[p2p-research] Fwd: important message to all p2p foundation sympathizers

[M. Fioretti]

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 16:14:30 PM +0700, Michel Bauwens
(michelsub2004 at gmail.com) wrote:

Let's start from this (taking my comment that follows as just a bit of
absolutely _general_ friendly advice given with constructive spirit,
and feel free to completely ignore it of course):

> I would personally not know how to fork a wiki, nor care to learn,
> ... I do not wish to go in that direction of learning this
> technology,

> ... in the worst case, I would use public spaces like blogger and
> such, look for free wikispaces on the net, and do things that I can
> launch in five minutes, and proceed from there, ...I want to focus
> on content production, and I'm ready to pay the price for this lack
> of expertise...  the important thing for me is the ability to work
> in peace and productively

I really don't see how you can keep publishing online as MUCH as you
want to do (especially in a collaborative way) AND afford at all the
"nor care to learn" position in the medium/ long term. Unless you're
sure you can always pay some professional to handle the details for
you. This hasn't even anything to do with being free software geeks or
not, because the required skills are NOT about programming, but let's
ignore that. Point is, if you moved to any of the "public spaces" you
mention, you'd have NO guarantee that they wouldn't, in 1/2 years from
now (or every 1/2 years...) that their providers:
 
- go out of business
- be hacked and lose all your data, with no obligation to you
- change their terms of service, or start charging money (remember
  ning?), therefore becoming unsustainable, but WITHOUT giving you any
  "wiki migration function", ie forcing you to retype everything
  somewhere else
- terminate your account and cancel all your stuff "just because"

Again, this is just a really general friendly thought/advice that we
can merrily discard from now in discussing the current problem. With
respect to that, it seems clear to me that:

 "the majority" including me, has no preference, be it because it
 would take too much time to make a really informed opinion or
 whatever else. Otherwise this thread wouldn't have lasted so long
 with only you and Alex talking to each other. I'm NOT saying "please
 stop filling the list". I am just saying "probably it's pointless to
 expect more/any feedback from the list", you have to sort this out
 between the two of you and Sam.

 since YOU and not Alex started the foundation and did almost all the
 website work until today, personally I could not object or blame if
 you had simply told Alex weeks ago "thanks but from now on you will
 only work inside alex.p2pfoundation.net period". EVEN IF I WERE SURE
 that he's 100% right and you 100% wrong (which I am far from being,
 since I haven't followed the discussion and I know so little of the
 website content that can't figure out without lots of time which
 organization I would prefer). That's why I asked, essentially, can
 you control the current website or not?

I mean, to me right now, more than "who's right, Michel or Alex" it
seems more important to ask "what's the best way to let both of them
not stump on each other and let time tell which way is best?"

This whole problem doesn't exist because nobody knows which way is
better. It only exists because you want to do two different things in
the same place.

HTH,
Marco