What if the government decided to take over your Open Source project?

The following post, presented as a plot outline for a book is an excellent example of the threat a project like Safe Network can present to those in power, and what a government might do to neutralise it.

Well worth a read.

Heather Burns is a vocal, funny and insightful technology policy expert who advocates “for an open web built around international standards of human rights, privacy, accessibility, and freedom of expression”. Well worth following on her Twitter @WebDevLaw or via her blog.

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Very good and also very timely. Early this year there will be some announcements from maidsafe the UK company on this very topic and what we have done or will be doing to mitigate this. In the last 6 months and certainly since we lost Sharon the UK institutions have been taking up positions. That means the banks, FCA and HMRC and I believe the threat is real. Almost all my time in the last 3-4 months has been in some kind of dystopian hell of kyc/aml and contradictory laws. I feel I aged 10 years in the last 6 months, it has been hell for sure.

To ensure Safe is truly “free” it will need to launch (of course) and in parallel have many forms of governance in many jurisdictions and importantly with many different groups of unconnected people in unconnected jurisdictions. It is also important that closing down any of these organisations does not close down the project. So we need to remove such threats and we will need to be extremely light and nimble, I believe the simplest and most nimble approach will outpace the huge institutions or it will have the best chance.

In any case, the last mile will have to include some way maidsafe at least becomes an important but not essential part of Safe. No org can be essential and we need to get there fast.

The other thing we have is that many of us will stay on board whether governments or these agencies threaten jobs or not.

Again though simple well documented protocols are essential and that’s looking good right now.

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SN + Safe-git may make it pretty hard to attack (block) the code and development. I hope also for the possibility of a quality DeFi platform on SN as well … I think all combined (if it can get there and I see no reason why it won’t eventually), SN will be practically indestructible.

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Is the safe network GPL-3 licensed?

Perhaps it should remain GPL-3 licensed, so it remains open source.

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In part yes, but if you read the article it has little effect when these agencies get involved.

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Any government ignoring GPL licenses is grounds for civil war imho.
But I highly doubt it will happen purily under the government umbrella
and it’s going to be one of the GAFMA companies claiming to have the right to take over the safe network or create it’s own and advertises it everywhere.

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Can you give any more specifics of the “threat” you believe is incoming or shall I wait for the announcements?

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I cannot be specific but I am certain social media and this forum are or will be monitored for the inside scoop and any chance at getting the evidence of something or other. These guys are not as open as we are.

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Most definitely not. Watch your back at least you are expecting it :+1:t2:

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Each and every day the internet is becoming a gun pointing at us… we can´t do anything, even type a single letter on the keyboard without being watched, directed, censored, limited… all the freedom we had in the early days of this marvelous tools is gone!

I do hope SAFEnetwork brings the safe haven we have been looking for, away from psycopaths who want to control even your thoughts…!

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That was the driving force for the project to start.

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imo the DAO of safenetwork should run a dist. priv. git setup which makes use of the safenetwork vaults to store code versions , with the DAO dist. git running it’s own drm scheme requiring a rotating node multisig access, where the DRM is home-cooked and not something the powers that should not be TPTSNB have back door keys to. which means IPFS is probably a not starter method for vault?

Adding a DAO constiution where node operators get a vote to first create it and then amend it makes alot of sense too drive the various ‘behaviours’ of the DAO, including the ability to defend itself dynamically against govt takeover or intrusion, ie if the dist. git get’s breached by a a Supercomputer or Quantum computer assisted node hack, a self healing update and or node isolation mechanism kicks to protect the rest of the network, maybe even adding honeypots to track such attempts to hack the system, so as to retroactively have the committee of node operators signed up the DAO constitution to study the hack and propose proactive protection schemes, which is then voted on, yaddayadda

I am not a fan of Greg Stahlman and the people that back him and GPL3 personally, you may want to shift your licensing out of this GPL3 realm where ever you can, asap, as the psychopathic NYC money entities behind Stahlman controlling his agenda have completely tangential motives to that of the safenetwork.

I think github is not the ideal place to serve the code of the network! it may get down at any time!

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git is not github just to be clear. Its just an open source software version control program :wink:

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