Re: Help Iranian dissidents

[Eugen Leitl <eugen@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 07:02:32PM -0400, Bill McGonigle wrote:

> > Step 2) Wait for Tor Project to do the technical work.
> 
> There could be at least four reasons:
> 
> 1) they don't believe it.
> They're just throwing ideas at the wall, to see who will do free work
> for them.  They wouldn't spend a dime of their own money to do it.

I don't know who "they" are, but the only way to cook up a bunch
of throwaway Tor nodes and distribute them for creative installation
is someone who has the spare cash to buy a few hundred to thousand
pieces of hardware, and give them away. In the case of Sheeva, that's
some 10 kUSD for a 1000 units (probably less due to mass rebate).

I don't have such money, but since it was my idea, and Ubuntu already
supports the Sheeva I'm willing to plug an USB drive and set up a self
hosting environment to build a Tor package or a system image based on
Ubuntu if someone sends me a Sheevaplug.

However, it would be probably trivial to do that for a seasoned Tor
developer, and it's also an issue of trust. Would you accept system
images from random strangers?
 
> 2) lack of capital
> They think it's a good idea, but don't have the funds to
> allocate/acquire the manpower to get it done.  If only they were better
> at raising money they'd get it done.
> Summer of Code, perhaps other outlets for these folks?
> 
> 3) ideological inefficiency
> They think it's a tor feature, Tor Project alone should do it, even if
> they have the capital and believe the business case.  I trust in
> individual self-interest too much to believe this is real.
> 
> 4) Confusion
> They'd do it themselves but it's not obvious what they need to do.
> Being opaque, they work on other things first.
> I suspect this is possible, so I started a wiki page that could, in a
> future form, be useful to this class:
>   https://wiki.torproject.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/EmbeddedTips

That is an excellent idea.

> It would be great if those with experience could add info/links here,
> especially architectural elements with broad commonality among potential
> targets.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org";>leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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