[wsfii-discuss] funding supernodes

Sat Oct 27 14:05:32 UTC 2007

I have to say we had some discussions lately 
about how to bring more access to a wider group 
of people. Being capitalists, of course, there is 
another point of view. If we set up a sort of NGO 
that worked with funding we provide based on a 
percentage of company profits, say 10 or even 
20%, then many projects that need "seeding" can 
actually happen and resource-limited projects can 
be made to be more robustly designed.

The problem would be that some folks do not like 
any "co mingling" of commerce and open networks, 
so much so that it would be an "unholy alliance" 
in their view. For instance, if we wanted to make 
a commercial box running BATMAN and use profits 
from the product to finance projects, we would be 
running afoul the license terms for use of BATMAN.

Likewise, if a logistics firm had an area that we 
deemed useful to link two networks, and they 
agreed to access their property, allow the 
installation of gear and provide the electrical 
hookups, asking in return that we install some 
cameras pointing on their property to the doors 
of the warehouses or at the gates of their yards, 
we likewise would be in conflict with Freifunk.

I understand the desire not to support the sorts 
of Big Brother eyes in public areas like London 
does, and believe that any area where cameras are 
so used should be marked as such, also in any 
sort of "private-open" space such as an office 
building, shopping mall or hotel, but when 
someone puts up a security fence around a large 
private property and wants to monitor what is 
happening on his side of the fence, that seems 
like a reasonable use. If they are willing to 
allow an open network access on that network or 
to colocate fully independent gear, why not do that?

At 23:59 24.10.2007, you wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>just seen this on the okfn list http://cofundos.org
>
>It's a system for developing open source projects by pledging funds
>and also providing a framework for negotiating the project spec etc.
>
>It reminded me a bit of the system that guifi are using on their home
>page http://guifi.net for raising money for supernodes and might be a
>good model for funding bits of network that are a) expensive and b)
>shared.
>
>In guifi there is a donation/pledge system where a budget for a
>project is set and those who rely on it pledge funds to pay for the
>node install or upgrade. When the budget is reached the work gets
>done. This is being used for boosting performance of 'super nodes'
>maintenance and provisioning of long links.
>
>Why is this necessary in a freenetwork?
>
>In freenetworks the idea is that an infrastructure can be
>peer-produced in the local or metropolitan area. This possibility is
>based on some sort of equality of investment in terms of hardware and
>maintenance - the network is made of roughly equivalent peers.
>
>In a mesh like freifunk, everyone pays roughly the same ammount for
>hardware ~ 100 Euros, and does maintenance themselves or as a group.
>The scale of each investment and commitment is within what individuals
>and small groups can manage and afford.
>
>The relativley similar physical environment of the city means that
>most people don't need links that are very different from each
>other. In this way peoples contributions to the network are more or
>less the same from an economic/time standpoint.
>
>In a rural setting like guifi or djurslandsnet, links vary more, some
>are longer and some are shorter, and thus the cost of some nodes is
>greater than others. Also some nodes have better geographical
>locations than others, for instance being on top of hills with line of
>sight to a number of villages.
>
>One of the themes that emerged at guifi was this distinction between
>super nodes and normal nodes that showed up in the open hardware
>discussions. In practice there are therefore some nodes or links which
>must carry more traffic, be higher specced, and thus cost more to
>deploy.
>
>Maybe something like this could be the beginnings of a system for
>loose freenetwork communities to fund the longer links between
>freenetwork islands?
>
>cheers
>
>/julian
>
>
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>wsfii-discuss mailing list
>wsfii-discuss at lists.okfn.org
>http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/wsfii-discuss

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