Crowdfunding critical infrastructure
The members of this list are, I think, much more aware tham most that a lot of critical Internet software is maintained by unfunded volunteers, and of the systemic risks that result from this. I'm attacking the problem at the root, applying what the Internet has taught us about decentralization and avoidiing single poimts of failure. In part because I'm currently struggling with medical bills (nothing life-threatening, just ankle surgery) but I've been worrying about the larger problem for a decade. Please read http://loadsharers.net Of course I would like everyone on here to take the pledge and spread the word in technical communities where they have influence. But beyond that, there are several members of this list who are clearly qualified to join as advisers. We're going to need that as the Loadsharers network scales up. -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a> .. a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen... -- Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. App.181)
On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 10:41 AM Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> wrote:
The members of this list are, I think, much more aware tham most that a lot of critical Internet software is maintained by unfunded volunteers, and of the systemic risks that result from this.
I'm attacking the problem at the root, applying what the Internet has taught us about decentralization and avoidiing single poimts of failure. In part because I'm currently struggling with medical bills (nothing life-threatening, just ankle surgery) but I've been worrying about the larger problem for a decade.
Please read http://loadsharers.net
Of course I would like everyone on here to take the pledge and spread the word in technical communities where they have influence. But beyond that, there are several members of this list who are clearly qualified to join as advisers. We're going to need that as the Loadsharers network scales up.
Interesting concept, and seems like a good idea. What's the end goal look like? Encouraging folks to contribute to specific individuals directly may be a little more difficult though, compared to, say, getting a legitimate organization going that provides (likely objectively-determined merit-based) payouts to the sort of folks you're talking about. Is that on the table, or is the goal more to just encourage direct payments from one individual to others? I think many of us assume that doing the sort of work you're referring to will definitely result in the regular receipt of many prestigious, high-paying job offers. If that's not the case, maybe something else we can do is to help find full-time employment/funding for folks who contribute and need it. Hope your ankle's feeling better soon!
Encouraging folks to contribute to specific individuals directly may be a little more difficult though, compared to, say, getting a legitimate organization going that provides (likely objectively-determined merit-based) payouts to the sort of folks you're talking about.
Adding an organization in front of that whose sole reason for existence is to decide who gets what % of the money doesn't make a lot of sense, mostly because it is just creating another layer of people who are then going to feel entitled to be compensated for taking the time to decide who should be compensated. Maintaining a list of individuals who freely maintain important software, with links so people can choose to donate a few bucks if they like seems perfectly fine. On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 11:59 AM Matt Harris <matt@netfire.net> wrote:
On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 10:41 AM Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> wrote:
The members of this list are, I think, much more aware tham most that a lot of critical Internet software is maintained by unfunded volunteers, and of the systemic risks that result from this.
I'm attacking the problem at the root, applying what the Internet has taught us about decentralization and avoidiing single poimts of failure. In part because I'm currently struggling with medical bills (nothing life-threatening, just ankle surgery) but I've been worrying about the larger problem for a decade.
Please read http://loadsharers.net
Of course I would like everyone on here to take the pledge and spread the word in technical communities where they have influence. But beyond that, there are several members of this list who are clearly qualified to join as advisers. We're going to need that as the Loadsharers network scales up.
Interesting concept, and seems like a good idea. What's the end goal look like? Encouraging folks to contribute to specific individuals directly may be a little more difficult though, compared to, say, getting a legitimate organization going that provides (likely objectively-determined merit-based) payouts to the sort of folks you're talking about. Is that on the table, or is the goal more to just encourage direct payments from one individual to others?
I think many of us assume that doing the sort of work you're referring to will definitely result in the regular receipt of many prestigious, high-paying job offers. If that's not the case, maybe something else we can do is to help find full-time employment/funding for folks who contribute and need it.
Hope your ankle's feeling better soon!
On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 11:32 AM Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:
Encouraging folks to contribute to specific individuals directly may be a
little more difficult though, compared to, say, getting a legitimate organization going that provides (likely objectively-determined merit-based) payouts to the sort of folks you're talking about.
Adding an organization in front of that whose sole reason for existence is to decide who gets what % of the money doesn't make a lot of sense, mostly because it is just creating another layer of people who are then going to feel entitled to be compensated for taking the time to decide who should be compensated.
