Re: GNOME en P2P networks

[Santiago Roza <santiago roza thymbra com>]

> No big deal, but a useful tip.

and i didn't make a big deal out of it.  i just said we should stay
out of p2p networks other than bittorrent.



> In the kiosks you can buy porn and lots of non-free software magazines.
> Same with CDs, DVDs and the WWW itself. Do we want to be associated with
> this?

in the kiosks you can buy many things.  but in some p2p networks (like
emule/edonkey) it's 99% about pr0n or mp3 or divx or warez.



> If you go deeper into the "medium is the message" concept you would
> realise that the P2P networks are a medium that fits perfectly in our
> message.

bittorrent is, the others are not.  don't you think there's a reason
why many free software projects are using bittorrent, but none of them
is using emule or gnutella or kazaa/fasttrack?



> Your perception of the P2P networks seems to be biased. Be careful, you
> could be a victim of the cultural industries and the mass media
> manipulation, that insist in this 99% of illegality.

god.  no i'm not a victim of that manipulation, mainly because i don't
consume a lot of mainstream media, and even less when it's about
technology.  the level of ignorance and stupidity that doesn't even
let them spell names correctly makes me wanna throw up.

on the other hand, as a tech journalist myself i tend to be well
informed about these issues.  so i do know how p2p works, and i do
know the differences between emule and bittorrent and gnutella or
whatever.  and i've even written about it.

what i say (emule 99% illegal) is not based in what fox news is
telling me to think, but in my own research and direct experience. 
'cause we journalists are supposed to research and experiment, no
matter the fact that fox news seems to think we shouldn't  :)

go search a random term in emule/amule, and see if the most sourced
result is NOT warez/mp3/divx/etc.  go search a random free software
project in emule or gnutella, and see if the most popular result is an
md5-equivalent copy of what you'll find in the official website.



> Thanks to them I got lots
> of information when I wanted to know more about CSS, UML, MySQL, PHP,
> server administration (including PDFs and video tutorials).

yeah well most of that was probably illegal (scanned books and so
on)... not like i have a problem with that, but it's not the best
point you could use against my 99% illegal theory  :)



> P2P networks are full of free software and free culture, and we want to
> be associated with this.

no they're not, at least not many of them (i'd even say all of them
excepting bittorrent).  and not if we mean free as in freedom (they're
full of free stuff, but free as in
i'm-an-l33t-hax0r-who-finds-stuff-on-teh-intarweb-without-paying).



> In any case, I have no problem that non-free software users sharing
> today porn, warez, mp3, divx, etc, will do it in a future on the top of
> a GNOME desktop.

neither do i.  but i don't want joe sixpack and/or mainstream media
(well they're pretty much the same) associating us with that, or
thinking the gimp is as "free" as his hax0red photoshop.



> Your position in this debate exemplarises the will of centralisation I
> was commenting in Planet GNOME:

well i'm not against all decentralization, but i think it can only be
done when things are ready for that.  and imho, most p2p networks are
not (yet).



--
Santiago Roza
Departamento I+D - Thymbra
santiago roza thymbra com