[HacktionLab] New project: Drogulous = Distributed data store

[sam at bristolwireless.net]

I spotted this on Twitter

It seems like a distributed data/ document store.

Might be of interest to someone

https://github.com/ntoll/drogulus

https://github.com/ntoll/drogulus/blob/master/docs/why.rst

 From website:

Why is there a Drogulus?
The Internet is a Mess
The World-Wide Web has become a ghetto of walled gardens built upon  
years of technological compromise. DNS (used to link domain names with  
their host computer) is beholden to the whims of governments and  
companies without recourse to due process. More worryingly still, our  
data is analyzed by companies, sold via targeted advertising or handed  
over to governments without our consent.

Problem #1: Users are no longer in control of their digital assets.

In order to publish anything on the web most users need third party  
services (web sites) to curate data on their behalf. How this data is  
organized is usually not decided by the user whose data it is but by  
the service provider. Furthermore, how this data is stored and made  
available is often done in such a way that makes it difficult to  
change service provider. As if that wasn't enough, each service  
requires its own set of credentials to identify the user - making it  
hard to tell if the provenance of data on one service is the same as  
data on yet another. Baroque technological solutions have been  
proposed to solve the problem of multiple identities on different  
services but these are merely a manifestation of problem #2 (see below).

Problem #2: hackers (used in the positive sense of the word) are  
obstructed by incumbent technology from tackling problems with  
elegant, useful and joyful solutions.

The beautifuly simple hypertext system originally envisioned by Tim  
Berners-Lee has grown into a monster. It's a plethora of complex  
technologies specified by committee that run on quirky browsers which  
never behave consistently. The ubiquity of the web also means it has  
assumed the status of de-facto platform for solutions thoughtlessly  
implemented in a sub-optimal way in order to cope with the limitations  
of web based technology. Furthermore, the resilience of the web's  
decentralized nature has been undermined: large parts of the web go  
dark when certain hosting providers break down or if popular websites  
fall over.

Problem #3: At a fundamental level the web isn't openly writable or  
configurable.

Creating, editing or organising content is not part of the web itself,  
but implemented at a higher level of abstraction (causing problem #1)  
in a way that abuses and complicates the original simple hypertext  
system (see problem #2). This technical situation has profound  
political and ethical implications concerning control, privacy and  
participation. Such potential disempowerment extends to DNS - a single  
point of control over linking domains to computers. As a result,  
naming places on the Internet requires permission and a single use name.

Drogulus is not a Solution
Rather, it is a utopian alternative undertaken in the spirit of asking  
"what's the worst that could happen?":

Drogulus is a web of cooperating, decentralized nodes that federate  
data in a global key/value store (a distributed hash-table). Users who  
store data in Drogulus have no idea of the physical location of the  
machines holding their data. Because of this there are no walled  
gardens, there is only the Drogulus.

Every Drogulus node contains a small yet powerful version of a LISP  
like programming language used for searching and processing the data  
stored within the Drogulus. In fact, in its raw form, data is stored  
as S-expressions.

Drogulus does not depend on DNS. Under the hood, Drogulus nodes are  
only referenced by IP address and port number. Data is replicated  
around Drogulus should nodes be taken offline by nefarious or  
accidental reasons so content remains intact and available.

The identity of users and access to data is based upon public key  
cryptography. At the lowest level data is protected by encryption and  
signing. Keys in Drogulus's distributed hash-table are partly derived  
from the public key of the user whose data is stored there. Data to be  
stored against a key is appropriately signed to ensure that nodes can  
check the provenance of the key/value being stored.

In a global sense, the user is their public/private key pair and is  
the only form of identity they need.

The network of nodes is ad hoc in nature and can grow / shrink with  
minimum risk of data loss.

The implementation details of the distributed nature of Drogulus are  
hidden from the end user.

All interactions are asynchronous.

Motivation
Autonomy ~ literally, "autos" (self) "homos" (rule or law) is a  
favorite word of mine.

