
Richard Stallman on Data Autonomy [video] - DoubleMalt
https://cloudfleet.io/blog/richard-stallman-on-data-autonomy.html
======
autoreleasepool
If BTsync ever goes open source or SyncThing ever achieves the quality and
functionality of BTSync, then achieving autonomy over our data will be easy.

I use BitTorrent Sync with my FreeNas box. It's absolutely amazing. I am able
to completely subvert the cloud and have all my data synced across devices.
The mobile app is a user-friendly delight. I was able to share 15 GBs of
vacation videos with 10 of my non-techie friends by sending them a read only
key to a shared folder. All of them got it right away with no technical
questions or issues.

Most importantly, I have all my photos and videos synced as I take them. This
means I don't lose precious photos from a trip if my phone accidentally falls
in the ocean. My phone, laptop, NAS, iPad, all have my photos backed up
providing good data redundancy. No cloud services involved, no risk accidental
publishing something private, no risk of an account hack, and no expensive
data storage plans.

The only problem is I have to trust BitTorrent's proprietary software to do
the heavy lifting for me. This is why I want the SyncThing project to catch
up.

~~~
bcrack
In what ways do you find SyncThing lacking when compared to BTSync? I started
using it for work (cautiously) a couple of moths ago and have found it to be
very similar (with respect to stability and ease of use) with BTSync, if not
superior. Note though that I haven't used BTSync since its first days.

~~~
artlogic
My guess is this:

> I was able to share 15 GBs of vacation videos with 10 of my non-techie
> friends by sending them a read only key to a shared folder. All of them got
> it right away with no technical questions or issues.

I appreciate SyncThing's security first stance, but it would be incredibly
helpful if it was a bit easier to share specific synced things with non-
techies.

~~~
Liru
This is the one thing that I was looking for in an alternative to Sync. It
made me sad that the main alternative to it didn't have this.

------
joesmo
Trust is indeed a huge issue that seems to be misunderstood and misapplied in
the software community. Stallman's views on trust may seem radical, but he's
pretty much right. Over and over I see the things he warns about come true and
I trust companies and other entities less and less. It's kind of disheartening
to see the huge potential of cloud infrastructure, amongst other technologies,
going to waste.

~~~
such_a_casual
His views only seem radical because of the way he presents them. Easily his
biggest mistake is naming his movement Free Software instead of something like
Software Liberties or Software Rights, and then refusing to change the name at
any point after the realization of this error. Then he says things like,
"They're trying to put a cloud inside your head." Which is just laughable.
Most of the time he's speaking very generally without citing specific facts to
back up his arguments (In the video he mentions that software is malicious,
why not mention one of them so everyone knows what he means by that). Which
causes anyone who doesn't know what he's talking about to write him off, and
the people who do know what he's talking about don't need to hear what he has
to say.

In a real debate about these topics, people usually hide behind capitalist
ideals to explain the immoral use of software. As opposed to trying to argue
that immoral use doesn't exist, or isn't prevelent.

~~~
irq-1
Here are two of Stallmans' writings addressing "Free" and "Cloud".

> Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software

> When we call software “free,” we mean that it respects the users' essential
> freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute
> copies with or without changes. This is a matter of freedom, not price, so
> think of “free speech,” not “free beer.”

[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-
point....](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html)

> Who does that server really serve?

> On the Internet, proprietary software isn't the only way to lose your
> freedom. Service as a Software Substitute, or SaaSS, is another way to give
> someone else power over your computing.

[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-
really-s...](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-
serve.en.html)

~~~
such_a_casual
What do any of those things have to do with my thesis? Can you restate the
main point of my argument?

------
dajbelshaw
It was my first time meeting Stallman at the Indie Tech Summit (where I also
met the CloudFleet guys). He's a little eccentric, but he's one of the reasons
I'm now on a Linux machine instead of a Mac!

~~~
nextos
I hope Stallman focusses on mobile now. Desktop, laptop & server are pretty
satisfying free software platforms.

But mobile is incredibly dissatisfying, and it's quickly getting a decent
share of users.

Incidentally, FSF is running a vision survey to establish strategic goals:

[https://my.fsf.org/civicrm/profile/create?gid=403&reset=1](https://my.fsf.org/civicrm/profile/create?gid=403&reset=1)

