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Top-level
 Now okay remember when I said "this sentence is gonna be important" You've forgotten it already? Okay fine I'm gonna quote it again > Operating some of these components might require collective (not individual) resources. Okay don't forget it this time! Don't forget it! 146 comments
> Organizations and projects like the Internet Archive, libera.chat, jabber.ccc.de, Signal, Let's Encrypt, Wikipedia [...], the Debian package archives, and others all demonstrate that non-profit orgs have the capacity to run larger services. Wait a minute hold on > Many of these are running centralized systems, but they could be participating in decentralized networks as well. no wait but wait back up hold on what was that list again Ok, XMPP and IRC are mostly ephemeral text and I love them, but let's be honest, they're pretty niche and on the decline I've just... wait a minute we've got to look at some of the org choices here What are the annual budgets of these FOSS service-hosting orgs? - Wikimedia: $178 million/year This is public information, you can look this up! Read their 990s. This is all to say, this is not your neighborhood block getting together to pitch in a few bucks to help out their FOSS friends These are great orgs and compared to large for-profits, these orgs are efficient and use their money well But these are SIZABLE hosting costs, and NOT easy to fundraise I say this, by the way, as an Executive Director of a FOSS nonprofit with a much smaller budget and also oh god I hate fundraising I promised myself I would never do a fundraising job again why am I doing this Did I mention we're doing a fundraiser? https://spritely.institute/donate/ Just sayin' ;_; People worry about wasteful funding, and right now FOSS organizations are losing many of the funding sources they have. Project 2025 specifically targeted taking the incredibly small amount of money that FOSS orgs get from governments Fundraising is the worst and it's so hard to fund anything My friend @n8fr8 of the Guardian Project likes to point at Signal's budget and say "yeah that looks big, but you know how much the government spends on each fighter jet?" and it's some unimaginably large number, like *hundreds* of millions of dollars per jet Signal is the cost of a jet wing Anyway we should give Signal the jet wing money Can someone get @spritely some of the jet wing money? Anyway you'd think if you were upset about the government "taking your tax money" you'd at least want to get something out of it and FOSS helps everyone so this is so frustrating So that's all to say that I think the choice of these orgs is pretty interesting because when you say "oh a bunch of FOSS nonprofits host community infrastructure" we're not talking social.coop costs with a bunch of these we're talking jet wing money It's really hard to get that jet wing money Anyway I'll stop talking about the jet wing money I promise jet wing money jet wing money jet wing money Please give FOSS nonprofits jet wing money But anyway THE POINT IS what kinda scale are we thinking about? What's your frame of reference? Fediverse co-op? Or Signal? But speaking of running FOSS nonprofits I now have an EXCITING MEETING about administrative duties of running my FOSS nonprofit So, it is time for a... MEETING BREAK (like, an hour) Followed by a tea break. (like, 10 minutes) ==== MEETING AND TEA BREAK HERE ==== Okay, I'm back from my meeting. I also have tea. We're about to get to the first REALLY substantial part, which is terminology. Is it fair to call Bluesky "decentralized" or "federated"? Both @bnewbold and I provided definitions and we are going to COMPARE and ANALYZE Before we go any further I am just gonna say, I miss hiding the easter eggs, but I don't think I can do that again If you know anything about my projects you know that I love goblins. Have for a long time. When we launched MediaGoblin I would get people saying "nobody will ever like goblins" WELL Now we live in an era of "Goblincore" and people self-describing as Goblins I am pleased. And I am pleased to be into Goblins before they were cool. The Goblin theme continues at Spritely as you may know But if you've read this far, let me know that you found Secret Goblin #1 😈 So, is Bluesky decentralized? Is it federated? In my previous blogpost, I concluded that Bluesky was not either. @bnewbold conceded that maybe Bluesky does not meet *my* definitions, but provides some alternative definitions, which maybe it does meet Were my definitions too strong or unfair? @bnewbold declares he will "choose his own fighter" and selects Mark Nottingham's independent IETF submission, RFC 9518: Centralization, Decentralization, and Internet Standards It's an interesting document, and