Dear all (mainly FSFE team),
First wish you all a new year and appreciate your solid work.
My email may look a bit annoying but please think it as a request (not a native english person).
Over the holidays I (being the crazy family geek) speaks about adblock (µblock origin) and many in family are bored but a bit thinking it is a good idea. With many smartphone + TVs - I sent (whatsapp) links to these people but realized soon everyone ignore this as running pi-hole is too much work. No one wants to touch router if it f**** up.
After Googleing a bit I found there are few pi-hole open to everyone to use. https://pi-dns.com https://public-pihole.com/
I am not an expert in network (actually a zoologist) things but I was wondering why not FSFE build a open pihole server?
Instead of trusting some people on the internet (there are warnings about using someones dns server???) FSFE is a trustable place.
This finally rounds up studies that say *people* do *care* about privacy but to enable this is too much effort. (other than buying Apple devices - at least people think)
Would it not be better FSFE does *real* practical help to world?
Every year here in our chapter we distribute flyers but many go to bin. Why? Not easy to do it? Want to avoid google search but others are not good (enough)? Want to google docs - no easy docs in phone! Want to stop MS-office - forced by enterprise/job! Want to stop Gmaps but ...
Are there any legal reasons FSFE does not want to get into adblocking? Or is it money?
Educating public/law makers is good intension - but at the end of the day people need practical help. Or finally I found many end up buying Apple devices - assuming they automagically get privacy - despite using Gmaps, or Google search etc. How long can people be tracked (especially our friends) until law changes or helps. I feel worry because some smartTVs are traking with even mic.
*So people really want to do change but it is help are presented in a easy way. *
What about a simple VPN service or pihole type adblock. Every small thing will help the innocent citizen?
Sorry if my email was rude...
Wish you a good start for wonderful year.
Hi Veronica.
First off, I'm not part of the FSFE infrastructure team, so talk what I say with a grain of salt.
My guess would be, that the FSFE is simply too busy with keeping their existing infrastructure running, to setup yet another public service that needs maintenance.
Also, it is the goal of the FSFE to educate people about technology and the best way people learn is by doing. It is far better when people learn to use technology to protect themselves and their friends independently then if they'd just make use of some provider without understanding what's going on. In the end they'd end up having to trust yet another party (the FSFE in this case).
I suggest you join forces with some friends/your local hacker space to set up your own pihole instance. Sadly privacy means hard work but its worth it ;)
Happy Hacking Paul
On Wednesday 1. January 2020 13.15.21 V F wrote:
Over the holidays I (being the crazy family geek) speaks about adblock (µblock origin) and many in family are bored but a bit thinking it is a good idea. With many smartphone + TVs - I sent (whatsapp) links to these people but realized soon everyone ignore this as running pi-hole is too much work. No one wants to touch router if it f**** up.
After Googleing a bit I found there are few pi-hole open to everyone to use. https://pi-dns.com https://public-pihole.com/
I am not an expert in network (actually a zoologist) things but I was wondering why not FSFE build a open pihole server?
Instead of trusting some people on the internet (there are warnings about using someones dns server???) FSFE is a trustable place.
I can almost predict one answer you may get from people representing the FSFE in some way: it isn't the job of the FSFE to run services because that requires a different focus from the mission of the organisation. A related answer would undoubtedly be that the FSFE cannot get involved in everything.
Both of those answers are acceptable on the face of it, but they don't provide solutions to people looking for "actionable" things to do when trying to advance the FSFE's mission (to get more people to use and develop Free Software) or to address related concerns like the need for privacy, security, and so on.
It is therefore left for others to bridge the gap between advocacy and reality. Presumably, this involves individuals doing things that they believe in, with virtue being its own reward, or it involves companies trying to make a viable product that brings in enough revenue to pay its employees.
Unfortunately, individuals volunteering their time and effort do not tend to produce sustainable solutions, except in a few cases where there is the opportunity to apply technology to a potentially neglected area and for those solutions to require limited amounts of further development and maintenance. Those few cases amount to "easy wins" but tend to make people think that "scratching itches" is all that ever needs to happen to get everyone using Free Software.
