Re: [GNU-linux-libre] now that adbard is gone :^( the ad problem is back

[Nicolás Reynolds]

On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 12:48:27 +0200, Jaromil <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> re all,
> 
> ok, at the risk of going a bit OT, I'll try to outline what comes
> after 12 years of "living clean and let your work be seen" for those
> who have not much money to live, nor want to become money rich in
> their life, rather than dedicate it to sharing knowledge and free and
> open source software.  I'll invest more of my time in a longer article
> about the topic and this thread is an interesting contribution to it.
> 
> On Thu, 29 Mar 2012, Nicolás Reynolds wrote:
> 
> > hi, just 0 cents: at parabola we haven't been accepting money
> > donations, but people's time, and hosting space nor bandwidth have
> > never been a real problem... never needed money i mean. maybe we can
> > help you with this?
> 
> It is not so simple what you are mentioning: it seems so if you just
> boil it down to "host a website", but this is not exactly what it is.

I must have misread you then. But still we have two servers running
Parabola plus two more repository mirrors out of friends kindness. This
way we never had to put money out of our pockets to sustain the project
infrastructure. Not counting the electricity our build machines consume
of course.

> We are talking about a tribe relying on the interconnection of diverse
> services used and administered by different people, which also implies
> a network of trust regarding private materials hosted on a somehow
> intertwined server fleet and long-term personal relationships built
> across members taking care of it.
> 
> And while at the beginning of 2000, about ten years ago, we had a
> similar situation as yours, mostly thanks of public infrastructure and
> academic support in EU, the situation is now changing for dyne.org. EU
> is diving deep into depression, while the attempt of healing the
> problems brought by neo-liberism with an insane injection of
> ultra-liberism has the effect of shutting down most cultural funding.
> 
> For example, the public institutions where I've worked part-time in
> the past 6 years ( http://NIMk.nl ) had an 100% cut and we are all
> fired now. Being a software developer myself (not just a distro maker,
> which strangely enough might be somehow more rewarding as an activity
> alone) I've brought forward some free software development you can see
> here http://syncstarter.org and that I'm at least happy it won't sink
> with the ship now, being free and open source and fairly well done.

I understand completely, since neoliberalism was implanted here on the
'90s and blew up 10 years ago. Now we have a sort of "progressive"
rebound.

> Our infrastructure had to slowly be bought commercially, expenses are
> now about 100 EUR p/m and there is no way we can find gratuitous
> hosting in a company where some of us works as we also did in the
> past, because of the heavier traffic and because most people now work
> in multinational corporations, rather than a small local business, and
> these corporations usually like to support "big fishes" like Mozilla,
> not us.
>
> [...]
> 
> What I'd love to come out of this very useful discussion are concrete
> proposals on how to avoid proprietary software ads (via Google or a
> revived AdBard that actually works) as well ideas and visions on how
> to support our development.
> 
> Thanks for reading and offering your help already, but with all what
> I've written I don't think InI need help. Its not help what's needed,
> but definitely some constructive input and from the FSF as well. In
> two close threads now we have read the advice to "put a link to the
> FSF websidesite" (which BTW centralizes the donation flow, already
> very centralized and not redistributed) and also "remove your ads"...
> 
> looking forward to more constructive suggestions

So if it's not about infrastructure, we're discussing about hacker
wages and if it's possible to sustain our work with minimal compromise
or having to divert our meager free time and money into it.

I believe Trisquel is trying microfunding/crowdfunding alternatives but
I have no idea how's that working out for them.

Also, back on the economic crisis, a lot of good experiences came out of
it. IIRC, we have ~10 free software coops now in Argentina, working with
other coops and worker-owned factories :)

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