Re: [Userops] What is "userops", and who does it target?

[Christopher Allan Webber]

Stefano Zacchiroli writes:

> On Sun, Apr 12, 2015 at 11:16:11AM -0500, Christopher Allan Webber wrote:
>> This is a good point.  First of all, it's worth noting that "userops" is
>> a vague term, totally undefined at this point, more of a rallying cry
>> for people working on similar issues, but it's probably worth defining.
>
> Thanks Chris, this is an important discussion to have in the early days
> of this mailing list / community.
>
>> Here's attempt one at a definition:
>> 
>>   Userops is about deployment solutions that target users rather than
>>   developers or businesses.
>> 
>> But wait, that's not right.  Many times, developers *are* users, if we
>> think in the "user freedom" style of users.  Sometimes, users are
>> hackers.  So, try two:
>> 
>>   Userops is about deployment solutions targeting user freedom, rather
>>   than developer freedom.
>
> I've thought about this, and there is something in it which strikes me
> as not-quite-right yet.
>
> The debate about how much more empowered "tech-savvy" users *can* be, in
> comparison with "non-tech-savvy" users, is an important one. But I'm not
> sure we should base the "userops" definition on top of that.

You are right... I ought to clarify that I really did not mean (hence my
attempt at definition 2, but obviously I did not get there!) to make
this a developer/non-developer distinction.  Though, I did tier the
target audiences / milestones as such, so I suppose that feeds into it.

But what I really meant about "user freedom" vs "developer freedom" was
the same kind of distinction I've given when talking about increasing
anti-copyleft mentality, which I think comes from a "developer freedom"
focus, which is partly a point at developer wanting to have a lot of
freedom (including to restrict as a method of making income, which we
can debate as not really a "true freedom" maybe, so...) and also concern
about developers working on making tools for other developers but more
or less asking each other to be okay with not releasing each others'
"secret sauce", on the application layer.  "User freedom" on the other
hand means freedom on all layers, including that "secret sauce" layer.

But I think it's true that this terminology is not really clear.  The
fact that I need to spend so much time redefining it amongst an audience
I'm fairly close to isn't a good sign.  So it probably isn't a good
definition.

So, I am open to further definitions!

> My main argument for the above claim is that, in a centralized world,
> tech-savvy users are not much more empowered than non-tech-savvy ones.
> Consider the case in which hackers are stuck using some proprietary
> cloud stuff (no matter the *aaS service model), of which nothing is
> freely distributed, nor suitable Free Software replacement exist. Those
> hackers can not, no matter their technical abilities, deploy the same
> infrastructure (or a similar one) on their own servers, and set
> themselves free from the centralization grasp.  Sure enough, they are
> hackers, so they can sit down and rewrite from scratch a Free Software
> replacement, whereas non-tech-savvy users cannot. But that's basically a
> truism, which always applies, and does not lead us anywhere IMO.

That's true.

> A counter proposal (not very much fleshed out as of now) of mine would
> be to base the userops definition on the kind of *applications* that
> should guarantee freedoms to users.

Well, this list did start out around the aim of talking about deployment
after I gave a talk on deployment and people said we needed a space to
continue discussion.  We can expand its scope to talking about other
issues as well, and maybe we'll find that there is no deploying freedom
without accomplishing the other issues anyway.

There used to be other venues for talking about network freedom and
disappearing user freedom in a highly networked space; the autonomo.us
mailing list comes to mind, but for whatever reason that seemed to have
tapered off.  I'm okay with the userops list filling that need, as long
as we look at the main picture about getting users being able to deploy
and run applications in an autonomous (heh) way as a way out from our
fairly cloudy (heh again) present!

At any rate, I'm certainly interested in discussing whether by focusing
on those applications that guarantee users freedom that this will
effectively solve the problems that people are hitting with deployment.
Will it?  We are starting to have a reasonable set of applications that
try to solve user freedom issues, but there seems to be a fairly
fundamental problem that people just can't run them very easily.  It's
no good indication that I'm pushing for people being able to run their
own programs and control themselves, but I become weary of the thought
of running network-freedom-oriented applications on servers... even my
own!  That is no good sign.

But you address that further so let me get back to it...

> Today, it's pretty clear to me that we know how to set free users of
> classical desktop applications that require very little communication
> with other peers to work. We might not be there yet for a lot of use
> cases, but we (developers) basically know how to do that. We also know
> which deployment model works well for users (package managers and/or
> "app stores") and enable them to easily install/upgrade/remove
> applications. Arguably, we also have a decent market share here, at
> least in comparison from where the Free Software movement started
> decades ago.

We have a good sign on how to free users on desktop applications and
what deployment models work reasonably well, I agree.  But we don't in
the... oh you're getting to that.

> The situation is much different when we look at "distributed
> applications", where communication among remote peers is key. There we
> neither have a decent market share, nor we know how to decently develop
> Free Software replacements, nor we are sure about the most appropriate /
> easy to use deployment models.
>
> So, if anything, I'm inclined to think that the userops mission should
> be framed in terms of "how can we achieve wide-spread user freedoms for
> distributed applications, similar to what we have achieved for desktop
> applications". That way of seeing things is absolutely neutral to the
> user / developer distinction, and I think that's how it should be.

Okay, so I like this perspective!  Maybe "userops" is, in a certain
sense, a place for discussing the plumbing of making the autonomo.us
type future of yore we have dreamed actually possible, something people
are actually running comfortably.

And I agree that replacing the user/developer distinction with something
else is a good one.

(By the way, I've registered userops.org if we ever wanted to put
something on it, including such a definition / mission?  But maybe
that's getting ahead of ourselves. ;))

> The main difficulty will be defining properly what a "distributed
> application" is. There lies the devil. Because, e.g., mainstream social
> network are not "distributed" in the classical sense, then you need to
> pick one between "distributed" and "federeted", etc etc etc. But
> agreeing (or not :-)) that this is the main angle to focus on would be
> an useful step forward, I think.

Indeed!

> Thanks for starting this debate (and for this list!),
> Cheers.

Thanks for your helpful and insightful feedback, Zack!
 - cwebb