosen their Terms of Service?

-Tom

[Jason Self]

Thomas Cort wrote...

Post by Thomas Cort
I live in Gatineau, Québec, Canada, and the Terms of Service for the
ISPs in my area prohibit residential/home users from running servers.
Is anyone doing anything on this front? Either coming up with a way to
securely push data to a server somewhere out on the net or trying to
persuade ISPs to loosen their Terms of Service?

Change plans with your ISP, or change your ISP.

I have a "business" account with my ISP, and they let my run my servers from my
home. Sure, it costs me about twice as much as it otherwise would but we're
talking about freedom & autonomy here.

[Ted Smith]

Post by Jason Self
Thomas Cort wrote...

I live in Gatineau, Québec, Canada, and the Terms of Service for the
ISPs in my area prohibit residential/home users from running servers.
Is anyone doing anything on this front? Either coming up with a way to
securely push data to a server somewhere out on the net or trying to
persuade ISPs to loosen their Terms of Service?

Change plans with your ISP, or change your ISP.
I have a "business" account with my ISP, and they let my run my servers from my
home. Sure, it costs me about twice as much as it otherwise would but we're
talking about freedom & autonomy here.

Not everyone has the ability to double their Internet costs. Freedom &
autonomy for the rich only is not freedom or autonomy.

I think the best way to deal with such policies is through massive
disobedience campaigns, and where possible, implementing local resilient
networks outside the control of any authoritarian entity (such as a
state or capitalist). It doesn't seem like OStatus is a protocol
well-designed for this - or at least, the way it's currently implemented
in StatusNet now.

Hopefully in the future, there will be some support for protocol-level
encryption in the same manner as implemented in most BitTorrent clients
now. I wonder if Diaspora has considered this, since they are running
right up against this common ISP policy.

[Melvin Carvalho]

Post by Matt Lee

Post by Jason Self
Thomas Cort wrote...

Post by Thomas Cort
I live in Gatineau, Québec, Canada, and the Terms of Service for the
ISPs in my area prohibit residential/home users from running servers.
Is anyone doing anything on this front? Either coming up with a way to
securely push data to a server somewhere out on the net or trying to
persuade ISPs to loosen their Terms of Service?

Change plans with your ISP, or change your ISP.
I have a "business" account with my ISP, and they let my run my servers

from my

Post by Jason Self
home. Sure, it costs me about twice as much as it otherwise would but

we're

Post by Jason Self
talking about freedom & autonomy here.

Not everyone has the ability to double their Internet costs. Freedom &
autonomy for the rich only is not freedom or autonomy.
I think the best way to deal with such policies is through massive
disobedience campaigns, and where possible, implementing local resilient
networks outside the control of any authoritarian entity (such as a
state or capitalist). It doesn't seem like OStatus is a protocol
well-designed for this - or at least, the way it's currently implemented
in StatusNet now.

Not entirely surprising when you look at who designed the OStatus protocols:

LRDD - Yahoo
WebFinger - BT?
Activity Streams - Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Six Apart, Google,
Microsoft
PoCo - Google, Google, Six Apart
OStatus - Status.net
Salmon - Google

Obviously and understandably the spec authors are going to take into account
a wide range of considerations.

That said, you have to start somewhere and we're getting to proof of concept
and running code, which is the forte of the folks of GNU. I do have faith
that the right thing will be done long term.

Additionally, GNU Social has excellent FOAF support, which is another way to
create distributed social nets at web scale. So hopefully over time, the
best of all worlds can be achieved.

Post by Matt Lee
Hopefully in the future, there will be some support for protocol-level
encryption in the same manner as implemented in most BitTorrent clients
now. I wonder if Diaspora has considered this, since they are running
right up against this common ISP policy.

[Alec Muffett]

Post by Thomas Cort
I live in Gatineau, Québec, Canada, and the Terms of Service for the
ISPs in my area prohibit residential/home users from running servers.

The verbiage is there to allow arbitrary disconnection of people who use their service in a way that's uneconomic to the ISP, that's all. Run Skype? That's a "server". Run BT? That's a "server". You have TCP listeners all over the place, they could be on several machines.

See if you can find out what they believe a "server" entails and share the results on your blog and/or with this list; don't put words into their mouth, get their customer services people to provide their own definitions, then pile them up and demolish them.

Your ISP could all block your inbound traffic but that would not be commensurate with providing a service that you've paid for.

Perhaps if we nail down definitions, and name and shame such ToS restrictions along with their commensurate silly definitions, then something might change.

-a

--
alec.muffett-***@public.gmane.org
http://dropsafe.crypticide.com/

[Thomas Cort]

Post by Alec Muffett

Post by Thomas Cort
I live in Gatineau, Québec, Canada, and the Terms of Service for the
ISPs in my area prohibit residential/home users from running servers.

See if you can find out what they believe a "server" entails and share
the results on your blog and/or with this list

Vidéotron's definition of server: "The Customer undertakes to refrain
from using the Internet access to disseminate the data from any type
of server (such as FTP, HTTP, IRC, PROXY, SMTP, POP or others) to the
Internet." Source:
http://www.videotron.com/services/en/service_clientele/8_3.jsp

Post by Alec Muffett
...pile them up and demolish them.
...name and shame...

Is that really the best way to open a dialog with an ISP to try to
convince them to change their Terms of Service for us?

-Tom

[Jason Self]

Post by Alec Muffett
...pile them up and demolish them.
...name and shame...
Is that really the best way to open a dialog with an ISP to try to
convince them to change their Terms of Service for us?

Eben Moglen had a great response to this question, I think, during his recent
speech at DebConf "How We Can Be the Silver Lining of the Cloud." [1]

The entire video is great, but this question was asked at about 0:39:15.

[1] http://penta.debconf.org/dc10_schedule/events/641.en.html