it turns out, has some interesting context Bryan cites Mark's definition of *centralization* (which I hadn't defined!): > [...] "centralization" is the state of affairs where a single entity or a small group of them can observe, capture, control, or extract rent from the operation or use of an Internet function exclusively. Good so far! However it's time to compare definitions of *decentralization*. First mine: > Decentralization is the result of a system that diffuses power throughout its structure, so that no node holds particular power at the center. I stand by this! Now here is Bryan's definition (more accurately Mark Nottingham's definition (more accurately, Paul Baran's definition)) of decentralization: > [Decentralization is when] "complete reliance upon a single point is not always required" (citing Baran, 1964) Uh, hm... this seems... pretty weak?! This definition of decentralization is so weak it may as well say "Users occasionally not rely on a central gatekeeper, as a treat" It's pretty weak, and yeah Bluesky qualifies, but that's... I'm gonna be honest that's an *incredibly* weak definition by comparison Let's look at the delta between my definition of decentralization and the one chosen by Bryan: In my previous blogpost I had expressed worry about moving the goalposts of "decentralization". That is *exactly* what's happening here, and what's being said is "if we weaken the definition dramatically, then Bluesky qualifies" This is, IMO, not a very compelling look I've gotta say Now you might notice this citation [Baran, 1964] and hey if you work on network things you might be thinking "Hey Christine, wait isn't this one of the seminal papers on networking which led to the internet?" GOOD QUESTION LET'S COME BACK TO THAT The context is CRITICAL. Back to that in a moment. Okay so "decentralization", maybe Bluesky qualifies if we use an unimaginably weaksauce definition that's so loose you don't even have to comply with it hardly at all? So okay now let's compare definitions of "federation". My definition: > [Federation] is a technical approach to communication architecture which achieves decentralization by many independent nodes cooperating and communicating to be a unified whole, with no node holding more power than the responsibility or communication of its parts. Bryan's definition (more accurately Mark Nottingham's definition): > [...] federation, i.e., designing a function in a way that uses independent instances that maintain connectivity and interoperability to provide a single cohesive service. Hm okay, well these don't look quite as far apart, right? So what's the delta? - The discussion of power dynamics, once again, is not present. Turns out this has a big effect. Re-read and compare. Under that last definition, even corporate but proprietary internal microservice architectures or devops platforms would qualify as federated! Maybe? But it's not federation in a *decentralization* context. (That last observation is thanks to @vv btw, good observation from a good gf) Bryan then acknowledges it's a comparatively low bar: > What about federation? I do think that atproto involves independent services collectively communicating to provide a cohesive and unified whole, which both definitions touch on, and meets Mark's low-bar definition. However, Bryan does concede the following: > Overall, I think federation isn't the best term for Bluesky to emphasize going forward, though I also don't think it was misleading or factually incorrect to use it to date. Well okay, actually that's quite the thing to concede, so massive props on that Bryan also in that same paragraph goes on to mention some very interesting history about Bluesky's earlier prototypes and how the design changed. Worth reading btw. But that's an aside, kinda. It seems that there might be more of a concession here that Bluesky isn't federated, so the bigger question really is whether or not it's decentralized. I mentioned that the definition is interesting in context and BOY is it interesting in context, oh gosh oh boy Hey remember earlier when I said this thing: > now here is Bryan's definition (more accurately Mark Nottingham's definition (more accurately, Paul Baran's definition)) of decentralization Did you notice all the parentheses? That's not JUST because I love lisp I mean I do love lisp But not only We need to understand Mark Nottingham's RFC and we need to understand Paul Baran's seminal 1964 paper both, within the contexts they were written, before we can pull this quote-of-a-quote out. So let's start with the RFC. If you hear "Respected standards technologist Mark Nottingham's independent IETF RFC 9518: Centralization, Decentralization, and Internet Standards", what do you think you'll find inside? I'll tell you what