@hipsterelectron @froztbyte @mhoye This shit right here is why I am not working on my seL4/Idris crap in public. Giving your shit away to comrades is fundamentally different from giving your shit away to the people in the power structures above you, and we need a way to encode and defend that distinction before we can have free software that doesn't feed the monsters.
@hipsterelectron @froztbyte @mhoye Not that my shit is any good; just look at the rest of what I've put up prior to this if you doubt me. But it's the principle of the thing!
@lykso @froztbyte @mhoye i like idris a lot and i have mixed feelings on seL4 but it is definitely cool software
@hipsterelectron @froztbyte @mhoye Yeah, your work sounds awesome and I am only pursuing the route I am because it seems like a good fit for my relatively limited abilities. These are the pieces I can see and use, and things feel like they are on fire right now so I'm doing what's in front of me. seL4 is juuust beyond the already-available, and I can reach that. You're reaching farther than I am; one day maybe I'll be building atop your work, but laying that groundwork is beyond me.
@lykso that is remarkably kind of you
@lispi314 @hipsterelectron @mhoye @froztbyte Yes, that's a worry I'm keenly aware of. At the moment, the door is open to anyone who passes the "smell test," so to speak. Ask for a Wireguard config and a username and you'll receive.
I like the idea of extending the federation concept to the Internet more broadly, TBH. So if you set up a Wireguard subnet on a private IPv6 as well so you can independently invite people in and you want to connect networks, LMK.
@lispi314 @hipsterelectron @mhoye @froztbyte Regarding failure due to obscurity, I think I'd rather wither in obscurity than feed the system I want to starve. I regard "failures" like Oberon and Plan 9 more highly than Linux at this point, and I'd prefer being lumped in with them.
Of course, success beyond my wildest dreams would see this OS or its spiritual successor as the OS of the revolution, so to speak; I'm speaking only to failure modes here.
@lispi314 @hipsterelectron @mhoye @froztbyte Yeah. I would like to be developing in public, of course, but at this point I am stuck on the point of distrusting the legal system to actually defend small timers like myself, even if there were a well-established license to satisfy my concerns.
@lykso @hipsterelectron @mhoye @froztbyte In my case I have no belief my license works as more than a statement of intent/principles.
So I try instead to compensate in things which I believe the generally applicable contribution to autonomy remains applicable regardless of whatever corposcum might copy it (whatever bastardized copy may not retain that, but the one I will continue to provide will).
I believe finding the source of things matters and that the tooling for current code helps a lot.
Ultimately of course even with protections, corposcum have very well demonstrated in book publishing just how effectively they can drown out one's signal so that one is never heard of anyway (copyright was a monopolist and censorship tool first & foremost and it is what it does best; the same is applicable to patents in a very similar way). The system has always protected the monopolists and corposcum first, anyone else being a pretense or incidental at best.
@lispi314 @hipsterelectron @mhoye @froztbyte Yeah, this is the right attitude to have regarding licenses now, I think.
I don't think there is anything which is structurally incompatible with cooption, and if it is coopted then it becomes irrelevant whether I am maintaining a "good" version; it gets drowned out. Worse, my maintenance may be upstreamed and used to benefit the capitalist version.
1/
@lispi314 @hipsterelectron @mhoye @froztbyte Ideally we would be actively undermining this system.
I suspect there will be a need for good code and good systems as the diseased ones fall apart. I would like to avoid a situation where the people responsible for the disease, where the diseased system itself, can use my work to save themselves/itself. Collective access to and control of this technology is a form of power; it would be 2/
@lispi314 @hipsterelectron @mhoye @froztbyte fantastic if I could find a way to direct that power into a political form which may challenge the current form.
And ultimately, I'd rather the diseased systems fall apart and my work be lost than my work be used to sustain and further the spread of said disease. 3/3
@lispi314 @hipsterelectron @mhoye @froztbyte Although it may be that the system is so diseased and falling apart so quickly that the pace of my work will render it useless in that regard. Good chance as well that the system finds no use for what I'm doing, having other tools better suited already at hand. Still, it's a risk I'd rather not take just now, I guess. 4/3
@lykso @hipsterelectron @mhoye @froztbyte It is a chosen tradeoff, I suppose.
if it is coopted then it becomes irrelevant whether I am maintaining a "good" version; it gets drowned out. Worse, my maintenance may be upstreamed and used to benefit the capitalist version.
It being preserved and public does enable the chance for it to be rediscovered at any time, and possibly in ways that inconvenience malicious parties (if they haven't died out prior).
Ideally we would be actively undermining this system.
Of course. Though the overthrow of capitalism will not come purely from software.
I would like to avoid a situation where the people responsible for the disease, where the diseased system itself, can use my work to save themselves/itself.
That would be unfortunate. Although I deem it extremely unlikely.
Most work that promotes autonomy and agency is worthless to them at best or inimical to their interests.
Most work that puts autonomy, security and control in the hands of the people/users, especially ones who use it to enact their agency & assert autonomy, is actively unwanted to the point that direct hostile intervention has been undertaken at points in the past over it.
(Not only in software work there.)
Collective access to and control of this technology is a form of power; it would be fantastic if I could find a way to direct that power into a political form which may challenge the current form.
A direct challenge seem unlikely, but if what its purpose is and what it enables is contrary to the malicious interests, then it does have good odds of providing indirect challenge or contribution to a direct challenge.
And of course, some in quest of liberation may use it to survive or save themselves long enough for the wider overthrow to take place (hopefully).
Although it may be that the system is so diseased and falling apart so quickly that the pace of my work will render it useless in that regard.
That would be a Plan9 ending.
Were you luckier, you might complete your work after the hostile system's crumbling and see it finding use too.
Good chance as well that the system finds no use for what I'm doing, having other tools better suited already at hand.
Quite.
Still, it's a risk I'd rather not take just now, I guess.
Fair enough. You do have that choice, and your discomfort is not groundless.
@lykso @hipsterelectron @mhoye @froztbyte The difficulty of anonymizing (most things like Tor don't support UDP) would have me refrain.
I like the idea of extending the federation concept to the Internet more broadly, TBH.
It has upsides and downsides.
Fidonet and Usenet both had this.
So if you set up a Wireguard subnet on a private IPv6 as well so you can independently invite people in and you want to connect networks, LMK.
I will probably refrain.
At the moment I2P is how I'd be inclined to do so, it also has key/password-limited connectivity & the like for allowlisted access.
An option usable from both the clearnet, I2P and Tor (varyingly based on individual node support) might be something like Retroshare, though I have no idea if it has slopped since I last looked at it and no idea how well-specified its "wire protocol" is.