I don't think anyone needs to be compensated for that. I think that you can certainly run a volunteer organization. The time required would be minimal enough that normally-employed folks could participate without issue in managing it. Having that tax deductible status, in the US at least, would be a big benefit and would also bring in institutional/corporate donors and the like as well. Non-profits have been run for making infrastructure software before and have been at least somewhat successful. ISC is an example of this. Something a bit more decentralized could work just fine, too, imho. As far as just asking people to give to others at random, I think you'll see less uptake and potentially issues with parity (for example, if you add worthy folks to a list, those at the top of the list will likely benefit more from random contributors just because they select those at the top of the list - so how do you decide who gets to be where on such a list?), and little if any interest from institutional/corporate donors. A formal organization structure with rules written down in public also helps to ensure transparency and if you set objective, meritocratic rules for the disbursement of funds and you keep things transparent around them, I think that would attract a lot of contributions. Just my opinions, though.
I think it would be a grand thing if someone put together a visible list of critical Internet infrastructure, who maintains it, and perhaps "click to support" buttons for those that need support. Then again, such a list might present a wonderful target list for those who might want to do ill. This also might be a great role for the Internet Systems Consortium. You know, the folks who maintain Bind, and already maintain a list of critical software maintained by ISC and others, along with a list of supporters, and a way to support some of the efforts. Miles Fidelman On 6/27/19 12:49 PM, Matt Harris wrote:
On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 11:32 AM Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:
Encouraging folks to contribute to specific individuals directly may be a little more difficult though, compared to, say, getting a legitimate organization going that provides (likely objectively-determined merit-based) payouts to the sort of folks you're talking about.
Adding an organization in front of that whose sole reason for existence is to decide who gets what % of the money doesn't make a lot of sense, mostly because it is just creating another layer of people who are then going to feel entitled to be compensated for taking the time to decide who should be compensated.
I don't think anyone needs to be compensated for that. I think that you can certainly run a volunteer organization. The time required would be minimal enough that normally-employed folks could participate without issue in managing it. Having that tax deductible status, in the US at least, would be a big benefit and would also bring in institutional/corporate donors and the like as well. Non-profits have been run for making infrastructure software before and have been at least somewhat successful. ISC is an example of this. Something a bit more decentralized could work just fine, too, imho.
As far as just asking people to give to others at random, I think you'll see less uptake and potentially issues with parity (for example, if you add worthy folks to a list, those at the top of the list will likely benefit more from random contributors just because they select those at the top of the list - so how do you decide who gets to be where on such a list?), and little if any interest from institutional/corporate donors. A formal organization structure with rules written down in public also helps to ensure transparency and if you set objective, meritocratic rules for the disbursement of funds and you keep things transparent around them, I think that would attract a lot of contributions.
Just my opinions, though.
-- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra Theory is when you know everything but nothing works. Practice is when everything works but no one knows why. In our lab, theory and practice are combined: nothing works and no one knows why. ... unknown
Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net>:
I think it would be a grand thing if someone put together a visible list of critical Internet infrastructure, who maintains it, and perhaps "click to support" buttons for those that need support. Then again, such a list might present a wonderful target list for those who might want to do ill.
Which is why Loadsharers is designed not to have one big list at all. As Internet engineers, we've learned a lot about avoiding single points of failure in our communications networks. Loadsharers applies that hard-won wisdom to the funding problem. -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> wrote:
I think it would be a grand thing if someone put together a visible list of critical Internet infrastructure, who maintains it, and perhaps "click to support" buttons for those that need support.
Perhaps an opportunity to collaborate with https://www.coreinfrastructure.org/ ? -Jan
Jan Schaumann <jschauma@netmeister.org>:
Perhaps an opportunity to collaborate with https://www.coreinfrastructure.org/ ?
I am unfortunately constrained in what I can say about CII. The temptation to rant is extreme, but I would be revealing confidences that are not mine if I did so. I'll just suggest that if you think CII is the solution to this problem, you should take a hard look at what they're actually funding. And *not* funding. I have a paragraph in the Loadsharers FAQ about the failure modes of centralized fundings for LBIPs. I did *not* write that paragraph from theory. -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc>
Adding an organization in front of that whose sole reason for existence is to decide who gets what % of the money doesn't make a lot of sense, mostly because it is just creating another layer of people who are then going to feel entitled to be compensated for taking the time to decide who should be compensated.
