Fwd: Re: [projectvrm] personal sharing device
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--- Begin forwarded message from Brian Behlendorf ---
From: Brian Behlendorf <br...@behlendorf.com>
To: Doc Searls <dse...@cyber.law.harvard.edu>
Cc: ProjectVRM list <proje...@eon.law.harvard.edu>
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2012 20:12:58 +0000
Subject: Re: [projectvrm] personal sharing device
On Tue, 11 Dec 2012, Doc Searls wrote:
> Here's the hard part. If it's *only* provided, it's not personal. I
> don't have a pants provider. I do have an apartment provider. I own the
> former. I rent the latter.
I love this list when it causes me to go Google something silly, like
"Clothing as a Service", and come up with things I'd never heard of:
http://www.trunkclub.com/
http://www.thredup.com/
http://mashable.com/2012/08/13/buying-baby-clothes-subscription-services/
Seems like the idea of a "pants provider" isn't too far out, and in line
with the sharing economy trend of late.
> We need to make clear that the personal cloud, and the personal cloud OS
> (I prefer just "personal OS") is as personal as pants. Or a car. The
> latter may be a better analogy, in the sense that we use the first
> person singular possessive pronoun when thinking about or referring our
> car, whether we own, lease or rent it. We're the party in control of it
> when we drive it. The space within it is under our control as well. It's
> private. It also doesn't always have a "provider" except when it's
> rented.
Yes, I think this helps clarify. It's the difference between Avis and a
car-sharing collective. What kind of future would we prefer - one where
most cars were rented from a small number of centrally-controlled rental
agencies, or one where cars were rented/borrowed from local-community
pools? The former may be more classically efficient, but the latter more
resilient. But what about a service that helps coordinate local-borrowing
ecosystems, or community currency systems? Are they also providers? If I
buy a coat on EBay, does that make them a provider of coats?
Perhaps there is a spectrum between "full ownership" and "unvested
renter", and roles for companies that might look/smell like "providers" at
different points on that spectrum. I take the truck I 100% own to the
same auto body shop once a year for a checkup and maintenance. I could
easily take it to another, forgoing the history I've developed with my
mechanic, but at least I have freedom of choice. If renting were cheaper
than ownership (as it was while I was half-living in DC and Geneva) then
I'd weigh that against the loss of freedom. It's that freedom to choose,
though, which I think we would want to protect when it comes to cars, and
want to see emerge when it comes to the cloud.
*
I like the "Transporter" kickstarter - especially the marketing, where
they've been able to take some subtle concepts and make them clear and
significant to end users, everything from "online but off-cloud" to "no
fees, ever". I wouldn't buy one, however, because for some sad reason it
only has space for one hard drive. All hard drives will fail at some
point, and a box you pitch as a safe place to store your files for the
long term (and a suitable alternative to the cloud when it comes to
redundancy), you need something with local reduncancy. They gave that up
and went for "cute", and while "cute" helps on kickstarter, "cute" is not
what this box needs to be.
They would have done much better, IMHO, to write their filesharing/backup
software as an app that would run on the Drobo, Synology, or other NAS
boxes, and let someone else do the hard low-margin hardware work. This is
the model that Plex pursues for their Plex Media Server - actually they
give their Media Server software away for free (in addition to being
installable on various NAS boxes (QNAP, ReadyNAS, Syn) it can be installed
on Windows or Mac systems) and then sell the clients (for iOS, Android,
Roku, Google TV, etc). Rather smart and I hope it works out for them,
it's a solid product set.
Which suggests there could be a role for a "Personal Cloud Provider", a
company that helps individuals set up sovereign personal clouds, and
just like my auto mechanic, they step in on a regular basis to give it a
bit of maintenance and upkeep. Maybe it's a recurring fee like my auto
insurance, maybe it's a one-time fee like the oil change I get. We'll
know it's a mature market when there's competition between providers, and
providers aren't locked to platforms any more than a given auto mechanic
is locked to Jeep.
I wonder if OpenStack would scale *down* to an individual home NAS; and if
it did, if we'd ever see clones of apps like Gmail or Gdocs that could run
on OpenStack instances small and large.
> The appeal of what we're talking about here is personal agency, liberty,
> autonomy.
>
> The FreedomBox has all that. But it's still just a box, which is why it
> has come up short in exciting ordinary people. The Transporter appeals
> because it seems to be fully personal, and in ways people can put to use
> immediately, doing stuff they care about, such as selectively sharing
> photos and movies.
And it has that cute wedge shape.
BTW, at the AspirationTech conference a few weeks back, someone had set up
a PirateBox, which I'd never heard of before:
http://wiki.daviddarts.com/PirateBox
http://maxcho.com/piratebox/
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/piratebox
It's an easy easy easy way for people in physically the same space (within
range of the same local network) to share content:
> The PirateBox doesn't connect to the Internet for this reason. It is
> simply a local file-sharing device, so the only thing you can do when
> connected to it is chat with other people connected to the box or share
> files. This creates an interesting social dynamic, because you are
> forced to interact (directly or indirectly) with the people connected
> to the PirateBox.
You can install it on any WiFi router that can run the OpenWRT open
firmware, which is most of them if I recall. I might be wrong but I
thought I saw they had Etherpad running on it as well, but I can't see any
signs that others have done that successfully yet. Still, a cool example
of a "local cloud", if not 100% personal.
