[AktiviX-discuss] AktiviX:Community Server Architecture
m.reinsborough at Queens-Belfast.AC.UK
m.reinsborough at Queens-Belfast.AC.UK
Sun Aug 8 11:12:14 UTC 2004
Hi Alan- some comments below in reply to what you've written
On Aug 7 2004, Alan Dawson wrote:
>
> There is talk at the moment about getting a server together to provide
> infrastrucuture type services to the UK (and beyond) activist
> communities. In a simialr fashion to say.. riseup, sindominio, autisci...
>
yah i think this is a great idea. to my mind this is already what
burngreave is doing, yes? they've been very helpful here in Belfast for
setting up lists to support and democratise very active movements, like the
confrontation with racism. Perhaps there are limitations to burngreave, is
it a quango?
>
> but the discussion at the moment seems to be firstly machine and service
> orientated, rather than network centred. In these days of peer 2 peer
> filesharing, etc perhaps thats the multiconnected topology we need to be
> building for are own networks. Rather than investing our time and energy
> in an ( achievable ) solution that is dependant on single machines but
> with single points of failure and risk boundaries, we should be
> developing a highly scalable distributed system, similar to freenet ( but
> without its failings!) . Any how.. what do you think!?
>
ok, maybe. but i am concerned with the multiple machines approach. I worked
with local 23 computer tech collective of the iww san francisco in the mid
90s http://www.iww.org/unions/iu560/ see also http://www.tao.ca/ which has
had some association with this also and we were signing up techies during
the dot com bulge who had lots of expereince in the corporate sector where
capitalism paid big bucks to maximise their network functionality- and some
of them brought in this idea of differentiating functions of the network to
different machines when they came into volunteer on our network- but this
didn't work so well because the extra complexity meant we needed more
volunteer time and better qualified volunteers- instead of keeping one
machine up and running we suddenly needed to keep several machines up and
running. This works if you have an easy supply of labour- the capitalist
dot coms that people were learning their network strategy from had lots of
money to buy techs to keep fixing the system so that differentiating
network functions onto different machines worked for them. But for us we
relied on volunteer labour- which i think is good- lots of effort and
expertise went into setting up the server initially and then the sys admins
were volunteers who were learning skills and could if necessary get the
expertise of others elsewhere in the extended activist network- but mostly
if something went wrong with the system we rebooted the server and the
network came up all right. this worked best for us based on the amount of
resources we had- we couldn't pay full time sys admins and we couldnt ask
people to volunteer full time. didn't always work- the server eventually
got to be known as the "winchester mystery house" a not very affectionate
term if you're trying to fix a glitch. but multiple servers didn't work
well for us.
this is a different story from a different time. i'm not sure if it is
relevant to what you are suggesting, perhaps i'm talking nonsense at right
angles to the facts, but i would emphasize that an important component of
system design is the amount of resources in terms of tech skills and
volunteer time that one has- simple systems mean single point of fixing
(slightly different emphasis than single point of failure:). Simple systems
also mean the required experience to be a sys admin is lower hence the
learning curve starts lower- more volunteers can get on it- in the long
term more beginning volunteers means more development and better technical
expertise, a greater pool of experienced volunteers who go on to go on to
start new computer activist projects and support the existing ones.
this is not necessarily relevant to what you are suggesting but i think
it does makes sense for low resource starting-out .org projects-
particularly ones that want to generate more techie activist volunteers
than they use up.
michael w/red hair, Belfast
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