Safe Network For Institutions

I know that most people see the Safenetwork as anti the status quo etc. However, mass adoption would mean adoption by governmnets, corporations etc, too. So for instance, as Data Protection in Europe is becoming a big deal (see https://www.eugdpr.org/), with corporations potentially being fined a significant amount - ‘penalties will reach an upper limit of €20 million or 4% or annual global turnover – whichever is higher’ - do you guys think it may be worth pitching safenetwork to my employer once the release is out?

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I work at a company where protection of data is a must as well. If Maidsafe delivers I will certainly be discussing with management into the VP level the potential benefits of storing data on the network.

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Remember the E in SAFE is for Everyone!

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We have these requirements at my company too.
One thing that could pose a problem is related to where data is stored. The regulation has no notion of technology like that of SAFENetwork, and how it makes the borders irrelevant. It is therefore possible that it would pose a problem, with current version of the regulations, that data would not be stored within EU only.

EDIT: Naturally, the regulations will sooner or later have to adapt to the new technologies that emerge. But this kind of bureaucracy is not moving fast.

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I am also interested in this topic.

It must be very tantalizing for many companies to avoid a lot of the risks with GDPR altogether by not actually hosting sensitive data at all.

I am working on a couple ideas on this topic. Possibly for an article. So if anyone is interested in sharing some thoughts in this direction I would be very interested to discussing it.

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Blockquote
One thing that could pose a problem is related to where data is stored. The regulation has no notion of technology like that of SAFENetwork, and how it makes the borders irrelevant. It is therefore possible that it would pose a problem, with current version of the regulations, that data would not be stored within EU only.

A proper education on what is SAFE to the companies would be a nice start to make them understand (regarding the question on where the data will be stored)

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Good question, and it seems certain that many many people will be interested in using maidsafe as a foundation upon which to meet a whole variety of commercial goals and regulatory requirements. If it can be viewed as helping organisations meet regulatory standards and achieve certain prized certifications then that too could be another avenue for marketing to focus to help increase adoption!

I haven’t quite got to investigating the proposed details around licensing or in the practicalities of how the network is to be implemented and maintained, but will Maidsafe’s source code for the various components eventually all be available under open source licence for anyone to be able to contribute to or use? If so then will it be possible (whether you agree its right or not) that any organisation could create their own branch of the source to customise their own separate private version of the SAFE network for restricted use amongst their own staff, customers and associates?

I’m also aware of the kinds of legal regulations and restrictions in certain jurisdictions such as for accountancy software (even if it goes against the whole philosophy behind maidsafe) that might be a major stumbling block for businesses ability to adopt. However if there was such flexibility to customise a version it might help tick the various regulatory boxes to help ease adoption and with slowly paradigm shifting minds stuck in old regulatory ways of thinking! (at least initially until the network proves itself under extreme live conditions and old school regulators come to recognise its robustness - or perhaps we all recognise there’s less need for regulators as a result!). I of course understand the whole idea is to have one SAFE network for ALL! :slight_smile:

It already is.

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Thanks for providing a link to the source. The purpose of my general question however was not so much for simply gaining access to the source code. I get the opensource idea and its licence to freely use based on the official releases. I’m more trying to understand the gist of licensing for how it may be legally used if then separately modified for other purposes such as for entirely private closed networks for private or commercial reasons? Will there perhaps be some kind of % royalties or other pricing structure required to the Maidsafe foundation for legally enabling that kind of private use? Could there possibly even be some kind of maintenance and support type of business model around such a possibility that could be another avenue for Maidsafe to generate an ‘old school £’ revenue stream to help further fund the core development to the benefit of all. I’ll be investigating in more detail myself in due course when I get the available time, but at my newbie stage I was just hoping some insider might be able to provide a high level answer to help me and any other passing newbies interested from that kind of perspective.

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I’m pretty sure the figure is 1%, to Maidsafe Ltd (and the foundation benefits as the major shareholder).
Maybe someone can correct me if this is wrong.

