[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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