~~~
pmoriarty
Another frontier that the Free Software community should set their sights on
is virtual reality. The potential impact of VR is enormous, and one of the
leading VR development and content creation tools (Unreal Engine) recently
open-sourced thier product (though I'm not sure if it was done with an FSF
compatible license). Unity, the real giant in the VR arena, and Oculus' own
code are closed, if I'm not mistaken. I'm not sure how open Oculus'
competitors are (HTC Vive, Playstation Morpheus, and Microsoft's Hololens),
but I wouldn't be surprised if they're all closed. Making a difference in the
openness of the ecosystem at this relatively early stage in its development
could make a big difference.

~~~
DonHopkins
High Fidelity [1] [2] [3] is an interesting open source [4] VR platform,
developed by Second Life pioneer Philip Rosedale [5].

[1] [https://www.highfidelity.io/](https://www.highfidelity.io/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Fidelity_Inc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Fidelity_Inc)

[3] [http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/28/virtual-world-pioneer-
phil...](http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/28/virtual-world-pioneer-philip-
rosedale-shows-off-virtual-toy-room-in-high-fidelity/)

[4] [https://github.com/highfidelity](https://github.com/highfidelity)

[5]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Rosedale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Rosedale)

~~~
yarrel
I can build it on Debian 64 bit but it always crashes. Otherwise I'd be using
it already.

------
brennannovak
Really cool project! As CloudFleet was one of the first backers of Mailpile
(disclaimer, I co-founded it), I've always loved their concept and am stoked
it's coming to light :)

~~~
metakermit
Yeah, for the HN people interested in CloudFleet, I recommend you visit our
technology overview at
[http://cloudfleet.readthedocs.org/en/latest/doc/technology/t...](http://cloudfleet.readthedocs.org/en/latest/doc/technology/technology.html)

~~~
mark_l_watson
Thanks for posting the link. I might try setting up Blimp on my Pi 2.

------
baldfat
Anyone find it funny that the video is on a non-Stallman CC-ND License?

> Q6: Can you comment on the Creative Commons licence?

Richard Stallman: The thing is, it's meaningless to talk about Creative
Commons licence. The bad thing about Creative Commons is that it has produced
a broad series of licences that have nothing in common. In fact, if you look
at these licences and determine what is the freedom that is common to all
these licences, the answer is: nothing.

EDIT: Reference [https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/transcripts/rms-
fs-2006-03-09....](https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/transcripts/rms-
fs-2006-03-09.en.html#q6)

~~~
metakermit
Actually, Stallman himself asked us to mark the video under that license (he
proof-read the post).

~~~
baldfat
Really????? Well that is pleasantly surprising.

------
shmerl
Yep. Add to that all kind of attempts to erode the ownership of digital goods
by all kind of stores which pretend they sell you something, while really they
only rent it (for no good reason). DRM and its kin come along with that.
Support DRM-free stores and boycott DRMed ones to vote with your wallet.

------
bl4ckdu5t
Stallman just has a way of putting things that makes you feel doing otherwise
is wrong. I never thought of data autonomy this way and I've been fine with
using popular cloud services till now

~~~
kordless
Stallman does a good job of calling out cognitive dissonance, as do most
individuals with wisdom.

The question is why are you and others "fine" with running your services on
someone else's systems? I think the answer lies in what Stallman said about
keeping your software and data "under your control". If someone has control of
the services you use, or the data you store in those services, there exists a
clear manner in which revenue can be generated, the product improved and their
ability to run it better than you increased to the point they can market it as
the only way to do it. In a way, the public cloud exists because people don't
want to spend (or have) the time to understand how to run the services in a
reliable way themselves, on their own equipment, in their own domain.

The argument becomes exactly what you hear everyone from software interns to
VC parrot: I trust Amazon to run my servers better than I can.

By taking a bit of trust from a bank account, and giving it to someone else,
users are able to "put off" having to understand how services and systems
operate. They are, in a way, willing to ignore the fact the service and data
is outside their control in some use cases that actually matter. This is what
Stallman meant when he said "put a cloud in your mind".

That "cloud" is actually cognitive dissonance. Literally believing your data
is safer on someone else's servers because you could never run it better than
they could, while at the same time being totally OK with not having any
control over where it is stored or who has access to it.

If cost (and the time associated with it) were no objection, where would you
choose to run your services and store your data? If you had a choice between
running it at my house and running it at your house, which would you chose?

~~~
Frondo
I'm fine with relying on other people because I do it for every other part of
life already. I don't grow my own food, I don't produce my own medical
supplies, I don't build my own wifi devices and I don't pave my own roads. No
one engaged in modern western-civilization does; we all rely on everyone
around us all the time to live and do things.

Cloud backup services, VPSes, photo-hosting sites, Twitter, whatever, they're
the exact same thing. If something about these services isn't fair or just,
the answer is to find an alternative, inform our friends and neighbors, work
to change laws, etc., whatever, not just try and do it all ourselves in some
pointless attempt at individualism.

If cost and time were no object, I'd pay someone else to manage every single
bit of my infrastructure, and task them with the responsibility for making
sure it kept working. I wouldn't ask how, it'd be their job, the thing I'm
paying them for.

(If I had any knowing of the details, I probably wouldn't want them to build a
server and buy colo space, though, because of the resource consumption that
would imply. All that electricity for redundant server hardware to endure disk
crashes and so on? What a waste!)

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
You are essentially completely strawmaning the argument ... or, more likely,
not understanding anything at all.