Meanwhile, businesses developing or providing Free Software and "libre" services have to compete with proprietary software businesses with aggressive and/or predatory monetisation strategies. Where Free Software businesses might have an advantage is interoperability, but some people in the broader community still seem to think in terms of picking winners (which solution - singular, not plural - will replace Facebook, for instance).
So, hype gets directed at some project or other for a while, everyone thinks that the problem was solved, and then it turns out that the world has moved one. And all we are left with are a bunch of unmaintained, obsolete projects, with everyone using proprietary solutions instead.
This finally rounds up studies that say *people* do *care* about privacy but to enable this is too much effort. (other than buying Apple devices - at least people think)
Would it not be better FSFE does *real* practical help to world?
Every year here in our chapter we distribute flyers but many go to bin. Why? Not easy to do it? Want to avoid google search but others are not good (enough)? Want to google docs - no easy docs in phone! Want to stop MS-office - forced by enterprise/job! Want to stop Gmaps but ...
I have always maintained that you need viable solutions to exist before advocating Free Software adoption, at least where end-users are concerned. Otherwise, they are left to wonder what it is they can actually do. It is easy for people to make a shopping list of solutions, naming the "best" (or only) Free Software offering in each case, then claiming that Free Software has "got it covered".
Such attitudes are complacent and actually undermine Free Software adoption because the end-user might have a different opinion about the offerings, how usable they are, and so on. It also doesn't help that some of the people developing Free Software solutions seem to live in a bubble, telling each other how "awesome" their design skills are, and yet failing to deliver a coherent, accessible user experience.
Are there any legal reasons FSFE does not want to get into adblocking? Or is it money?
It is most likely due to the reasons I gave above, plus related ones. However, this should not mean that the FSFE should not facilitate the establishment of trustworthy service providers.
Educating public/law makers is good intension - but at the end of the day people need practical help. Or finally I found many end up buying Apple devices - assuming they automagically get privacy - despite using Gmaps, or Google search etc. How long can people be tracked (especially our friends) until law changes or helps. I feel worry because some smartTVs are traking with even mic.
*So people really want to do change but it is help are presented in a easy way. *
What about a simple VPN service or pihole type adblock. Every small thing will help the innocent citizen?
I think that the FSFE and related organisations have to step up and offer practical support for those people and companies operating in the advocacy/reality gap. This means, amongst other things, providing a venue for developing interoperability standards, connecting developers with businesses and businesses with revenue opportunities, and having a coherent, comprehensive strategy for how end-users should be able to enjoy a complete computing experience using entirely Free Software and "libre" services.
The last item is the most ambitious and strategic, and there will always be an advocacy/lobbying aspect to it as well, but it cannot come about by merely making positive noises, talking up the idea of Free Software, and waiting for "the market" to deliver the missing pieces all by itself.
Sorry if my email was rude...
Wish you a good start for wonderful year.
Don't worry about seeming rude: your message is pertinent and constructive. At this time every year, having spent time with relatives and having to do end- user support, there are a lot of rude things I could actually say about the disconnect between supposedly wonderful Free Software solutions and the way some of those solutions are experienced.
And I really think that organisations like the FSFE have to adapt to embrace a broader set of values so as not to become irrelevant.
Paul
Je mer, 2020-01-01 je 13:15 +0100, V F skribis:
After Googleing a bit I found there are few pi-hole open to everyone to use. https://pi-dns.com https://public-pihole.com/
I am not an expert in network (actually a zoologist) things but I was wondering why not FSFE build a open pihole server?
Instead of trusting some people on the internet (there are warnings about using someones dns server???) FSFE is a trustable place.
I like the idea, but I'm not sure the FSFE actually has the resources to maintain more tech resources than it currently does. The problem with setting up such a server is that it's a commitment into the future. You can't take it down after a few years, because it will break people's workflows. And if it turns out that the server becomes more popular than anticipated, then it's even more problematic. How do you maintain a popular server when most of the people working for the FSFE aren't server administrators?
On a grander scale, I think a better solution would be that relying on a server is not necessary. Imagine instead that a distribution might include a `spyware-dns-hosts` package that modifies `/etc/hosts` with the same kind of blacklist that pi-hole uses.
Or maybe browsers could ship with much stronger privacy protection. I believe that Firefox is flirting with the idea of blocking more ads by default, but I'm not extremely well-read on that topic.
