Personal Clouds to replace corporate-controlled platforms

Some thoughts, and a proposal,
about
“Personal Clouds to replace
corporate-controlled platforms”
Marco Fioretti
http://mfioretti.com
http://stop.zona-m.net/
Marco Fioretti (marco@digifreedom.net) 2018/02/17 FOSSMeet’18, Calicut
http://stop.zona-m.net/ Some Rights Reserved

Freelance author/researcher/popularizer (Home page: http://mfioretti.com)
Fields of activity:
• Free Software / Open Hardware/ Open Standards / Open file formats
• Distributed/P2P Digital Manufacturing
• Impacts of digital technologies on human/civil rights, economy, environment,
culture...
Board Member of the Free Knowledge Institute (http://freeknowledge.eu)
Self-hosting my own email, websites, online bookmarks, news feeds… since 2007
First of all… Who am I?

The problem with today’s social networks

“Group Box" service: communications and coordinated activity (sometimes for offering
external services) inside groups. Examples: Uber, AirBnB and similar "platforms", but also FB groups
"Personal box " service: individual online presence, communication and sharing (of text,
video, pictures, calendars and other individual "data")
In an extremely convenient, but deeply problematic way
●
Personally, I believe that group and personal boxes should be as separate as possible
This proposal is only about "personal boxes"
They fill two ESSENTIAL needs

Being a centralized “platform” for
personal boxes means being:
• A single point of failure
• made to order for censorship
(WHOEVER the owner is: coops,
governments…)
Problems of ALL centralized, for-profit social networks
Being profit driven at the platform level means being forced to be:
• Addictive you get what feels good much more than what IS worthwhile
• Polarizing the more “market niches” there are, the better
• Stalking following you through ALL your Web activities, everywhere
• Exploitative YOUR friends are “the product” you pay for free service

Individuals come before BOTH"communities” AND “platforms”
you must have first of all your own personal box
That box must keep working without any loss of identity or connections, throughout your life, even if it
moved to new servers
without that, there is NO real “data portability”, that is no individual freedom, in practice
you must be able to have as many personal boxes as they want (for e.g. family, friends, work..)
Platforms for multiple personal boxes? No, thanks
Implementing personal boxes as partitions of larger "platforms" means insisting
with the same architecture that creates so many problems today.
Vision and main requirements (1)

THIS IS A CRUCIAL POINT!
hosting providers are not (OK, yet) required to police and “govern” the personal blogs they
host. With real “personal boxes” it would be exactly the same
Authorities can finally do their job without begging some foreign corporation
Automated mass censorship becomes much harder (every personal box could be in a
different data centre)
Putting “platforms” and “governance” back where they belong
Platforms for group activities DO need centralized governance
Really individual "personal boxes" , instead...
put "governance" back where it should have stayed: plain old laws and full individual
responsibility

Identities are more important than "services"
All your personal activities, data and contact info should always remain attached to YOU, even
if technologies and their providers change continuously.
WRONG
SomeWebsite.com/YOUrblog
AnotherWebsite.com/YOUrphotos
YOURemail@aThirdWebsite.com
you@someMicroBlogging
InstantMessaging.service/@yourname
RIGHT
YOURNAME.com/blog
YOURNAME.com/photos
email@YOURNAME.com
chat@YOURNAME.com

realistic first alternatives to the likes of FB, Gmail, Snapchat…
must be like them
• Usable by EVERYBODY. Including minors, villagers, refugees, nomadic people...
• Interoperable with the Web AND main social networks!!!
(no way they’ll be adopted, otherwise)
but they can (IMHO: must) only target the main, concrete, basic needs
• Blogging,photoblogging, microblogging... The current diversification of digital social
networks is, in large part, an artificial, induced need.
• Almost all of today's social network users only use their most basic features anyway

Remember Dilbert! (in June 1996...)
CONSUMERISM

The reality of life:
• This is not about software usable ALONE
• Running anything like your own email server gives you no privacy if all
90% of your contacts find usable is Gmail
The unavoidable conclusion:
• Geeks can play as they want with “the next thing”. No, they must!
• But in the meantime, if they care for their own privacy etc…
they still need ALL their contacts to have feasible alternatives now
This is about **communication**

before ANY reconstruction there must be
(quick!) Search & Rescue
when a building burns, you don’t wait till a
better one is available to rescue who’s inside
You just get them out of the building, and give
them an emergency blanket ASAP
This proposal is about the blanket.
What I consider the most urgent priority is
providing such blankets, asap, to:
What I care about? Think buildings on fire!
the 2+ BILLIONS people ALREADY trapped inside FB/Google…
and the NEXT billion of Internet users

The percloud has NO ambition to be the final
solution. Only the first, necessary step
We are wasting too much time looking only
after “real” (=long-term) solutions
THE BETTER IS ENEMY OF THE GOOD
ESPECIALLY WHEN SOCIAL INERTIA IS
already HUGE, and keeps growing
Most people trapped inside a
burning building:
First things first. Please!
will not accept to be rescued if that means “losing” their loved ones inside the building
will be unable to manage anything more complex than a fire / emergency blanket