I don't think anyone needs to be compensated for that. I think that you can certainly run a volunteer organization. The time required would be minimal enough that normally-employed folks could participate without issue in managing it.
I have founded and run three 501(c)3s. Two of them are still on mission 17 and 26 years, respectively, after they were founded and with me no longer running them. I have seen success, I have seen failure, I have the battle scars. You are, sadly, wrong. When your nonprofit scales up past a certain level part time problems turn into full-time ones. You may get lucky and not be required to scale up that far, but it is not wise to count on this. Usually you *will* hit that transition point. If you don't adapt to it, your organization will fail. Above that point, when you fail to compensate your people adequately, you lose them. They bail out or they burn out. Altrustic drive can postpone that reckoning, but not prevent it. -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 9:34 AM Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:
Encouraging folks to contribute to specific individuals directly may be a little more difficult though, compared to, say, getting a legitimate organization going that provides (likely objectively-determined merit-based) payouts to the sort of folks you're talking about.
Adding an organization in front of that whose sole reason for existence is to decide who gets what % of the money doesn't make a lot of sense, mostly because it is just creating another layer of people who are then going to feel entitled to be compensated for taking the time to decide who should be compensated.
It will be interesting to see, should this get off the ground to any significant amount, if it turns into a bit of a popularity contest - where a few get the lions share of the donations and the rest a pittance. It might be a good idea to provide the list in a random (and frequently re-randomized) fashion to avoid the same names always being at the top of it. I see that Matt Harris had the same thought. -- Jeff Shultz -- Like us on Social Media for News, Promotions, and other information!! <https://www.facebook.com/SCTCWEB/> <https://www.instagram.com/sctc_503/> <https://www.yelp.com/biz/sctc-stayton-3> <https://www.youtube.com/c/sctcvideos> _**** This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the individual named. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail transmission. ****_
Jeff Shultz <jeffshultz@sctcweb.com>:
It will be interesting to see, should this get off the ground to any significant amount, if it turns into a bit of a popularity contest - where a few get the lions share of the donations and the rest a pittance.
I'm aware of that possible failure mode. It's why I designed in a three-way fanout. The Loadsharer pledge strongly encourages its takers to to find and sponsore *three* LBIPs.
It might be a good idea to provide the list in a random (and frequently re-randomized) fashion to avoid the same names always being at the top of it. I see that Matt Harris had the same thought.
There is no one list, by design. That would be a single point of failure. Each adviser keeps his or her own list. Loadsharers choose which advisers to pay attention to. Didn't anyone actually read the webpage? -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 10:31 AM Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> wrote:
Jeff Shultz <jeffshultz@sctcweb.com>:
It will be interesting to see, should this get off the ground to any significant amount, if it turns into a bit of a popularity contest - where a few get the lions share of the donations and the rest a pittance.
I'm aware of that possible failure mode. It's why I designed in a three-way fanout. The Loadsharer pledge strongly encourages its takers to to find and sponsore *three* LBIPs.
It might be a good idea to provide the list in a random (and frequently re-randomized) fashion to avoid the same names always being at the top of it. I see that Matt Harris had the same thought.
There is no one list, by design. That would be a single point of failure.
Each adviser keeps his or her own list. Loadsharers choose which advisers to pay attention to.
Didn't anyone actually read the webpage?