Kindly, Carmen
On Tuesday 7. January 2020 15.17.12 Carmen Bianca Bakker wrote:
On a grander scale, I think a better solution would be that relying on a server is not necessary. Imagine instead that a distribution might include a `spyware-dns-hosts` package that modifies `/etc/hosts` with the same kind of blacklist that pi-hole uses.
I didn't address the alternatives to just delegating responsibility to services in my response, but it is certainly the case that localised solutions should also be in a position to be considered viable and usable. If they aren't then effort should be directed towards making them so.
I may have mentioned that I use a rather clumsy approach on a single-board computer than I also use as a "workstation", extracting host details from "excessive" Web sites and adding them to /etc/hosts. This could be improved substantially, and maybe I could learn from what the pi-hole project does, but it probably makes various Web sites usable for me on this fairly constained hardware already.
Having a curated blacklist does involve a certain amount of effort and collaboration, and it also brings certain responsibilities. Here, the FSFE would probably act as some kind of guarantor that various providers do things in acceptable ways, having clear policies and not just blocking stuff arbitrarily, for instance.
Or maybe browsers could ship with much stronger privacy protection. I believe that Firefox is flirting with the idea of blocking more ads by default, but I'm not extremely well-read on that topic.
The problem with the Web and its de-facto custodians is that various business models rely on pervasive advertising, with some of that advert money being ploughed back into Web platform development. Consequently, the attitude that "amazing" things can now be done using Web technologies facilitates people using those technologies to provide overcomplicated and surveillance-heavy Web "experiences".
Of course, the people developing Web technology are always able to persuade themselves that they are merely "enriching" the platform or "empowering" the users. Never mind that what should be relatively simple online transactions turn out to involve tens or hundreds of megabytes of traffic, multiple data centres, and maximum CPU, for which the power has to come from somewhere.
Returning to the specific topic, there have been initiatives like FreedomBox that seek to make systems - Debian, in that particular case - more appliance- like and requiring less end-user maintenance. However, FreedomBox seems to have taken a path where people do need to care about what it is doing, arguably following the same path as some other router-like distributions. Maybe pi-hole is more appliance-like, less prone to failure, and less susceptible to burdening the user with maintenance by dressing it up as customisation.
But as I noted in my previous message, having a broad and coherent strategy means providing "actionable" solutions, and if a solution such as pi-hole isn't practical then organisations like the FSFE should be looking to facilitate improvements in order to strengthen and deliver that strategy. Saying "Free Software is great" and then "you're on your own" is not a credible strategy.
Paul
Agree a lot with PB and apologies in advance.
I suggest you join forces with some friends/your local hacker space to set up your own pihole instance. Sadly privacy means hard work but its worth it ;)
This is the reason why I asked if a non-profit regional or global organisation can do it -to avoid conflict of interest. And there are more people to take care of servers. Doing it in a locally mean - friends/people keep moving - changing life always means things are left to die. Of course, ideally, a company should do so that it lasts longer - but then profit motives come along and ruin any honesty/transparency.
My guess would be, that the FSFE is simply too busy with keeping their existing infrastructure running, to setup yet another public service that needs maintenance.
Also, it is the goal of the FSFE to educate people about technology and the best way people learn is by doing. It is far better when people learn to use technology to protect themselves and their friends independently then if they'd just make use of some provider without understanding what's going on. In the end they'd end up having to trust yet another party (the FSFE in this case).
Sure you can teach or bring awareness. But seriously: May be this *educate* strategy did not work (well - at least) May be this decade (or end of last decade) needs a rethink of strategy. As people change, new generation view consumption of information differently. Otherwise, don't you think the *same* old strategy will bite the dust? Even if you educate people they will use netflix or amazon. Thinking 2000s type is not viable anymore, at least I feel.
1. An artist/taxi driver/chef/biologist cannot install pi-hole, tried it. People are afraid/reluctant to muck with electronics. 2. Even in my local fsfe chapter none of the individuals have pi-hole (Reasons: Ahh.. sd-card failed, no micro-usb charger, sorry iPhone user blah..) 3. People that are vulnerable are the ones that need *easy/simple* help - not complicate their lives. 4. People have no time 5. Any change in peoples's behavior must be done as easy as possible 6. Take for example, fair trade (I mean the concept not trademark) - they do not say buy your 'wool' and DIY. Just establish something and bring it to customer in a quick way. May be you can charge a few EUR to use the DNS or whatever. 7. If some thing like FSFE absolve oneself from responsibility then I ask what or who would do these stuff?
