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0 pointsjancsika8y ago0 comments

> a) do you imagine anarchism to be a uniquely strong hindrance

The hindrance is a developer reflexively prioritizing criticism of some centralized part of a design without fully understanding the design, because "centralized" necessarily equates to "bad" or "wrong."

Some of the back-and-forth with Moxie over federating Signal looked suspiciously like a case of that. I see a lot of similar discussions wrt FLOSS privacy/security software. To the extent that anarchy is responsible for the ideological bent that "centralized" is "bad,", I'd say yes, it's a problem that wastes a substantial amount of time and effort.

> b) do you consider that hindering of software development to be a sufficient issue to object to anarchy.

Maybe you can help me come to a conclusion. Where does the ideological bent come from that "centralization" equates to "bad" in FLOSS privacy software?

For all I know, it could be that most anarchists are opportunistic and savvy in how they use computers, and it's only the anarchist software developers who have the ideological bent I described.

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Avshalom8y ago· 1 in thread

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Although again none of the concerns below are necessarily anarchy specific nor do they necessarily (this is a statement of hypothetical, not a statement of fact: as far as I know we have no data in any direction about anything) have an significant effect on software development when compared to almost any other concern, source of friction or limitation

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I'm at best anarchist adjacent in as much as the circles I run in are concerned so I am not the one to diagnose them all (and there's an enormous variety of them)

But I would suspect that they see history as pointing to centralized architectures as significantly more vulnerable to being corrupted/controlled. And in many cases unauditable or unaccountable until it is too late (lavabit seems relevant here).

In addition to that vulnerability centralization puts broad power in concentrated hands which is kind of a necessary precondition for hierarchy and it easier to head things off at the pass then start down the slope and hope people don't succumb to momentum.

And worrying about architecture need have no effect on non-network oriented software, which outside of communication software is basically all of it if you haven't drank the SaaS koolaid.

jancsikaOP8y ago

> But I would suspect that they see history as pointing to centralized architectures as significantly more vulnerable to being corrupted/controlled.

But unless there is a workable decentralized alternative the point is moot.

I don't see any good reason to avoid using Wikipedia just because it is centralized. I don't see any good reason for Snowden to have avoided using Lavabit (nor its other 400,000 users). Again, I'd speculate that anarchists who aren't technically-minded would probably agree by their actions.

Moreover, well-designed, stable decentralized alternatives like git seem to have no problem overtaking their centralized counterparts. So what is the use of equating "centralized" with "bad?"

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