I did, but I definitely missed the part about advisors maintaining their own lists. I believed they were all going to be contributing to a master LBIPs list. - "and can choose which Advisers to follow (or to follow none!)" did not make that explicitly clear. My mistake was thatI didn't go to the Advisors' pages. I thought they'd just be bios or somesuch, but the first lists are there as well. As is, one thing that grates a bit personally is that the two advisor pages do not share a common structure - If I'm doing a comparison, even unconsciously, I'm going to want to be looking at like objects. Instead, I have your page, which matches the rest of the formatting of the Loadsharer's website, and then I go to Dave Täht's page which is a Patreon blog post, with a very different appearance. I suggest that you provide Advisors with Loadsharer pages like your own, to increase the commonality between list appearances. My background is military - some uniformity counts in my worldview. Maybe the lack of it will assist in splitting the loadsharers between Advisors, which could be considered a feature. FWIW. -- Jeff Shultz -- Like us on Social Media for News, Promotions, and other information!! <https://www.facebook.com/SCTCWEB/> <https://www.instagram.com/sctc_503/> <https://www.yelp.com/biz/sctc-stayton-3> <https://www.youtube.com/c/sctcvideos> _**** This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the individual named. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail transmission. ****_
Jeff Shultz <jeffshultz@sctcweb.com>:
As is, one thing that grates a bit personally is that the two advisor pages do not share a common structure - If I'm doing a comparison, even unconsciously, I'm going to want to be looking at like objects. Instead, I have your page, which matches the rest of the formatting of the Loadsharer's website, and then I go to Dave Täht's page which is a Patreon blog post, with a very different appearance.
I suggest that you provide Advisors with Loadsharer pages like your own, to increase the commonality between list appearances.
My background is military - some uniformity counts in my worldview. Maybe the lack of it will assist in splitting the loadsharers between Advisors, which could be considered a feature.
No, I think you are right and had already identified this as a problem. I just hadn't gotten around to nudging Dave about it yet. I'm forwarding this to him. I'm going to take your feedback as actionable advice that I need to do something formal about making adviser pages comparable *now*, rather than when I get a round tuit. What I can do about this within the Loadsharers organizational design is put up a "Best practices for Advisers" page strongly recommending that new advisers should clone an existing Adviser page when creating theirs. I'll put that up today. I can also offer advisers the ability to host their pages through the Gitlab repository I use for the main loadsharers page and FAQ, with the same toolchain for making the HTML. Which is, in case anyone didn't recognize it, asciidoc. With a Gitlab CI job rendering to GitLab pages and a custom domain. -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
Matt Harris <matt@netfire.net>:
Interesting concept, and seems like a good idea. What's the end goal look like?
Depends on timescale. What I want is for a growing number of skilled engineers to be able to both (a) work shared-infrastructure problems full time, and (b) be able to feed themselves and pay rent and live normal lives while doing it. If this *really* scales up well, shared infrastructure might become something like a career path. Work on things of widely perceived value, get lots of patrons, prosper. We need to do something like this because currently LBIPs are caught between two problems: (1) No way to monetize critical services (2) Altruism doesn't scale well.
Encouraging folks to contribute to specific individuals directly may be a little more difficult though, compared to, say, getting a legitimate organization going that provides (likely objectively-determined merit-based) payouts to the sort of folks you're talking about.
I designed loadsharers out of experience that the centralized model has been tried and failed. As the FAQ notes: It turns out that recruiting people who are both competent to run an organization like that and able to sustain the effort is really hard. Also, organizations that handle money have high complexity, overhead, and management costs. Remittance systems offer us a way to route around most of those costs. Loadsharers is designed to be the thinnest possible coordination layer over the remittance systems. Last but not least, centralization creates single points of failure. A loose network like Loadsharers should be less vulnerable to individual incompetence, political capture, corruption, etc. I have specific instances in mind for all the organizational failure modes I describe. Also, I have yet to see any evidence that small central panels of experts are better at judging merit than a swarm attack on the evaluation problem in which people choose to fund what they like and know about. That's called a "market". It works.
I think many of us assume that doing the sort of work you're referring to will definitely result in the regular receipt of many prestigious, high-paying job offers.
When that happens, it's actually a problem. Let's suppose that someone were to judge I've been doing high-quality work on security-hardened NTP. I get a job offer as a result. Is it going to be to work on NTP? Nope, you can't monetize NTP, so my employer will want me to work on something else that generates a profit. Boom. We lose.
If that's not the case, maybe something else we can do is to help find full-time employment/funding for folks who contribute and need it.