For me, when someone or something is autonomous it is self-directing,  
free to act of its own accord and lacking imposition or direct control  
from external parties. It also suggests intelligence and awareness  
enough to be able to enjoy and make use of such freedom. Furthermore,  
such intelligence entails ethical and political considerations on the  
part of the someone or something. (I'm using the term "ethics" to mean  
how an individual makes moral choices and "politics" to mean how  
individuals organize themselves within groups).

Autonomy is also the opposite of terms describing such undesirable  
states as tyranny, slavery, ignorance and apathy.

My definition contains two different states relating to freedom:

Freedom to self-determination, and
Freedom from imposition or coercion.
These are Isiah Berlin's famous "Two Concepts of Liberty" (Berlin uses  
the words "freedom" and "liberty" interchangeably). He calls them  
positive and negative liberty and introduces them by relating them to  
a question:

"...the negative sense, is involved in the answer to the question  
"What is the area within which the subject - a person or a group of  
persons - is or should be left to do or be what he is able to do or  
be, without interference by other persons?" The second, ...the  
positive sense, is involved in the answer to the question "What, or  
who, is the source of control or interference that can determine  
someone to do, or be, this rather than that?"
Put simply, negative liberty is freedom from coercion or interference  
and positive liberty is freedom to act in a particular way.

Berlin qualifies this by saying that coercion implies deliberate  
interference from other persons when one could act otherwise and that  
the capacity to do or act in a particular way does not count as a lack  
of ones political liberty. As Berlin puts it, "If I say I am unable to  
jump more than ten feet in the air ... it would be eccentric to say  
that I am to that degree enslaved or coerced. You lack political  
liberty or freedom only if you are prevented from attaining the goal  
by human beings."

Berlin explains, "I wish to be the instrument of my own, not of other  
men's acts of will. I wish to be a subject, not an object; to be moved  
by reasons, by conscious purposes, which are my own, not by causes  
which affect me, as it were, from outside. I wish to be somebody, not  
nobody; a doer - deciding, not by external nature or by other men as  
if I were a thing, or an animal, or a slave incapable of playing a  
human role, that is, of conceiving goals and policies of my own and  
realizing them."

But are these definitions of freedom/liberty the same as autonomy?

No.

What makes autonomy different is a will to act. Freedom/liberty is a  
necessary condition for autonomy but not the only condition. One might  
have freedom to do "this" or "that" but, due to habit, laziness,  
apathy or some other reason, may simply not do "this" or "that".

In some sense, autonomy requires reflection and then a conscious  
decision to act upon one's freedom (positive liberty). However, it's  
important to acknowledge this doesn't imply rationality, good  
behaviour or a good outcome. There are further considerations beyond  
autonomy: the ethical and political implications of exercising autonomy.

So we get to the nub of the essential matter in hand: I believe that  
autonomy is a desirable state to aspire to and to encourage. People  
should have the freedom, encouragement and means to act autonomously.  
Furthermore, without such freedom to act we are machines devoid of  
ethical or political responsibility.

What has this got to do with software?

Software is Ethics and Politics
So much of our world is (and will be even more) controlled by  
computers and the software running on them. Whoever controls the  
computers controls how things work which in turn controls what people  
are able to do and how they are able do it. This relates directly to  
the freedoms described above. Unless it is possible to audit, change  
and improve the source code of software then we lose both freedoms: we  
have no way to become free from the coercion and limitations of  
software and we have no way to meld the software to our needs. As Doug  
Rushkoff exclaimed, "Program or be Programmed".

This is the same position taken by free software advocates such as the  
Free Software Foundation (FSF) (where free is meant in the context of  
freedom not gratis).

Yet there are further considerations:

By writing software to be used in such and such a way the designers  
and developers are expressing an opinion about how the world should  
be. Often the decisions concerning how software should work do not  
have an ethical or political dimension yet the end result does insofar  
as it causes users to behave and interact in certain ways that cannot  
be changed by those participating.

Drogulus is an exercise in personal autonomy. I choose to implement  
Drogulus in a way that reflects my emphasis on autonomy with clear  
philosophical reasons for certain technological and implementation  
details.