SEUL Identity Crisis

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

I've been leading the seul project for almost four years now, and I've
seen a lot of different ideas show up and (many of them) disappear
again. We started out as a project to build a better distribution,
since no distribution was targeting the needs of the end-user at the
time. Since then we've moved into the role of providing a good home
and strong vision for end-user-friendly projects, starting many of them
ourselves. But it's time to reevaluate our ends and our means.

Don't worry -- I'm not going to bail on you. I'm not even looking for
a replacement leader. All of you have demonstrated dedication and/or
intelligence associated with a seul project, and I want to get a feel
for what you want to get out of seul and where you want our project to go.

I don't care about end-users. My job here has been to collect people
who care about end-users and try to coordinate them to build something
bigger than any one of them would create on his own. I want to see the
ideas of free software (and the community mentality that comes with it)
spread as widely as possible, and addressing the needs of end-users is
still an excellent way to smooth the delivery of this message to millions
of people around the world.

Some of you have wondered at some point what you're doing associated with
seul -- after all, electronic design projects like geda and opencollector
aren't for end-users, right? I think our original definition of an
end-user is still exactly right: "somebody who uses Linux not to create
more Linux, but for other things." Basically, anybody who isn't a Linux
developer is an end-user. We want to ease the process of designing a
good amplifier just as much as we want to ease the process of starting
a graphical file transfer (well, weighted by the number of users it
will benefit).

But this doesn't mean we should attack all the problems at once. We've
moved from half a dozen projects a couple years ago to over forty,
and there are close to two thousand people associated with seul based
on the mailing lists, but several of the early projects like FreeCASE
still haven't gotten off the ground (and won't, because they don't have
the right people, guidance, and ideas). Should we do something about
these projects, or just let them keep twitching?

The time I spend on seul these days is to set up new projects and
services, and to listen in on the mailing lists and try to keep people
focused and and coordinated and producing things that are actually
useful to the rest of the Linux world.  I also still maintain some
contacts with leaders of other projects, but I've been growing more
slack on that in the last year or so. I've been spending most of my
copious free time [1] lately leading http://freehaven.net, which is a
much more direct application of my skills and interests to shift power
to the people. Yes, I'm a raving cryptoanarchist too. Which leads me to
my next point: licenses.

I think people have the impression that we're not a hardcore free software
group -- that we make compromises whenever they're convenient, rather than
pushing for the most free answer in all cases. A lot of that is from where
we came from originally: several years ago, educational software for Linux
was nonexistent. Any solution at all was better than the gaping void that
we had. Thus seul/edu advocated (and still advocates) all development
of educational software for Linux, commercial or not, nonfree or not.

I've been moving much farther into the RMS camp in the past few years. In
a lot of ways this makes me more narrowminded. One of the examples I
used to use to justify our flexible licensing approach has been WXftp
(now Axyftp). When we first took in the project it had a non-free license,
and over the course of the next year I managed to convince the author to
move to a free license. These days, I wouldn't dream of working with a
project that didn't have a free license. Maybe I'm becoming more picky
with where I spend my time. Maybe the world is changing and it's easier
to say that. But that's my perspective on the license issue.

Which doesn't mean I want to dump seul/edu. I think Doug is doing an
excellent job at maintaining interest and communications between many
different sectors of education, and I think a more radical approach would
harm seul/edu even now. How can I reconcile these disparate ideologies?
What do each of you think, and how do you think seul could most benefit
the world on this issue?

"The end goal of SEUL is to have a comprehensive suite of high-quality
applications (productivity applications as well as leisure/programming
applications) available under the GPL for the Linux platform, as well
as a broader base of educated users around the world who understand why
free software is better." This is what I wrote on the seul-edu freshmeat
editorial, at least, when Doug asked me for a summary. This is what I
want to get out of seul -- what I want to provide for the world. Does this
mesh with our original manifesto, or should we rewrite it? Does this mesh
with what each of you wants? What else do you want, or how do you think
we could focus our efforts to more effectively provide what you want?

I would like to decentralize the long-term planning for seul a little bit
more. I don't have enough time to make seul more useful, and I think that
we need to make some changes in who we are and what we're up to. That
is, I want some more people to step up and take part in deciding where
we're going to go and what we're going to focus on (and also be around to
follow through with it). Would you be interested in taking part in this?

Is there anything else I should be asking or saying here? What have
we been missing lately that would make everything better? Are there
other organizations or companies that we should be working more closely
with? Or are you just happy with seul as long as our apache and pserver
stays up and available, and you don't much care about the rest of the
issues? (This is a perfectly reasonable response.)

Please let me know via personal mail; I will collect the answers and
make a plan from there. (*Don't* group-reply.) And don't worry about
saying things that are politically charged or potentially offending;
I need to know what you actually think.

Thanks,
--Roger



[1] Ha ha. Did I mention I'm in a startup too?

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