[mesh-talk] Why I'm leaving sudomesh

[Marc Juul]

On Wed, May 25, 2016 at 3:32 PM, Max B <maxb.personal at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've been putting this off for a while now, but I think it's important
> that I finally come out and say this.
>
> I'm no longer interested in a being a member or in any way involved with
> sudomesh. This might surprise some folks, largely because so much of the
> dysfunction in this group has been swept under the rug, but I don't want
> to continue to participate in the facade of "everything is fine here and
> we're building a community mesh network". I don't think it's fair to new
> folks or to the community at large.
>
>
I'm sad to see you leave the organization. I hope that you will do what
many open source projects do when unresolvable disagreements arise and
fork() the project such that we can continue to share code and experience
and stay inter-operable. Having multiple organizations supporting community
networking in the local area while successfully co-existing and peering
would be both interesting and beneficial for long-term sustainability. If
you go this route I think it would be interesting to share the "brand"
peoplesopen.net for the network with some kind of agreement in place for
sharing the domain and website. I like how food not bombs have many
chapters that are actually completely independent but have a shared name
and mission that boost their signal, though it makes sense that each
organization should also have their own independent name if operating in
the same geographic region. In the end one of the goals of this project has
always been to make it easy for anyone to replicate/fork what we've done
and I hope that many more groups will use the work of this group and others
as a base from which to launch new community networks across the globe.


> The ownership and power structures of the organization are choking a
> really good idea to death. At first I tried to cope with it, thinking
> that it was better than nothing. Later I attempted to take action to
> help correct it, but was met with a complete unwillingness. The work is
> difficult enough. I no longer feel any need to compound it with the
> interpersonal, power dynamics, and bureaucratic difficulties that
> sudomesh is burdened with.
>
>
For my part I regret not engaging much earlier with conflicts and
mediations in a more head-on fashion rather than letting tensions fester
until it came down to an ultimatum. If this had happened then at least
perhaps the fork (if indeed it is a fork) could have been established under
more positive conditions.


> As I'm currently the owner and maintainer of the sudomesh exit node, if
> people are using a "peoplesopen.net" router and want to continue to do
> so, they should speak with someone involved with sudomesh (probably
> Juul) to coordinate ongoing functionality. I will continue to maintain
> some infrastructure, mostly those nodes that I personally installed. I'm
> happy to support folks who I personally met with and helped setup.
>

We are having issues with digital ocean anyway so I'll set up a new exit
node (VPN) and will switch existing mesh nodes over to this new exit node.
If I still have access to a peoplesopen.net router/node a week from today
then I will issue an update that switches them to the new VPN. If a new
organization is established that maintains its own exit node then it should
be trivial for either of us to establish peering between them since we use
no access control.


> I do continue to care deeply about building community owned and operated
> internet infrastructure. I'm happy to talk about my future plans with
> folks as well as what I think went off the rails here. Obviously there
> is a lot of work to be done in this domain and though I'm discouraged by
> the situation here, I do think that we can move forwards in positive
> directions. Feel free to reach out directly to me if you'd like to be a
> part of that.
>

-- 
marc/juul
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