Features and architecture of a truly “for the masses” personal cloud
z
This.
And.
Nothing.
More.
user =
average FB
user
Including
homeless,
minors…
From any
Internet kiosk,
or smartphone

hosting and publishing of texts, images, audio, bookmarks, calendars, any other file
• Discussions and access control, at file level
• Notify personal contacts of new content, or discussions
announcing new content on Facebook or Twitter accounts
UNIFIED "news" interface for: RSS feeds, other perclouds, new email, Tweets,
Facebook status updates... the whole world, without filters, in ONE "window"
Communication: email (server included!), mailing list manager, instant messaging
administration (& automatic backups!): separated, assignable to a trusted party (e.g. parents)
permanence: can be moved from any server to any other, without losses
Features and architecture of a truly “for the masses” personal cloud

Gnu/Linux distro, or container
pre-configured with [the right combination of Free Software]
supports the main CPU families, from ARM to x86_64
has an installer that also attaches to it a Web-visible domain name
primarily, heavily optimized for
• running as Linux VPS or Container
• automatic administration, updates etc by data-centre admins
Percloud (PERmanent/PERSONAL cloud) architecture

self-installable on any hardware that runs Linux, from home computers to the
datacentre of any ordinary hosting provider
moveable from any computer to any other without losses
• from the outside everything remains "attached" to "yourname.com"
(self) Expandable without interfering with existing features
A container of personal data immensely easier to migrate to any other “personal
box” than it would be to migrate the same data from inside, e.g. a FB account
Percloud architecture advantages

The MOST important part of the proposal
The ONLY way to make perclouds really usable by those who need them the most:
• the billions people who don't want to, or simply cannot, install and manage
anything by themselves
PEAAS = getting your percloud created, hosted and managed..
by any web hosting provider of your choice, in their datacentre
Just like eg. setting up a blog at wordpress.com: a few clicks, and you're done
Nothing is interrupted or lost if you move the whole percloud to a different provider
PEAAS: Percloud As A Service

"Anything, as long as it is black"
many components may still be
the same listed in 2017 (*)
but what matters are
architecture, integration and
above all: packaging, i.e.
PEAAS
Percloud software components
(*) http://per-cloud.com/percloud-proposal-2017/#percloud-2017-software

Possible main candidates
• Nextcloud?
• Postfix + Dovecot + Rainloop for email?
• Shaarli for bookmarks?
• Let’s Encrypt for certificates?
• Tell me your favourites
But remember: what really matters is integration & packaging
Percloud software components (2)

The others:
Full answer: http://per-cloud.com/percloud-and-the-others/
Percloud
What are the differences between Percloud and “X”?

Deployment and usage: much simpler than the alternatives
• NO NEED for international coordination or huge infrastructures
• You don't need anybody's permission or coordination to set up your own,
worldwide-interoperable, email server
• The percloud is the same. It talks both with the whole Web and with other
perclouds, by design
Both for individuals setting one up for themselves, and for organizations
providing them to all and only their “members” via PEAAS
Percloud deployment

(Much) simpler than the alternatives, since most if not all components already exist...
...but certainly not a pet project. Main challenges (besides packaging):
• Federation, that is notifications exchange among different perclouds
• User interface usability
• PEAAS-related testing and optimization (requires large scale pilot)
Who MAKES it?
• A diverse, adequately funded TEAM
(programming, UX design and testing, fundraising, , documentation...)
• With or without me. Seriously. Just go ahead, give credit where credit is due
• See next slide, thanks
Percloud development

Excellent question, thanks!
This, and others closely related questions are extensively
answered in:
●
the conclusion of the complete Percloud Proposal :
http://per-cloud.com/percloud-proposal
●
this addendum to the Percloud FAQ, from 2014:
http://stop.zona-m.net/2014/10/some-more-percloud-questions-ive-already-frequently-answered
Show me the code! Why didn’t you do this yourself?

This is actually two, equally important questions:
•1: Who would pay for development and maintenance of all this software?*
A1: whoever cares for a really decentralized, multi-cultural Internet that puts privacy and
other individual rights at the center:
EU, UNO, NGOs, Open Society, national governments, local public Administrations,
who else?
A2: whoever would make money (or otherwise fulfill its own institutional goals!) from
offering PEAAS.
The main such category would surely be (community-owned?) hosting providers
Who will, or should pay, to make this happen?

The second, even more important question:
Who would pay for PEAAS, that is the HOSTING of perclouds?
FACT: percloud via PEAAS (=99..% of cases) cannot be free as in free beer. A (very?) few
USD/month, yes, but not free
NOTE: The pilot suggested in the proposal would also measure real-world cost of PEAAS hosting
ANSWER:
Who will, or should pay, to make this happen? (2)
governments, local administrations, schools, NGOs helping disadvantaged groups...
they already, implicitly have, or otherwise should have, providing perclouds to their
own "members" as part of their mission
All these organizations may (IMHO, often should) pay (part of) the hosting costs for
their members, maybe only for one or two years. After that, those members could
migrate their percloud to any other PEAAS provider.

The complete percloud proposal is at http//per-cloud.com
These slides will be available there soon
Feedback and help to spread the proposal are extremely welcome!
Let’s stay in touch:
• Email: marco@digifreedom.net
• Twitter: @mfioretti_en
• My main blog http://stop.zona-m.net
– Thanks!
Thanks, and final notes

Personal Clouds to replace corporate-controlled platforms

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