On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 6:35 PM, Paige <veeforvoluntary@gmail.com> wrote:

Hey y'all!
Just a quick intro: I'm the Community Manager at Open Garden, a company making a mesh networking app for Android based in SF. I'm also a decentralization enthusiast and liberty activist.

I'm interested in discussing potential collaborations between the Open Garden community and Oakland mesh outreach. The first idea that comes to mind for me is holding local events based on education about mesh networking both in Oakland and SF. Oakland is obviously the most important community to focus on for the Oakland mesh (duh), however there can be a lot of benefit from marketing the project to a wider audience - especially since SF is right next door.

How awesome would it be to do a basic demo using Internet from somewhere like the TechShop and sending it to Yerba Buena Gardens for example? There could also be a chance at leveraging the marketing from the Google/SF WiFi initiative... something that says "Hey... we're trying to do something similar over here but even better!" Of course while trying to avoid pissing off Goog or SF.

I think pissing off Google or SF would be a great success for our mesh project. Maybe we should look into this.

Anyways... I know some (probably most) of you may have some reservations about collaboration with a company making proprietary software on a moral ground but I'm interested in discussion on mutual benefit - both for outreach and as complementary solutions for meshing the planet! ;)

There are several problems for me. One is what you mention. Another problem is that Open Garden is a for-profit company. Then there is the fact that, while Open Garden's technology is free, it is controlled by a small centralized organization with a hierarchical power structure. This creates a split between a small group of powerful producers of technology, and the rest of the world as consumers that have only what magic the powerful wizards on the mountain decide to grant them. If we had the ability to fork the codebase, that would be somewhat less of a problem. This split between producer and consumer is worsened by the fact that Open Garden has decided to provide only limited and abstract documentation on their technology. Curious users will have a hard time figuring out exactly how the software works. I do not like black boxes. I like things that encourage human curiosity and ingenuity.

My opinion is that the mesh group should not become officially associated with Open Garden, nor any proprietary technology to the extent that it can be avoided (We're using ubiquiti routers, with atheros chipsets, ugh, but we're still some ways away from truly open hardware platforms. Still I would not want to do an event with ubiquiti either).

This is my opinion only. I would like to hear how the rest of the crew feels about this. I will bring it up at the next meeting.

Marc Juul