What "something else" could be more efficient that putting money into Loadsharers? Corporate overhead for an employee is typically 100% of gross salary or up due to plant costs. When you fund an LBIP through a remittance service, the service takes a cut that's usually about 5%. You could buy a lot more infrastructure support with the 95% difference. Part of what the Loadsharers design is surfing on is the fact that software developers don't actually need the kind of capital concentration that the modern corporation is adapted to manage. We used to, back when computers and communications were expensive, but that was decades ago now. So, if your corporation wants to do infrastructure support efficiently, the most effective thing it can do is earmark some number of K$ per month for the job, then choose experts from among their employees to put it into Loadsharers, possibly acting as advisers to attract more money to the things they can make a case are important.
Hope your ankle's feeling better soon!
Thank you, it seems to be healing nicely. -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
On Thu, 27 Jun 2019, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
I think many of us assume that doing the sort of work you're referring to will definitely result in the regular receipt of many prestigious, high-paying job offers.
When that happens, it's actually a problem.
Let's suppose that someone were to judge I've been doing high-quality work on security-hardened NTP. I get a job offer as a result. Is it going to be to work on NTP? Nope, you can't monetize NTP, so my employer will want me to work on something else that generates a profit.
Boom. We lose.
This may have been an anomaly made possible by early .com $, but I'm pretty sure at one point, companies like VA Research / VA Linux employed developers who in various cases worked part or full time on the Linux kernel and other Open Source projects "as their job". That you've developed/maintained software that's in every Android device, but haven't been paid by anyone for that may be the biggest flaw with Open Source / Free Software. Presumably, if you chose to stop doing that work and nobody volunteered to step into your place, Google (and others) would be forced to fork the code and pay developers to maintain their own versions. Free software was meant to give users control of / access to the code...not create a parasitic ecosystem where some people code because they enjoy doing it and others profit from their work by packaging and selling it or things based on it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jon Lewis, MCP :) | I route | therefore you are _________ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________
Once upon a time, Jon Lewis <jlewis@lewis.org> said:
This may have been an anomaly made possible by early .com $, but I'm pretty sure at one point, companies like VA Research / VA Linux employed developers who in various cases worked part or full time on the Linux kernel and other Open Source projects "as their job".
The vast majority of developers of software in a typical Linux distribution are paid to work on it. That's what companies like Red Hat, Canonical, SuSE, and many others do. There's lots of other stuff that's contributed to as a consequence of their job. When I needed software to support DEC Unix features for example (because that's what my company used), I wrote patches and submitted them to OpenSSH, BIND, etc. My company was fine with that (we weren't going to sell software). -- Chris Adams <cma@cmadams.net>
Jon Lewis <jlewis@lewis.org>:
This may have been an anomaly made possible by early .com $, but I'm pretty sure at one point, companies like VA Research / VA Linux employed developers who in various cases worked part or full time on the Linux kernel and other Open Source projects "as their job".
I was on the Board of Directors of VA Linux at the time. I know we did. That kind of generosity can exist, yes. But the economic headwinds are against it. If you're one of the lucky developers patronized *inside* a corporation, you are never more than one bad quarter from being defunded. For some projects, like Apache or the Linux kernel, the business case for cross-corporate collaboration on shared infrastructure is so clear that even a succession of non-technical bosses can grasp it. And when that happens, you can thank me, because I wrote up that business case where it could become part of C-level thinking. That just means that people like me get to worry about the next level of the problem. Shared infrastructure where the connection to profits is *not* one that a non-technical executive can easily grasp. Good luck keeping *that* sort of work funded inside a for-profit organizatiion.
That you've developed/maintained software that's in every Android device, but haven't been paid by anyone for that may be the biggest flaw with Open Source / Free Software. Presumably, if you chose to stop doing that work and nobody volunteered to step into your place, Google (and others) would be forced to fork the code and pay developers to maintain their own versions.
They would. More efficient for me to keep doing it, but that's not an efficiency that shows up in a manager's quarterlies.
Free software was meant to give users control of / access to the code...not create a parasitic ecosystem where some people code because they enjoy doing it and others profit from their work by packaging and selling it or things based on it.
My eyes were open. Open source was, and is, a solution - oe ary least a good hard whack - at one set of systemic problems. Now we get to deal with the problems that come from the solution. That's what I'm trying to do. You know how to help. Take the Loadsharers pleadge and spread the word. -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
You know how to help. Take the Loadsharers pleadge and spread the word.