Brian
--- End forwarded message ---
From: Brian Behlendorf <br...@behlendorf.com>
To: Doc Searls <dse...@cyber.law.harvard.edu>
Cc: ProjectVRM list <proje...@eon.law.harvard.edu>
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2012 20:12:58 +0000
Subject: Re: [projectvrm] personal sharing device
On Tue, 11 Dec 2012, Doc Searls wrote:
> Here's the hard part. If it's *only* provided, it's not personal. I
> don't have a pants provider. I do have an apartment provider. I own the
> former. I rent the latter.
I love this list when it causes me to go Google something silly, like
"Clothing as a Service", and come up with things I'd never heard of:
http://www.trunkclub.com/
http://www.thredup.com/
http://mashable.com/2012/08/13/buying-baby-clothes-subscription-services/
Seems like the idea of a "pants provider" isn't too far out, and in line
with the sharing economy trend of late.
> We need to make clear that the personal cloud, and the personal cloud OS
> (I prefer just "personal OS") is as personal as pants. Or a car. The
> latter may be a better analogy, in the sense that we use the first
> person singular possessive pronoun when thinking about or referring our
> car, whether we own, lease or rent it. We're the party in control of it
> when we drive it. The space within it is under our control as well. It's
> private. It also doesn't always have a "provider" except when it's
> rented.
Yes, I think this helps clarify. It's the difference between Avis and a
car-sharing collective. What kind of future would we prefer - one where
most cars were rented from a small number of centrally-controlled rental
agencies, or one where cars were rented/borrowed from local-community
pools? The former may be more classically efficient, but the latter more
resilient. But what about a service that helps coordinate local-borrowing
ecosystems, or community currency systems? Are they also providers? If I
buy a coat on EBay, does that make them a provider of coats?
Perhaps there is a spectrum between "full ownership" and "unvested
renter", and roles for companies that might look/smell like "providers" at
different points on that spectrum. I take the truck I 100% own to the
same auto body shop once a year for a checkup and maintenance. I could
easily take it to another, forgoing the history I've developed with my
mechanic, but at least I have freedom of choice. If renting were cheaper
than ownership (as it was while I was half-living in DC and Geneva) then
I'd weigh that against the loss of freedom. It's that freedom to choose,
though, which I think we would want to protect when it comes to cars, and
want to see emerge when it comes to the cloud.
*
I like the "Transporter" kickstarter - especially the marketing, where
they've been able to take some subtle concepts and make them clear and
significant to end users, everything from "online but off-cloud" to "no
fees, ever". I wouldn't buy one, however, because for some sad reason it
only has space for one hard drive. All hard drives will fail at some
point, and a box you pitch as a safe place to store your files for the
long term (and a suitable alternative to the cloud when it comes to
redundancy), you need something with local reduncancy. They gave that up
and went for "cute", and while "cute" helps on kickstarter, "cute" is not
what this box needs to be.
They would have done much better, IMHO, to write their filesharing/backup
software as an app that would run on the Drobo, Synology, or other NAS
boxes, and let someone else do the hard low-margin hardware work. This is
the model that Plex pursues for their Plex Media Server - actually they
give their Media Server software away for free (in addition to being
installable on various NAS boxes (QNAP, ReadyNAS, Syn) it can be installed
on Windows or Mac systems) and then sell the clients (for iOS, Android,
Roku, Google TV, etc). Rather smart and I hope it works out for them,
it's a solid product set.
Which suggests there could be a role for a "Personal Cloud Provider", a
company that helps individuals set up sovereign personal clouds, and
just like my auto mechanic, they step in on a regular basis to give it a
bit of maintenance and upkeep. Maybe it's a recurring fee like my auto
insurance, maybe it's a one-time fee like the oil change I get. We'll
know it's a mature market when there's competition between providers, and
providers aren't locked to platforms any more than a given auto mechanic
is locked to Jeep.
I wonder if OpenStack would scale *down* to an individual home NAS; and if
it did, if we'd ever see clones of apps like Gmail or Gdocs that could run
on OpenStack instances small and large.
> The appeal of what we're talking about here is personal agency, liberty,
> autonomy.
>
> The FreedomBox has all that. But it's still just a box, which is why it
> has come up short in exciting ordinary people. The Transporter appeals
> because it seems to be fully personal, and in ways people can put to use
> immediately, doing stuff they care about, such as selectively sharing
> photos and movies.
And it has that cute wedge shape.
BTW, at the AspirationTech conference a few weeks back, someone had set up
a PirateBox, which I'd never heard of before:
http://wiki.daviddarts.com/PirateBox
http://maxcho.com/piratebox/
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/piratebox
It's an easy easy easy way for people in physically the same space (within
range of the same local network) to share content:
> The PirateBox doesn't connect to the Internet for this reason. It is
> simply a local file-sharing device, so the only thing you can do when
> connected to it is chat with other people connected to the box or share
> files. This creates an interesting social dynamic, because you are
> forced to interact (directly or indirectly) with the people connected
> to the PirateBox.
You can install it on any WiFi router that can run the OpenWRT open
firmware, which is most of them if I recall. I might be wrong but I
thought I saw they had Etherpad running on it as well, but I can't see any
signs that others have done that successfully yet. Still, a cool example
of a "local cloud", if not 100% personal.
Brian
--- End forwarded message ---
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