Are there plans to reevaluate strategies/plans since FSFE founding in 2001? Can it be same forever?
But as I noted in my previous message, having a broad and coherent strategy means providing "actionable" solutions, and if a solution such as pi-hole isn't practical then organisations like the FSFE should be looking to facilitate improvements in order to strengthen and deliver that strategy.
100 % agree
Having 'actionable' solutions is paramount if one needs to provide it for 'end-user'. Honestly, the pages of 'print' material that every time I find our chapter distributes and later I find 'most' of them going to 'bin' in the corner of the street as the 'public' skims over the FOSS booklet and dumps it like a 'religious' pamphlet. Instead, build a virtual server may be more eco-friendly. Sorry.
Saying "Free Software is great" and then "you're on your own" is not a credible strategy.
This 'attitude from foss fans' especially makes one sound like a snob - absolutely counter productive (and people run to iOS/macOS). Please take some inspiration from F-Droid or newpipe or SmartYouTubeTV/nitter. Sure, newpipe promotes/uses proprietary services - but average human cannot be '100 % pure' living with webm. Of course code development of newpipe is done in github (purists get crazy again).
Apologies once again if this was rude. Again this is not pointed at FSFE or so. Overall I mean any overall FOSS type communities - us as a whole including myself (who is new to this world).
On Friday 10. January 2020 15.50.47 V F wrote:
Agree a lot with PB and apologies in advance.
No apologies necessary! :-)
I suggest you join forces with some friends/your local hacker space to set up your own pihole instance. Sadly privacy means hard work but its worth it ;)
This is the reason why I asked if a non-profit regional or global organisation can do it -to avoid conflict of interest. And there are more people to take care of servers. Doing it in a locally mean - friends/people keep moving - changing life always means things are left to die. Of course, ideally, a company should do so that it lasts longer - but then profit motives come along and ruin any honesty/transparency.
Although local Free Software advocacy and support groups are useful, I think that too much emphasis is placed on them. Back in the 1990s when "Linux" was a new thing, people would be curious about it and seek help from others in their area, particularly because meeting others with the installation disks was more efficient than waiting hours or days to download something. There was some basic sense of community in wanting to try out something that was almost an "underground" alternative to the mainstream, aided by people who knew Unix and were seizing the opportunity to install something Unix-like on their own hardware.
But running services and providing support in a scalable way is a lot to ask of a local group. There are hacker-/maker- spaces that merely try and offer facilities to people, and it is interesting to see how much money just disappears on infrastructure. I looked at the financial reports for one here in Oslo, and as one would expect in a city with expensive real estate and an economy tuned to inflating such costs, it was probably two-thirds to three- quarters of the membership revenues that were being spent on the lease!
Such things can be done more economically if there isn't a need for permanent facilities - that is, there isn't a load of equipment that needs to be stored somewhere, and if a physical space can be rented or borrowed periodically - but even if all we are talking about is a bunch of people and some virtual server accounts, there are significant personnel costs. To do such things properly, things really have to be done less informally, which means that a stable entity has to be created, money has to be involved, and so on.
Thinking about such issues, I have come to the conclusion that the FSFE and other organisations should promote and assist providers of services who genuinely participate in Free Software development without compromising the basic rights of their customers. It is most likely that such providers will only want paying customers, which might seem as if it excludes those who cannot afford to pay, but I think that people should be paying fair prices for other people's work. Indeed, living wages and decent working conditions should be a component in what Free Software organisations stand for.
With such a range of "ethical", but perhaps paid-for, providers available, if some people want access to a service and cannot afford to pay for it then some kind of sponsorship might be appropriate, and if the existing providers are all seen to be too expensive then the Free Software basis of the solutions should at least allow for people to try and do things themselves.