Or maybe suggest to some of these BDFL that they loosen their self imposed requirements to maintain absolute control of the code, and share the workload. It's not hard to work 50 hours a week for free. Don't! On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 10:23 PM Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> wrote:
This may have been an anomaly made possible by early .com $, but I'm
Jon Lewis <jlewis@lewis.org>: pretty
sure at one point, companies like VA Research / VA Linux employed developers who in various cases worked part or full time on the Linux kernel and other Open Source projects "as their job".
I was on the Board of Directors of VA Linux at the time. I know we did.
That kind of generosity can exist, yes. But the economic headwinds are against it. If you're one of the lucky developers patronized *inside* a corporation, you are never more than one bad quarter from being defunded.
For some projects, like Apache or the Linux kernel, the business case for cross-corporate collaboration on shared infrastructure is so clear that even a succession of non-technical bosses can grasp it. And when that happens, you can thank me, because I wrote up that business case where it could become part of C-level thinking.
That just means that people like me get to worry about the next level of the problem. Shared infrastructure where the connection to profits is *not* one that a non-technical executive can easily grasp. Good luck keeping *that* sort of work funded inside a for-profit organizatiion.
That you've developed/maintained software that's in every Android device, but haven't been paid by anyone for that may be the biggest flaw with Open Source / Free Software. Presumably, if you chose to stop doing that work and nobody volunteered to step into your place, Google (and others) would be forced to fork the code and pay developers to maintain their own versions.
They would. More efficient for me to keep doing it, but that's not an efficiency that shows up in a manager's quarterlies.
Free software was meant to give users control of / access to the code...not create a parasitic ecosystem where some people code because they enjoy doing it and others profit from their work by packaging and selling it or things based on it.
My eyes were open. Open source was, and is, a solution - oe ary least a good hard whack - at one set of systemic problems. Now we get to deal with the problems that come from the solution.
That's what I'm trying to do.
You know how to help. Take the Loadsharers pleadge and spread the word. -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 08:41 Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> wrote:
The members of this list are, I think, much more aware tham most that a lot of critical Internet software is maintained by unfunded volunteers, and of the systemic risks that result from this.
Please explain. This is not true.
I'm attacking the problem at the root, applying what the Internet has taught us about decentralization and avoidiing single poimts of failure. In part because I'm currently struggling with medical bills (nothing life-threatening, just ankle surgery) but I've been worrying about the larger problem for a decade.
Please read http://loadsharers.net
This needs governance and transparency around it. Just launching a page isn’t going to get you anywhere “sustsinable” <http://loadsharers.net>
Of course I would like everyone on here to take the pledge and spread the word in technical communities where they have influence. But beyond that, there are several members of this list who are clearly qualified to join as advisers. We're going to need that as the Loadsharers network scales up.
-- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
.. a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen... -- Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. App.181)
-- Mehmet +1-424-298-1903
Mehmet Akcin <mehmet@akcin.net>:
On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 08:41 Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> wrote:
The members of this list are, I think, much more aware tham most that a lot of critical Internet software is maintained by unfunded volunteers, and of the systemic risks that result from this.
Please explain. This is not true.
Tell it to Dave Taht, who broke his health solving the bufferbloat problem. Tell it to Patrick Volkerding, who sweated to created the first Linux distribution - inventing a whole tier of infrastructure we now take for granted - only to end up in deep financial trouble because other people make all the money selling the CDs. Tell it to me, leading GIFLIB and GPSD and NTPsec and 48 other projects and looking at having my life savings possibly wiped out by a relatively low-grade medical problem because I'm not on anyone's payroll. Tell it to Harlan Stenn, who worked on NTP for over a decade and could barely get anyone to kick in enough money to buy coffee. If you do not understand the scope of this problem, you are *astoundingly* ignorant. And probably alone on this list.
This needs governance and transparency around it. Just launching a page isn’t going to get you anywhere “sustsinable”
Every loadsharer keeps control of their money at all times. Nobody is makng decisions for them; the most the advisers can do is suggest priorities. Everyting happens in public. How does it get more transparent than that? -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
Chris Adams <cma@cmadams.net>:
Once upon a time, Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> said:
Tell it to Patrick Volkerding, who sweated to created the first Linux distribution
No, he didn't.