I'd expect Rah rah decentralization!! The internet was meant to be free!!! Well... You should read the RFC yourself, here it is: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9518/ Mark Nottingham is a respected, accomplished standards author. And with good reason. Most of his work history is representing standards for big corporate players. That's how most of it is these days, actually The surrounding context of the RFC is a debate within the IETF and elsewhere: gosh! this internet! it sure seems to have centralized a *lot*, is this really what we wanted to happen to it? This wasn't the original vision! Shouldn't standards orgs do something to fix it?! Well should they? Mark Nottingham's own words answer better than I do, and you should read the RFC. It's not quite one way or the other. It's kind of a "well decentralization is great and yeah centralization is bad but how realistic is decentralizing things anyway and when?" But Mark's own words handle it better From the RFC: > This document argues that, while decentralized technical standards may be necessary to avoid centralization of Internet functions, they are not sufficient to achieve that goal because centralization is often caused by non-technical factors outside the control of standards bodies. As a result, standards bodies should not fixate on preventing all forms of centralization; instead, they should take steps to ensure that the specifications they produce enable decentralized operation. Let me emphasize a sentence there for you: > standards bodies should not fixate on preventing all forms of centralization That is the crux of this RFC It's an interesting read, it's very thoughtful, it analyzes from many angles. It's worth reading! But that is the broad sweep of RFC 9518. Mark examines centralization's effects from multiple angles. He has a *great* section called "Centralization Can Be Harmful". Covers the general ground. But it's immediately followed by "Centralization Can Be Helpful"! This is not a radical pro-decentralization RFC, is what I'm saying. Mark does address the radicals: > Many engineers who participate in Internet standards efforts have an inclination to prevent and counteract centralization because they see the Internet's history and architecture as incompatible with it. So true bestie, that's me you're describing While Mark analyzes both, his position is ultimately that of someone who does care about standards, but takes a kind of pragmatism that hey, look, decentralization, it's a great goal, but it's pretty hard, and maybe actually centralization is pretty helpful too, let's not go too wild here The history of the internet and the web *is* of big dream believers making big strides. The internet has been moving away from that, and it's getting harder to participate in standards without being a big corporate player. (Trust me, I know *all too well.*) So, *should* standards orgs do something? As a side note on the thread on the other place, Bluesky dropped one of my replies and literally refuses to pull it up for me even though it acknowledges it's there I have the worst time navigating replies on Bluesky, sometimes I send people threads and they say "I don't see the reply you're talking about there" Dear god for all the claims of ATProto and Bluesky having a big deal of no missing replies it's really frustrating dealing with replies on Bluesky's UX Anyway... Anyway Mark, tell us, what should standards orgs do? > Centralization and decentralization are increasingly being raised in technical standards discussions. Any claim needs to be critically evaluated. As discussed in Section 2, not all centralization is automatically harmful. Per Section 3, decentralization techniques do not automatically address all centralization harms and may bring their own risks. Note this framing: centralization is not necessarily harmful, decentralization may not address problems and may cause new ones. Rather than a rallying cry for decentralization, it's a call to preserve the increasing status quo: yes, it's worrying large corporations are centralizing the internet, but should *standards* really be worried about that? More from the RFC: > [...] approaches like requiring a "Centralization Considerations" section in documents, gatekeeping publication on a centralization review, or committing significant resources to searching for centralization in protocols are unlikely to improve the Internet. |
Gregory's Server
> This doesn't mean only well-funded for-profit corporations can participate! There are several examples in the fediverse of coop, club, and non-profit services with non-trivial budgets and infrastructure.
This is certainly true on the fediverse, I am hosted by a co-op. Thank you social.coop 💜
(@bnewbold is also on social.coop!)