Hey All,

Armin is writing a book (in German unfortunately) about CommunityWireless. I thought that this information might be interesting for everyone else out there as I feel that we (the PTP "management") haven't been doing a very good job communicating what's in our heads over the last few months.

Here are the answers I wrote to his questions.

Adam. 

Armin Medosch wrote: 
> hi adam,
> I think I may have sent you some questions as part of my research for my book on free 
> networks. I have not heard from you since, but this is no complaint. Maybe you are 
> busy, maybe the questions were not good enough, and also some of the answers you 
> have already given in previous emails.

Hi Armin,

I apologise for being slow, I'm getting progressively worse at email as the months go by.

Thanks to your questions this is a good summary of what I think about the community networking movement right now. I'd like to forward it to our list if that's okay with you. (Note: He said it was okay). 

> Advanced Questions, Free Networks 
> 
> How would you describe your project in spring 2003? what has been achieved, what are 
> issues still to be resolved?

Personal Telco is an Oregon (USA) nonprofit, we are waiting to hear about our 501(c)(3) status (that's federal tax exemption which means we've been accepted as a charity).

We have a large active memberhip (700+ people on mailing lists, 40-60 people at monthly meetings, 5-15 people at weekly meetings).

We have been very sucessful at building hotspots and are only just turning our attention to seriously looking at building an actual network (interconnected hotspots).

We've been agressively pursuing relationships with the city goverment, local press and local business. Progress is slow but their interest is building steadily and we're hopeful that something will come of it soon. 

> What are top priority efforts currently? (for instance dynamic routing or a specific linux  
> distribution or other things?)

Current priorities are: 

> now that the commercial world is picking up on wifi, as they call it, do you see that as a threat  
> or are there possibly good things to be expected to come from this?

The good I can see coming of it is further reduced HW prices and increased interest from the world.

I don't particularly see the commercial world as a threat. 

> same question, asked in a different way: some critics say, its the same old story, first activists  
> come and popularize a new technology, then the industry moves in, activists projects are on 
> the retreat, slowly die out. can you confirm that viewpoint? Or is  it a lame critique, and if so, 
> why?

Though the Open Source model has a lot of flaws when you try and apply it to community network building ... in this aspect I think it holds true. Just as commercial software doesn't render FreeSoftware/OpenSource software obsolete ... nor do commercial networks render free ones obsolete.

Also as prices for deploying hardware and network infrastructure continue to drop ... we are nearing a time where the accounting/billing infrastructure may actually cost more to maintain then the actual network. This is especially true for small networks which are the flesh and blood of community networks. 

> In talks at meetings where we tried to formulate the pico peering agreement sometimes people   
> expressed views that the commercial network model had so utterly failed, that there may be 
> more than just a niche for free networks. Saul Albert has formulated that quite well in his 
> introduction to the interview with vortex:
> 
> "This marks a potential turning point for Free Networks. As the corporate model of Internet 
> infrastructure is crumbling along with the Nasdaq index, and media giants enforce draconian 
> copyright laws internationally, these alternative models of network provision seem 
> increasingly viable. The careful, legal formalisation of relationships between these 'pico peers' 
> might pave the way for a much more widespread peer network, that operates independently of 
> large providers or telcos."
> 
> Now looking at this in cold daylight, do you really see a realistic chance for a global pico peer 
> style (or whatever we call it) network, or large scale networks relying mostly on unmetered 
> wireless traffic?

Possibilities are rife at the moment. There is still enourmous energy and enthusiasm in this area, both amoung the activists and the entrepreneurs.

I think the next 6-12 months will be telling in how this will eventually play out. Either the community folks will get it together and finally start to build something compelling or the commercial sector will build something that is a "good enough" value proposition and interest will begin to fade. The market has shown time and again that many/most people would rather pay a small amount for a service then invest time/energy in participating in a community.

I've also been saying this for over 2 years, so perhaps I should be taken with a grain of salt. ;) 

> Some people/projects focus entirely on the establishment of the free network infrastructure.  
> Others have claimed that it needs new interfaces that support that new network paradigm, that 
> what is needed are also applications and services that exploit the potential of those networks. 
> What is your opinion on this and can you give examples of such services that exploit the 
> potential of the network? are you, or someone in your network neighborhood involved in 
> creating and running some such thing?

I firmly believe that the "killer app" for (free) wireless networks hasn't been thought of yet. When it is it will strike us all with the dumb simplicity of it (like Napster and ICQ did).

The building of the free network is the ugly groundwork that those of us who believe in the future it makes possible are willing to do. Things that I think will be big are moblogging (or other local and independant writing/media projects) and location based services. What form they will take when they are mature I have no idea.

What we must all do in the interim is *build* the network. Keep the network dumb and open ... and make sure that that what be build is hard to commercially co-opt and genuinely provides value to the end user. There is no sense building something that nobody wants. 

> One focus of my research is 'investement in the community'. Thats when free networkers put  
> up a node for instance in a community infrastructure, a space that is communally and publicly 
> used for cultural or other reasons. Do you know of any such examples of mutual benefit, 
> where the wireless community put a node into a semi-public space and that space, in return, 
> became a focal point for the free networkers, as well as improving conditions of those who 
> have been using that space all along? Do you have any stories to tell about things in that 
> direction?

That's a harder question to answer. It's certainly true that when we help unwire a location there is a burst of traffic and business to that location. We recently helped unwired a coffee shop called Urban Grind and as a result many PTP folks have begun to hang out there. We've also had one event there (our third "play day" where people get together to play with technology, chat and hang out) and are hoping we'll be able to have future monthly meetings there.

