[Festival] IFF's now on Slack!

Tue Oct 27 14:54:11 CET 2015

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Alllllright everyone!
One of the more important things that we were hoping to achieve was
vivid communications between the wonderful people of the free internet -
and I can see that we achieved that at least!

I want to introduce myself - I'm Oktavia - I'm a part of the team that
has the awesome privilege of putting together the festival next year for
you all, and let me tell you it's an awesome task that I and my
compadres take on with humble minds and hands; we have a lot to do and
we will work as hard as we can before March 1 to make sure that the
festival becomes exactly what you all need in our mutual space.

Firstly - thanks to all for participating in the lively discussion -
this is a point I love discussing (and Bernard, I will buy you a coffee
in Valencia and even get you back on wanting to discuss!) however I want
us all to be mindful of a) this is a list of great people who have many
differences in opinion so please, look over that text before you press
send, and b) we love and crave your input! Please make sure that in the
replies you give us, you tell us what alternatives we should have
available or should think of; if there are better solutions or heck -
ask us for a talk! More importantly, we are working very hard on this
and we run 100% on your love and support - so if you can't give us the
former, please give us the latter.

My suggestions are (aside from spamming wonderful Samuel, because we
really need more volunteers with all of your wonderful skillsets):

Come over here: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/IFF16, give us
your thoughts on channels for communications and for guidelines (so for
example, if slack is used, what shouldn't we communicate there?) and
last but not least, general guidelines for conversations - I know there
are other resources out there that help us find the right tone, please
share your thoughts (or links!)

I chose Mozilla for the etherpad - if there are better alternatives,
ping me! Also I guess I should mention that the pad is public (think in
terms of content you put there) and there are ways in which people that
want nothing good for you to know you are there etc. etc.

Mostly - please remember; There is more than one colour, in fact the
rainbow has seven and we all deserve the colour and flavor we want (my
point is IRC, slack, emails - I want us to have all of them - and yes I
also want us to have and use them in the safest and best way possible)

Before I go; let's make ope-source Slakc happen people! <- a potential
session at the festival? Gosh I hope so!