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Your suggestions are IIRC part of MaidSafe’s plans. This has been explained before in response to similar queries to the ones you make in this topic, but I don’t recall the details. If you search for licensing, and responses by @ dirvine you might find them.

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Thanks for your responses. I appreciate that such questions have probably been asked many times. I guess I just saw the topic after recently joining the forum and thought of the question without spending any time trying to research and answer the questions myself. It just seems the possibilities based on the ideas behind maidsafe are endless! It will be interesting to observe the future emergent uses that no one will have thought of before :sunglasses:

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This is what the official training guide says so I guess it’s simply a matter of arguing that SAFE is safe!

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I am not a lawyer, this is just my opinion:
The GPL has clauses stating there is no guarantee, so by definition I don’t think it would qualify as a legally binding agreement guaranteeing data protection. For legal purposes open source software under this license is “guaranteed” to be broken and unable to operate as intended. It just turns out actions speak louder than words and many prefer openness instead of needing to trust someone’s word with regard to their proprietary black boxes. I think you would probably need to hire MaidSafe and go with something similar to their commercial license, then pay them or outsource the administrator/custodial data management services (located in Europe or other locale) in order to leverage the resiliency of the global network.

See sections 15,16,17 of GPL3
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html

MaidSafe has a limited liability clause in section 4 of their commercial license.

  1. Limited warranty
    4.1 MaidSafe warrants that it will perform its obligations under this agreement with reasonable care and skill.

I think that once the network has been live for a small time and the crackers have issued their report then data stored on SAFE will be considered “adequately protected”

The issue will be the APPs that store/process the data, they too will have to pass that test. But I am sure that won’t be as difficult as proving SAFE to be secure.

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We know the Internet runs on these licenses The lack of warranty is a statement of this is a best effort from people you don’t know clause. It is the ultimate take it or leave it really. However it is also the enforced freedom license.

Ultimately I feel it is the, here is how we did it statement, but if you can do better then please do, but if you use this to build on then your stuff has to be free as well.

License and law is boring really when you think about it, full of subjective feelings and opinions, but the GPL at least IMO tries to say, learn form this and improve, but hide nothing and I like that actually.

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I agree. After a while the benefits and opportunities that GPL provides become addictive. ( By the way, thank you again for choosing a GPL/pro-freedom route with SAFE.)

My reply to @Joe_C was specific to some of the clauses that were in his “official training guide” example, which had me thinking out loud about how he might be able to immediately convince staunch supervisors to get on board without having to wait for critical mass when SAFE becomes the financial or health industry standard. Perhaps if presented with recent examples of a change in attitude by governments and institutions with regard to open source software, his local bureaucrat may be just fine with the GPL as is / take it or leave it clauses… but large institutions do tend to move rather slowly, can be reluctant to trust in transparency, and seem to prefer outsourcing their responsibilities.

I do see the preferred route being one where institutions either embrace (or conform by popular demand) to SAFE, open source, and the GPL take it or leave it yet improve it culture; rather than the vice versa where great tools and innovations are required to conform or are stuffed into little black boxes just to make lawyers happy. Although, I suppose that GPL is an example of making lawyers happy so we can be happy too. Humans. :smile:

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Bringing up my own comment to share the article I co-wrote this summer. I was intending to write an English translation and put on medium, but right around that time life got really busy with moving house and a new family member.

The article is in Norwegian and was published in a Norwegian trade magazine focusing on risk, governance, internal auditing and compliance. The article was meant to be an easy digestible introduction to the possibilities of SAFEnet in the context of GPDR. My technical understanding is perhaps not stellar, but it was a fun article to write and feedback has been positive.

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Ive already pitched it to my employer, mainly because for some obscure reason our computers are terribly slow.

They always blame it on malasia.
Not sure why nothing is cached locally.
Safe would make it so much faster and reliable.

Just need a working product first.

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