Nobody suggests that we should give of division of labor. Got that? That's
just one big fat straw man that you made up. People (like RMS) simply analyse
what kind of power structure results from how specifically the division of
labor currently works/where it currently seems to be headed. And then he
points out where those power structures might not be in your interest, so you
might want to do something about it.

So, sure, you don't grow your own food. Nobody suggests you should. People
just suggest that maybe it's not in your interest to sign a contract that
prevents you from buying food from anyone but Foodle Inc., even if they
promise you the easiest food on planet earth. Maybe with one option out that
has "migration costs" of 10000 USD attached to it. Or that it might not be in
our interest to have any entity know everything about us, because that makes
them a very powerful entity, with huge potential for abuse of power. Because
there is a difference between your doctor knowing very private things about
you and one company having a database of all of those private details of all
citizens.

Also, you might not have noticed, but someone is trying to inform you that
something isn't fair and just. But it seems like you aren't listening. And
what people are also pointing out is that finding an alternative is not really
an option if you are locked into a service affected by network effects.

------
crististm
Do you have an agenda or you just can't think on your own?

By your own description you should up your game a little before writing off
some argument as "laughable".

~~~
dang
Personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News. We ban accounts that do this,
so please don't do this.

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10919602](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10919602)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
crististm
When the only criticism to "a cloud inside your head" is "laughable" I can't
help to think it comes either from malice or ignorance. A real argument should
carry more weight. (And I realize this goes both ways).

~~~
dang
I know, but the bias to think that it's malice or ignorance is much stronger
than it ought to be, so if we don't all consciously practice the benefit of
the doubt, things are guaranteed to get acrimonious.

------
informatix
Nice

------
hsnewman
Couldn't have said it better and more clearly myself!

------
andygmb
In the video stallman states that nonfree software is in the control of the
developer who owns it, which is true, but isnt a developer of free software
equally in control of their software? I dont look into the source of every
program on my OS, even though if i was to use 100% free software, I could.
This means I am equally depending on the developer of the free software not to
be malicious as I am the nonfree software.

~~~
n4r9
At least with free software there is the hope that malicious code will get
picked up on by _someone_ with an interest in reading the source, who would
then make that functionality known to others.

~~~
krapp
To be fair, that hope exists with proprietary software as well, it's just that
the end user is excluded from the set of eyes watching the code.

------
nbadg
I'm sorry, but this is profoundly naive. If the name "Richard Stallman"
weren't attached to it, you wouldn't have watched this video.

The world doesn't have time for everyone to deploy their own server. I mean,
honestly, ask _yourself_ if _you_ even have time to do this, or if it's just
yet another project that's going to get piled on top of the Raspberry Pi and
Beaglebone Black you have sitting in your projects box. Plus, everyone
operating their own server is an indescribably large security catastrophe
waiting to happen. IoT is a perfect example of this. Those exact same massive
companies opaquely hosting your data struggle with security issues on a daily
basis and even they can't always get it right.

 _The answer to data autonomy is end-to-end encryption._ Full stop. We need a
protocol that gives exact, one-to-any (one-to-none, one-to-one, one-to-many)
control over sharing. That can be enforced cryptographically. It would be nice
if that same protocol also had a consensus algorithm for data deletion, so we
could avoid this whole "right to be forgotten" vs "free speech" debate.

There is at least one example of such a protocol. I know, because I'm the one
developing it [1], and I've been incredibly frustrated at how difficult it's
been to build awareness, because my name isn't, for example, Richard Stallman.

[1a] [https://github.com/Muterra/doc-muse](https://github.com/Muterra/doc-
muse)

[1b]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3wFU4VIhww](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3wFU4VIhww)

[1c] [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ethyr-modern-encrypted-
em...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ethyr-modern-encrypted-email)

~~~
castratikron
It doesn't sound like he's advocating that everyone run their own server. He
said that if you require your data be available all the time, then you should
run your own server; otherwise, you should keep your data on your computer.

That being said, I don't see a problem storing data on someone else's computer
as long as that data is encrypted and I alone have the ability to decrypt it.
Trusting someone to encrypt your data for you when you give them your data is
essentially the same thing as giving them access to the unencrypted data.

~~~
zekevermillion
Yes, I wonder if RMS has any objection to clouds where the user data is
encrypted end-to-end, like with Tahoe-LAFS. Does that count as running your
own server if you have client-side encrypted data through Tahoe backed up on
Amazon servers? Or is there too much info leaked, or some other way that
Amazon could engage in hostile behavior with respect to data it cannot read?

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
If there is no risk of surveillance or lock-in, he'd probably be ok?

After all, "cloud" is a pretty ill-defined term. He certainly doesn't object
to things because someone calls them "cloud-something", but because of the
power structure they entail--which happens to include stuff such as
surveillance and lock-in with a lot of the stuff that's currently being sold
as "cloud services".