We've also recently unwired a bar called the Rose and Raindrop and PTP folks have begun to use it as an adhoc meeting space for smaller meeteings (Urban Grind is very large but not open late).

Other instances are harder to quantify. We unwired Pioneer Courthouse Square (the closest thing Portland has to a town center). This was done with the cooperation of a local business but they don't benefit from it directly. I hope that the community benefits from the presence of free wireless internet access at the square but it's hard to quantify. 

> What has been questioned by some is the relation between network and community. is there  
> such a thing as a community facilitated by a network? In theory this would always be a two-
> way relation, influences going both ways. But theory apart, do you know of any concrete, 
> practical example?

My favorite quote along these lines is on the wirelesscommons.org site:

"We can't create a culture of freedom and innovation, but we can build a network which fosters its growth."

I think it's too early (at least for us) to cite any concrete examples. 

> At free network meetings, both in real and virtual space (by virtual I refer to the mailinglists) I  
> observe a strong geek aspect. certainly there is a sense of community, but its a community of 
> geeks. Other, less technically minded people find it hard to interface with that vibe. Is that the 
> end of the story, geeks getting together, showing their toys? Are free networkers meetings 
> insiderish? Is what drives them  impenetrable for most people? And, if this might be really a 
> problem indeed, what can be done about it?

This is a *big* problem, but I think with a bit of work and time it will take care of itself. Community networks really aren't ready for the masses yet, the technology is still too scarce and the software too hard to use.

However I don't think it's too far off. Right now geeks are the main ones involved because the problems that require solving are ones that geeks have to solve. However we're already beginning to see that change. As the technology begins to mature we're seeing non-geeks want to get involved. As they get involved they "educate" us geeks about what they understand and don't understand, about what's important to them and what's inconsequential. We take this information and try and make it better. At this point I think it's a positive feedback loop.

The big frustration for geek and non-geek is the amount of time change takes. I think that is simply the nature of volunteer organizations. Things seem to happen very slowly and in sporadic bursts of frantic activity (which often confuses people). 

> Free networks generally tend to aim at building infrastructures that are decentralized, have no  
> central control. This notion tends to be also part and parcel of the organisational process of 
> building those networks, at least in some cases. But if that is so, if there is no recognizable 
> political structure, how are decisions made in those projects?  What is the emergent 
> democracy in the form of organisation of the projects themselves?

In PTP's case we formed a nonprofit corporation, so the organization itself has a structure. This is a good and bad thing. It's good because it allows us a form with which we can interact productively with the business community and the city governments. They expect an actual company that they can work with. It also allows you to setup a framework to help provide longevity of the project (ie. it stops becoming "Adam's Project" and truely becomes an organization).

The down side is that you burn cycles of your most involved members taking up time doing busy work (making sure taxes are done, membership agreements are formed, wondering about legal liabilities etc). There also seems to be a significant onus of political BS that goes along with nonprofit status that didn't exist previously. 

> Last question, back to basics: why are free networks needed?

This varies hugely depending on who you ask. *Personally* I'm interested for primarily political reasons. Deep down inside I still have my anarchist punk memories. I *love* the fact that a bunch of enthusiasts have built something that has changed the face of the wireless world. PTP's efforts have made Portland the most "unwired city in America", while it's a sort of meaningless title in any soft of tangible way ... it's something that we can use to measure what we've accomplished. The Portland wireless scene is different simply because we exist ... and I think it's different for the better.

I like the freedom of speech aspects that I believe are sorely needed in these times in America. I like that journalists are reportedly using our nodes to publish stories in real time as they cover city events.

I like the possibilities for peer to peer aps, for people discovering people ... I like the idea of a network built *by* the people ... to sever the peoples needs.

From a "President of PTP" point of view I like that we can help with digital divide issues, that we can hopefully bring high speed internet aceess to underprivledged area's. Even if we can't do this effectively perhaps we can pressure the incumbants into providing proper service into places where it's not financially viable otherwise.

I like that PTP is constantly making in roads into all sorts of local communities and able to teach and educate people that are interested in what we do.

A true community network can only be maintained by the support of many communities. PTP's role is to pioneer the technology, build enthusiasm and knowledge and work with everyone to actually get the work done. 

> Okay, two more questions. Those are quite insiderish, but maybe interesting not only because  
> of that:
> 
> What are the issues with nodedb, evilbunny; why is it not accepted by some free networkers 
> as the now standard global database of nodes? and what, if this is necessary,  is being done 
> about the issue of creating a better nodedb?

Evil Bunny has provided a valuable service to the community wireless gruops with his nodedb software over the last year. However he and I have a fundamental difference of opinion that we haven't been able to resolve.

He doesn't believe that releasing the source to nodedb under an FreeSoftware license will benefit the community.

I believe that releasing your software as free/open source is a core responsibility of running a community network. There are many reasons for this, some practical (removing technical and social points of failure) and some have to do with the spirit of the thing (not releasing source to something as important as a mapping solution makes people suspicious of motives).

In the end EB and I could not come up with compromise that suited both of us. Instead we are working on developing our own mapping solution based on a true GIS backend and integrating into our wiki software. We hope to have migrated to our new software soon and to release what source code we're written shortly after that. 

> Similarly, there is locustworld with its hard/software meshAP. that seems to me to be a quite  
> good implementation of free network ideas in hard- and software. Something you can just take 
> and use. but I picked up some criticism, some issues that people have here about proprietary 
> parts, but also about IP allocation and WIANA. What exactly is the problem and what is your 
> take on this?

I honestly don't know much about the locustworld and am hesitant to comment.

Adam.

CategoryWriting CategoryWireless

ArminMedoschInterview (last edited 2006-06-07 00:40:00 by AdamShand)