This might sound like the situation we have now, but what we currently lack is the community and structures in place to grow the provision of Free Software services and a shared interest in keeping such services strong. (Instead, behind the scenes, there have been people playing the zero-sum game, badmouthing their Free Software "competition", guarding their niches, and letting proprietary providers take most of the market share.)
[...]
Also, it is the goal of the FSFE to educate people about technology and the best way people learn is by doing. It is far better when people learn to use technology to protect themselves and their friends independently then if they'd just make use of some provider without understanding what's going on. In the end they'd end up having to trust yet another party (the FSFE in this case).
Sure you can teach or bring awareness. But seriously: May be this *educate* strategy did not work (well - at least) May be this decade (or end of last decade) needs a rethink of strategy. As people change, new generation view consumption of information differently. Otherwise, don't you think the *same* old strategy will bite the dust? Even if you educate people they will use netflix or amazon. Thinking 2000s type is not viable anymore, at least I feel.
People only have so many hours in their day. If I think about all the different things that I could be doing to make my own technological existence more sustainable and manageable, it is very easy to be overwhelmed by it all. Where does one even begin? And if I start with one topic, there are so many others that I cannot pursue, and so I have to hope that others will also see the benefit in pursuing them and have the time and inclination to do so.
- An artist/taxi driver/chef/biologist cannot install pi-hole, tried
it. People are afraid/reluctant to muck with electronics. 2. Even in my local fsfe chapter none of the individuals have pi-hole (Reasons: Ahh.. sd-card failed, no micro-usb charger, sorry iPhone user blah..) 3. People that are vulnerable are the ones that need *easy/simple* help - not complicate their lives. 4. People have no time 5. Any change in peoples's behavior must be done as easy as possible 6. Take for example, fair trade (I mean the concept not trademark) - they do not say buy your 'wool' and DIY. Just establish something and bring it to customer in a quick way. May be you can charge a few EUR to use the DNS or whatever. 7. If some thing like FSFE absolve oneself from responsibility then I ask what or who would do these stuff?
I agree with these observations. Initiatives like Fairtrade are pertinent because they let people feel as if they are achieving something. Of course, trust is also a factor, but we have to be sensible about what can realistically be achieved if we decide to not trust anybody to do anything.
It is interesting to consider the specific case of pi-hole appliances again for a moment. Presumably, many people already have appliances in their homes to give them Internet connectivity. Indeed, I recall that the FSFE pursued action to ensure that customers of Internet providers would have the freedom to choose their appliances. But even if people were to exercise such choice, there is the matter of how they might do so, and so we return to "actionable" solutions.
I may have mentioned FreedomBox before, or I may have intended to do so. This is an interesting case in itself, partly because it is likely to overlap with the functionality provided by pi-hole, and partly because it was envisaged as a remedy for people's reliance on proprietary social media platforms, offering alternative technologies. Such plug computer solutions were intended to facilitate some level of "unhosted" communication, permitting server-based solutions without deploying them in datacentres.
What seems to have happened with FreedomBox, from what I have heard from some, is that it has become something else that has to be administered, that its users have to care about what it is doing, that it becomes another distraction with "apps" and things to point at and click on. Unlike the router provided with an Internet service, which is plugged in and just does its job.
I think we are being let down with technology. It is either something that demands little of us but still worries us (because maybe our routers are insecure), or it is something that is designed to be shiny and attention seeking, wanting a significant but undeserved part of our lives. There is no glamour in designing things well that just work and keep out of the way.
Are there plans to reevaluate strategies/plans since FSFE founding in 2001? Can it be same forever?
I also ask the same question!
But as I noted in my previous message, having a broad and coherent strategy means providing "actionable" solutions, and if a solution such as pi-hole isn't practical then organisations like the FSFE should be looking to facilitate improvements in order to strengthen and deliver that strategy.
100 % agree
Having 'actionable' solutions is paramount if one needs to provide it for 'end-user'. Honestly, the pages of 'print' material that every time I find our chapter distributes and later I find 'most' of them going to 'bin' in the corner of the street as the 'public' skims over the FOSS booklet and dumps it like a 'religious' pamphlet. Instead, build a virtual server may be more eco-friendly. Sorry.
I appreciate this insight into the "reach" of advocacy material because, for the most part, what we tend to hear is that a great time was had by people handing out literature, but we don't hear too much from those people who took it away to read (or throw away).
