Re: [libreplanet-discuss] New GNU

[Ramana Kumar]

Thanks for mentioning Diaspora* - I actually hadn't heard of it before, and now I have requested an invite.

It sounds like there are two actionable threads emerging from this discussion:
1. organise promotion of free social networks, especially switching away from proprietary ones together as a group of friends, and

2. organise promotion of free operating systems, possibly by introducing GNU to many people who haven't seen it or didn't know they were using it
These activities can of course be linked, because they share the underlying message that freedom matters.

In the spirit of Free as in United I think these two projects should have a homepage or two so we can clarify plans and ideas and get people involved.
Who would like to host this? Remember the bystander effect: if you don't volunteer, maybe nobody will. So I am asking you to step up!

In the meantime, I commit to start a page on the LibrePlanet Wiki to collate ideas raised so far by Monday 14th. (unless someone beats me to it :P)

On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 12:18 PM, Michał 'rysiek' Woźniak <rysiek@fwioo.pl> wrote:

Dnia wtorek, 8 maja 2012 o 12:18:56 Patrick Anderson napisał(a):

> We are fooling ourselves to believe P2P networking
> such as Diaspora can solve our problems.
>
> It only moves a very small part of the problem.
>
> We, the users, must co-own the servers and the
> buildings housing those servers, and the ISP connecting
> us to those servers, and the factories used to create
> those servers, and the power-plants used to power
> those servers, and the fields used to supply the food
> needed to power our bodies, and the water-rights
> needed to grow that food, and the mines needed to
> create all the tools needed for those operations, and
> all the other parts, recursively, for all the production
> needed to continuously recreate our daily needs for
> all the things we need.
>
> To leave any of this to corporations that we do not
> control is to relinquish control of the planet to those
> that must subjugate us in a variety of ways to
> perpetuate the scarcity required in their maniacal
> quest to keep price above costs.

Absolutely. But we need to start *somewhere* and moving away from
proprietary social networks is a good first step - first, because it
can be made "fun" (as I wrote before; secondly, as after that, even if
90% of users will be on joindiaspora.com, they will already be using a
service with a protocol and decentralisation built-in. That means it
will be trivial to move from server to server if need be.

Instead of "moving away from Facebook and losing all my contacts"
situation we will land in "I'll just change the server and notify all
my contacts, just like with e-mail". Which is obviously much, much
better.

Other than that, pray tell, do you have a silver-bullet-conquer-them-
all plan to achieve what you wrote about? If so, I'm in. If not, we
need to move one step at a time.

--
Pozdrawiam
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak

Fundacja Wolnego i Otwartego Oprogramowania