www/consensus faq.html

[hellekin]

CVSROOT:        /web/www
Module name:    www
Changes by:     hellekin <hellekin>     12/12/31 09:26:12

Modified files:
        consensus      : faq.html 

Log message:
        Make the FAQ fun and instructive

CVSWeb URLs:
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/consensus/faq.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.2&r2=1.3

Patches:
Index: faq.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/consensus/faq.html,v
retrieving revision 1.2
retrieving revision 1.3
diff -u -b -r1.2 -r1.3
--- faq.html    31 Dec 2012 08:11:03 -0000      1.2
+++ faq.html    31 Dec 2012 09:26:11 -0000      1.3
@@ -14,6 +14,110 @@
 facilitate coordination of free software social networking projects to
 encourage freedom, privacy, public space, and decentralization. </p>
 
+<h3>General</h3>
+
+<h4>What are you going to do, concretely?</h4>
+
+<p>Our intent is to bring people around the table, and figure out a
+common strategy to reach our common goal: user freedom, and
+empowerment through free software.</p>
+
+<p>We believe that the SWAT tests came with good intent, but were a
+bit too large a scope, and to specific. We want to propose simpler
+tests, that do not impose a pre-defined vision of the business logic
+of social networking software, but build on simple concepts, one at a
+time.</p>
+
+<p><strong>the starting point is "Hello, world."</strong>, or:
+<em>A</em> should send a message to <em>B</em> saying "Hello, world.".
+We leave to the coders the choice of the technology, and let them
+report what they used to achieve this basic inter-operability. In this
+first test, we're not interested in all the gory details of identity,
+objects, messaging, etc. One baby step at a time. The first step is to
+start working together.</p>
+
+<p>In other terms, we want to transition from a barely working
+federation, to a complete inter-operable federation, and from there
+transition to a fully peer-to-peer implementation. That is an
+omni-directional endeavor, and we need to reach a consensus for
+that.</p>
+
+<h4>Are you crazy?</h4>
+
+<blockquote>"You're never gonna survive, unless... You get a little
+crazy!"</blockquote>
+
+<h4>Where is the code?</h4>
+
+<p>Please have a look at our <a
+href="/consensus/stakeholders">Stakeholders</a> page.</p>
+
+<h4>Why do you recommend GPLv3+ and AGPLv3+?</h4>
+
+<p>We want to ensure that every stakeholder invests their energy
+knowing that everyone else is working for freedom. We don't
+<em>impose</em> the GPL on our partners. Some use <strong>MIT
+License</strong>, others the <strong>Apache2 License</strong>. But all
+do work for freedom.</p>
+
+<h3>Federation</h3>
+
+<h4>You're promoting federation: isn't it what Faceboogle want?</h4>
+
+<p>We're promoting federation as a transitory state toward true
+peer-to-peer social networking. Facebook is monitoring a
+<strong>billion</strong> users. They need to <a
+href="#funboogle">break free</a>.</p>
+
+<h4>You're promoting OStatus federation: isn't it broken? Why not use
+&lt;insert your favorite protocol here&gt;?<h4>
+
+<p>OStatus was a good start. Many prominent free social networking
+projects support it. New promising protocols are appearing, such as
+<strong>pump.io</strong>, <strong>tent.io</strong>, and new
+experiments are made, such as <strong>my-profile-project.org</strong>,
+and the <strong>Smallest Federated Wiki</strong>, etc.</p>
+
+<p>We hope they all will be willing to work together to define ways to
+inter-operate.</p>
+
+<h4>Isn't federation flawed? How can I trust a commodity server?</h4>
+
+<p>In that sense, yes. You can't trust a server controlled by a third
+party. That's why we're looking at peer-to-peer solutions in the long
+run, and promote user control of their data, and end-to-end, secure
+solutions.</p>
+
+<p>But not all use-cases require that amount of privacy. Federation
+makes a lot of sense for affinity groups, public contents, and local
+communities. <strong>We don't believe in
+one-size-fits-all</strong>.</p>
+
+<p>We're expecting to work with the <strong>Freedom Box
+Foundation</strong> to reach a critical mass of users so that
+"commodity servers" reach our homes at an affordable price. Obtaining
+a legal protection of our own data, for the sake of the constitutional
+privacy of our homes, is an integral part of the strategy.</p>
+
+<h3>Fun</h3>
+
+<h4 id="funboogle">What's the problem with Facebook?</h4>
+
+<p>Schrödinger's cat is alive, or dead: nobody knows until an observer
+actually <strong>opens</strong> the box. In any case, the cat is never
+<strong>free</strong>.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+  <p><em>Cousin Avi</em>: Open the cat.</p>
+  <p><em>Bullet Tooth Tony</em>: What do you <strong>mean</strong>
+  "open the cat"?</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<pre><code>
+cat | open
+Couldn't get a file descriptor referring to console
+</code></pre>
+
 <h3>Any Question?</h3>
 
 <p>Please <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/consensus";>send your 
questions to the mailing list</a>.</p>