[p2p-research] personal server technology

[M. Fioretti]

Matt,

first of all, if you decide to use the digest, it's better if you
change the subject to whatever you actually want to talk about when
you reply.  Messages with subject lines like "[p2p-research]
p2presearch Digest, Vol 31, Issue 35" are routinely canceled without
even opening them by many people. I opened this one by mistake.

>From the content of your reply, I assume that you are talking of the articles I wrote and announced here yesterday:

http://stop.zona-m.net/digiworld/big-limits-todays-email-privacy-barriers-and-robustness

http://stop.zona-m.net/active-citizens/real-obstacles-personal-email-management-unaware-users-and-absent-laws

so here's my reply:

On Tue, May 18, 2010 10:34:14 AM -0600, Matt Boggs (matt at digiblade.com) wrote:

> Running a personal mail server (at least in the United States)
> usually violates the terms of use with your ISP. Yes, even if you
> buy a block of IP addresses.

I know this very well, since it's the same in Italy. But the problem I
mention in the 2nd link above has nothing to do with this and would
exist even if ISPs weren't allowed to impose those ToU.

> I'm all for decentralization, but I'm not going to risk mission
> critical services on a home computer.

Same for me. What made you think that this is the only way? I
explicitly wrote in the second post:

	   By VPES (*) I mean a single bundle of preconfigured Free
	   Software that you could run in a very cheap dedicated
	   computer at home or remotely, in a data center of your
	   choice.

and running my email server in a professionally managed data-center,
with redundant backups, redundant internet connectivity, redundant
power and air conditioning etc... is exactly what I do, for the very
reason that you mention. I included "cheap home computer" in the
article because technically speaking is perfectly feasible (when the
ISP doesn't block some ports) and many folks only want to do it that
way.

But the point of my article is to make people realize that they can
and should run their email server in the first place. To realize that,
people must overcome a huge psychological barrier, a much bigger issue
than "what is the optimal location of the CPU where this server should
run".

So I'd rather not get sidetracked by that. Not here and now, at least:
I and another guy already discussed the "home pc vs datacenter" part
on this very list back in February, and the only result was to bore to
death everybody else.

      Marco