Can you be more specific? Are we possibly having some definitional issue about what constitutes a Linux distribution? It is certainly possible you are right and all my other informants are wrong, but... facts, please? Off-list, preferably. This isn't a nanog concern. -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
On 6/27/19 3:21 PM, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
Chris Adams <cma@cmadams.net>:
Once upon a time, Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> said:
Tell it to Patrick Volkerding, who sweated to created the first Linux distribution No, he didn't. Can you be more specific? Are we possibly having some definitional issue about what constitutes a Linux distribution?
It is certainly possible you are right and all my other informants are wrong, but... facts, please?
Certainly offtrack, but it only takes a little googling to find Softlanding, which was the predecessor of Slackware, and a few more (anybody remember Yggdrasil?). Debian was released so close to Slackware as to be essentially simultaneous (5 months). And then there were a few other minor distros. There's a pretty good family tree at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution#History Now, if you mean, the oldest EXTANT distribution, that WOULD be Slackware. Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra Theory is when you know everything but nothing works. Practice is when everything works but no one knows why. In our lab, theory and practice are combined: nothing works and no one knows why. ... unknown
Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net>:
Now, if you mean, the oldest EXTANT distribution, that WOULD be Slackware.
I will revise appropriately. And ask my informants some pointed questions. This is, by tge why, an exemplar of why LBIP evaluation should be crowdsourced. I can't know eveything relevant. No other single person or smal;l panel of expes could either. -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com>:
Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net>:
Now, if you mean, the oldest EXTANT distribution, that WOULD be Slackware.
I will revise appropriately. And ask my informants some pointed questions.
This is, by tge why, an exemplar of why LBIP evaluation should be crowdsourced. I can't know eveything relevant. No other single person or smal;l panel of expes could either.
"by the way" Ugh. Excuse my typos. I'm still in recovery from surgery and not at 100% -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
Once upon a time, Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> said:
Chris Adams <cma@cmadams.net>:
Once upon a time, Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> said:
Tell it to Patrick Volkerding, who sweated to created the first Linux distribution
No, he didn't.
Can you be more specific? Are we possibly having some definitional issue about what constitutes a Linux distribution?
He started out releasing fixes/mods to SLS, which was a commercial distribution; the maker asked him to stop, so he started Slackware as a distinct distribution. Yggdrasil was also before Slackware IIRC, as were TAMU and MCC Interim. -- Chris Adams <cma@cmadams.net>
Eric, Not to go too far afield, but I’m also not on anyone’s payroll, so I buy my own individual-plan health insurance. Yes, it’s more expensive, but that’s the price of not having just one boss :) -mel beckman
On Jun 27, 2019, at 10:46 AM, Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> wrote:
Mehmet Akcin <mehmet@akcin.net>:
On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 08:41 Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> wrote:
The members of this list are, I think, much more aware tham most that a lot of critical Internet software is maintained by unfunded volunteers, and of the systemic risks that result from this.
Please explain. This is not true.
Tell it to Dave Taht, who broke his health solving the bufferbloat problem.
Tell it to Patrick Volkerding, who sweated to created the first Linux distribution - inventing a whole tier of infrastructure we now take for granted - only to end up in deep financial trouble because other people make all the money selling the CDs.
Tell it to me, leading GIFLIB and GPSD and NTPsec and 48 other projects and looking at having my life savings possibly wiped out by a relatively low-grade medical problem because I'm not on anyone's payroll.
Tell it to Harlan Stenn, who worked on NTP for over a decade and could barely get anyone to kick in enough money to buy coffee.
If you do not understand the scope of this problem, you are *astoundingly* ignorant. And probably alone on this list.
This needs governance and transparency around it. Just launching a page isn’t going to get you anywhere “sustsinable”
Every loadsharer keeps control of their money at all times. Nobody is makng decisions for them; the most the advisers can do is suggest priorities. Everyting happens in public. How does it get more transparent than that? -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
participants (10)
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Chris Adams -
Eric S. Raymond -
Jan Schaumann -
Jeff Shultz -
Jon Lewis -
Matt Harris -
Mehmet Akcin -
Mel Beckman -
Miles Fidelman -
Tom Beecher