Saying "Free Software is great" and then "you're on your own" is not a credible strategy.
This 'attitude from foss fans' especially makes one sound like a snob
- absolutely counter productive (and people run to iOS/macOS). Please
take some inspiration from F-Droid or newpipe or SmartYouTubeTV/nitter. Sure, newpipe promotes/uses proprietary services - but average human cannot be '100 % pure' living with webm. Of course code development of newpipe is done in github (purists get crazy again).
Several approaches are needed, and we have to accept that we live in an imperfect world and that sometimes things just need to get done. At the same time, we should not perpetuate the imperfections or injustices of the world, either. So, to take the above as some kind of example, we should encourage the use of free media formats, but we should also recognise that people may need to access content in other formats. We should work to move the world away from non-free formats, however.
This extends into other areas. We should insist on properly documented, genuinely open hardware so that we can support it completely with Free Software, instead of having to deploy opaque binaries from a vendor who might be incompetent in their software development and whose binaries might put us at risk in some way. Certainly, we should try and assist people whose hardware is not completely open, but we should not endorse or indulge vendors who don't want to change their ways but who want us to legitimise their products.
Apologies once again if this was rude. Again this is not pointed at FSFE or so. Overall I mean any overall FOSS type communities - us as a whole including myself (who is new to this world).
As I may have said, I think Free Software organisations have to take a stand on more than just Free Software adoption, because such adoption tends to have limited significance in isolation: usually, recognising the value of Free Software tends to happen when other motivations are operating. So, such organisations have to recognise motivations such as privacy, transparency, democracy, and so on.
Paul
Hi Veronica,
Am Freitag 10 Januar 2020 15:50:47 schrieb V F:
Of course, ideally, a company should do so that it lasts longer - but then profit motives come along and ruin any honesty/transparency.
any organisation has to be run economically in the sense that the incoming money must be enough to cover the costs. It's the same principal situation for profits and for non-profits.
A company can be kept honest in many ways, one is governmental checking by laws, directivies and public servants. Another possibility is scrutiny by the public or journalists.
As most people are not willing to let the state run everything and they also do not want to rely on volunteer work, we need more company- or non-profit-backed offerings with Free Software.
Sure you can teach or bring awareness.
Being able to decide which offering is better or worse, - for example towards personal privacy of data or public effect - is a necessary precondition.
One of FSFE's main efforts therefore goes into increasingly enable others to evaluate if a software solution is Free Software or not and how it will affect them or their group. In best tradition of "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity (Unmündigkeit)." [1]
Having 'actionable' solutions is paramount if one needs to provide it for 'end-user'.
There are already offerings that are better than others, and if you know how to decide between them, there is much which can be done right away.
An example https://posteo.de has won the German Test.de's test for privacy aware mail, contact and calender providers (together with mailbox.org). Their offering is 12 €/year and can replace less privacy-including offerings. (Both Posteo and Mailbox.org use a lot of Free Software, but their offering is of course not perfect.)
Using LineageOS on your Android Phone or (LineageOS-MicroG) is a way to get longer lasting security updates without a need to have a user-account with a big player. You can use DavX5 from the fdroid.org store and have a lot of Free Software and more independence this way.
Honestly, the pages of 'print' material that every time I find our chapter distributes and later I find 'most' of them going to 'bin' in the corner of the street
If you see this happen, please report back on the specific circumstances and what can be improved. Maybe it is not the right flyer for the occasion or a different approach towards people is useful. Many of our local groups are successful by using the FSFE internal channels to exchange experiences.
Chosing the fitting one from our our campaigns is helpful https://fsfe.org/campaigns/campaigns.en.html Currently a lot of people are interested in our public money, public code information.
Our PDFReaders campaign and the Free your Android flyers were also popular a few years before and more possibilities did arise as a result.
Instead, build a virtual server may be more eco-friendly.
If this would be clear cut case. We could do so with FSFE. And we've run services from FSFE a couple of times before. Often we were in the way of something better. So the idea is to increase the chances that something better comes up, make sure people recognise it so they will finance it sufficiently to enjoy a Free Software and privacy aware service for a long time.
Regards, Bernhard
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Answering_the_Question%3A_What_Is_Enlightenmen...