Best thoughts and wishes,

Okta
On 10/27/2015 9:29 AM, Ximin Luo wrote:
> If you don't want to have this conversation, then don't post comments with inaccurate statements that conflate different concepts. Or actually listen to the points being made, instead of dismissing them as unimportant or trivia. > > IRC is not ideal for sure, but you can enable forward-secure only
TLS on it. But anyway, this is meant to be a public discussion place.
Whilst protection against automated mass surveillance is still important
in these cases (to make it more costly for the attackers), that is not a
primary reason to avoid Slack. > > There are many reasons to avoid
Slack. You rely on a centralised third party with a proprietary
protocol. Slack calls the shots, you tie yourself to them, and you can't
switch away easily. It works in the browser, with a huge attack surface.
It is much worse than Gmail - if *YOU* use Gmail it doesn't mean *I*
have to also use Gmail with other people I talk to. Gmail does not have
a bad security record. Easy alternatives already exist - for example,
there is a #noisysq channel on OFTC IRC. > > One of the reasons why the
internet security is so horrible, is *because* people make arguments
like this to pass off convenience for security - and I don't just mean
communications security, but your economic security, of reliance upon
centralised hierarchies. It is especially ironic that *this group* is
contributing to the network effort of moving to centralised
communications mediums. Well done for repeating history, even when
outwardly trying to warn the world about it! > > Core free open source
software projects will *never* move to Slack over IRC, whilst the above
issues exist. (For sure, some of them have shoddy practises in the area
of communications security). Why should this group? > > X > > On
27/10/15 13:22, Bernard Tyers wrote: >> Please. For the love of every
God in the sky (and every other place Gods live), can we not have this
conversation. I have no interest in it anymore. >> >> IRC is as open to
surveillance as Slack is, it’s plaintext, no encryption. Twitter is
closed source. How many people are using their Gmail address for
communication here? >> >> None of these tools are ideal. Their purpose
is to enable communication. This is not communication. >> >> IP over
carrier pigeon is fine with me. >> >> >> >>> On 27 Oct 2015, at 11:49,
Smari McCarthy <smari at occrp.org> wrote: >>> >>> I'm agreeing with Ximin
and Holger. Slack is a closed-source, centralized IRC replacement, and
not even a particularly good one (sorry). We can talk about US money and
other stuff like that, and we should, but how about we do it over a
decentralized communications platform that isn't directly anathema to a
free an open Internet? >>> >>> Rather than me continuing to rant about
this, just take a moment to imagine that did so, about software licences
and stuff like that. :-) >>> >>> E-mail is pretty good. >>> >>>   -
Smári >>> >>> On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 12:18 PM, Ximin Luo
<infinity0 at pwned.gg> wrote: >>> On 27/10/15 11:36, Jillian York wrote:
>>>> On 10/27/15 11:27 AM, holger krekel wrote: >>>>> Is it a good idea
to tie the "internet freedom" community to Slack >>>>> Technologies, a
large for-profit highly venture-capital driven company >>>>> in silicon
valley?  And to help their marketing by advising people >>>>> to shout
"i want to be a slacker"?  Centralized easy-to-surveil >>>>>
communication systems are the problem, not the solution in my view. >>>
>>> Thank you holger for making this point. I was going to myself but
wondered if anyone gave a shit... >>> >>>> Is it a good idea for the
"Internet freedom" community to take US >>>> government funding? Is it a
good idea for us to use Twitter? I'd argue >>>> those are far worse
things than Slack... >>>> >>>> Sorry, but your argument is overwrought
and unnecessary. You don't have >>>> to join the Slack channel. And you
certainly don't have to interrogate >>>> the organizers of the
conference publicly because you've got a >>>> holier-than-thou attitude
about which tools are best. >>>> >>> >>> Why this reaction? There are
different reasons for taking govt funding and using twitter, than using
Slack. >>> >>> Government funding: hard to market "internet freedom" in
current economy, need to get shit done regardless, need to get paid. >>>
>>> Twitter: reaches a wide range of people, good for publicily. >>> >>>
What is Slack good for that IRC doesn't provide? Formatting and smileys
are more important than running your own infrastructure, depending on
3rd parties that don't respect you, who don't release their source code,
and have a crappy history of protecting their users' data? >>> >>> (I
also support trying out things like Mattermost, if other people want to
play with that.) >>> >>> We make compromises working in this world
whilst trying to achieve our principles, but we must *never* forget the
fact that these are *compromises*. Don't let those things become a norm
in your head. >>> >>> And this is not about having a "holier-than-thou
attitude". Remember that from the point of view of the rest of the
world, the entire "internet freedom" community has a "holier-than-thou
attitude". holger was in no way insulting or aggressive. >>> >>> X >>>
>>> -- >>> GPG: 4096R/1318EFAC5FBBDBCE >>>
git://github.com/infinity0/pubkeys.git >>> >>>
_______________________________________________ >>> Festival mailing
list >>> Festival at ta3m.org >>>
https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/festival >>> >>> >>> >>> --
>>> Smári McCarthy - Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project
>>> Sarajevo / https://www.occrp.org / +387 60 3347 323 / @smarimc >>>
_______________________________________________ >>> Festival mailing
list >>> Festival at ta3m.org >>>
https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/festival >> >> >>
_______________________________________________ >> Festival mailing list
>> Festival at ta3m.org >>
https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/festival >> > >

- -- 

Kind regards,

Oktavía Jónsdóttir
- -------------------------
Program Director, S.A.F.E - initiative

Democracy Governance and Media
IREX
www.irex.org

S: oktahrund
E: ojonsdottir at irex.org

Connect with IREX on Facebook and Twitter
Get updates - http://webupdates.irex.org
Join Our Cause - http://www.irex.org/donate/ 
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2

iQEcBAEBCAAGBQJWL4ICAAoJELdLmD/szB1L5TAH/0Iud8cp295TPUZn4cLdwiBr
07mkJ1nMySQBUNecgEIOUcMJy5n5Xgu4rPmP2oZGVpPICEIxQGUyxbH+jOFEKtvA
4oaclvo5H+TOIPxRYWz/l4Nr/i5j+R8IvBftt8Rp1n34hzhds0w6/+krOZTUG/1S
mdzgc6dQ1MfeUDz+mxtURFRakwwmn8FyC3p/gJjrwAsG2JhFf51e7w2MMUyI8p/w
1IJEk6TdjqT/cp4Y6XHUfk8KF5xJSIOsI4oE1y2axFzm3lLu7oG5C+67Cg6BL/iu
jvXci0RAsX7z6LtVHpUWCh53MDLm+bAvZ2dkk2Miuc4kFoRsMPIriE7iF4URZy4=
=G3SP
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----