<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div>Valent,<br><br></div>This is a great project and you have achieved so much already. You mentioned that your project is open source, I am wondering if there is a public codebase. You mentioned that you used VPN, which one? Is there any form of de-centralised system ?<br></div>And why having only 450 users par MeshPoint. Is it possible to see the specs of your hardward? <br><br></div>I would like to learn, and if you won't mine.<br><br></div>Regards Janus<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Apr 30, 2018 at 11:03 AM, Valent Turkovic <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:valent@otvorenamreza.org" target="_blank">valent@otvorenamreza.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Hi,<br>
<span class=""><br>
On Sun, Apr 29, 2018 at 11:47 PM, Juliusz Chroboczek <<a href="mailto:jch@irif.fr">jch@irif.fr</a>> wrote:<br>
> Hi,<br>
><br>
> I've just spent four days in Osijek, a small city in the East of Croatia,<br>
> invited by Valent Turković (in copy of this mail). It was an interesting<br>
> stay.<br>
<br>
</span>Juliusz, it was a blast having you here! I really enjoyed meeting you<br>
and discussions we had were very, very interesting.<br>
You are welcome back to visit anytime, your friends are also welcome,<br>
and your friends of friends are also welcome :)<br>
<span class=""><br>
> For those of you who are not up to scratch in European Geography, the part<br>
> of Croatia that everyone knows about is the west, on the Adriatic gulfn.<br>
> But Croatia also has an inland part, in the east, which is flat and<br>
> agricultural. The region is known as Slavonia (no relation to either<br>
> Slovenia or Slovakia), and the main city is Osijek (pronounced "Osiek");<br>
> the other well-known town there is Vukovar.<br>
><br>
> Valent is the founder (co-founder?) of three projects:<br>
><br>
> 1. Osijek Wireless, a non-profit that puts open access points all over the<br>
> place, both in fixed locations and to support events;<br>
> 2. Otvorena Mreža (Open Network), an informal project that develops<br>
> a number of technologies including a free hardware outdoor router<br>
> running Babel, known as MeshPoint; Otvorena Mreža notably provided<br>
> Internet access to a Syrian refugee camp in Beli Monastir back in 2015;<br>
> 3. Crisis Innovation Lab, a limited responsibility company (for profit)<br>
> that aims to market an outdoor router for crisis situations.<br>
><br>
> The Otvorena Mreža technology stack uses a number of familiar open-source<br>
> technologies, notably Babel for meshing the routers when the need arises.<br>
<br>
</span>Thank you for this overview. Otvorena mreža and Wlan Slovenia have<br>
been working together for over 7 years, and we have made great<br>
progress together. You can check out our live node map here [1]. We<br>
are now in the process of setting up our own nodewatcher server that<br>
will run on <a href="https://nodes.otvorenamreza.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://nodes.otvorenamreza.<wbr>org</a>, and we already have a<br>
separate vpn gateway for our part of the network.<br>
Idea is to have duplicate and redundant systems so if any part of Wlan<br>
Slovenia network has some issues they can fall back to using our<br>
infrastructure, and vice-versa.<br>
<span class=""><br>
> Valent is unfortunately not the best at communicating about his<br>
> activities, and the only website I could find in English is about the<br>
> MeshPoint crisis router. It runs Babel ;-)<br>
><br>
> <a href="https://meshpoint.me/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://meshpoint.me/</a><br>
><br>
> -- Juliusz<br>
<br>
</span>Yes, this is so true. I didn't understand the importance of<br>
communicating vision and mission up until few months ago... I always<br>
thought that you really use terms like "vision" and "mission" when you<br>
wan't to sound smart or when you want to take money from someone :)<br>
<br>
I wrongly thought that "real engineers" don't need to communicate<br>
their vision, they just have an idea and go work on it. But without a<br>
way to communicate your idea to others you are then left alone to work<br>
on your idea and if idea is actually big and important enough there is<br>
actually very small chance that you can do it on your own.<br>
<br>
Best place we have documented our work so far is on Hackaday prize<br>
competition blogs [2] from last year's competition. But we have gone<br>
quite far from that since then.<br>
<br>
There a number of projects (big and small) and corporations (mostly<br>
huge ones) that are trying to address the issue of digital divide and<br>
how to connect next 5 billion people to the Internet. If you have been<br>
keeping an eye on what and how they are doing it you have seen them<br>
failing much more than getting something even off the ground, let<br>
alone making it successful.<br>
<br>
I was asking my self this; if even the biggest corporations, with<br>
almost unlimited resources, with probably some of smartest people on<br>
the planet, best scientists and awesome engineers then is it possible<br>
that a small group of open source geeks, volunteers with almost no<br>
budget can "compete" with them?<br>
<br>
My answer is yes. Not only can we "compete" but we can show them how<br>
this can actually be done. I see two mayor flaws in approaches so far.<br>
<br>
1. What most big corporations say they do and what they are actually<br>
doing is usually not the same. Yes, they wan't to connect next 5<br>
billion people, but all of them want to build some kind of wallgarden<br>
and not to connect people in the most general way possible. This goes<br>
agings internet being more open, and it is closing it down, making it<br>
almost a privately owned network (with corporations as gatekeepers)<br>
instead of a great public good.<br>
<br>
2. All commercial backed entities want to build an infrastructure what<br>
will be used by next 5 billion people. They see anyone connecting to<br>
the network not as a valuable contributor but only as a user. Also<br>
building infrastructure doesn't scale, or at least it scales very,<br>
very poorly - especially in developing countries.<br>
<br>
I have seen examples and I know there is a better way to do it. It is<br>
definitely not to build an infrastructure, because we would need<br>
billions and billions of euros/dollars...<br>
<br>
What we need to build are tools that will enable next 5 billion people<br>
to connect themselves.<br>
<br>
Building tools isn't as sexy or glamorous as building something like<br>
infrastructure that you can show of to others, but it is definitely<br>
only was I see we can connect whole world. But also building only<br>
tools is not enough.<br>
<br>
So the full answer is we need to do both.<br>
<br>
We need to build tools and we need to build infrastructure. But the<br>
main difference is in out approach. We don't build infrastructure with<br>
top to down approach because that doesn't scale, but we build<br>
infrastructure from bottom up. This is only way we can scale things<br>
and actually connect next 5 billion people.<br>
<br>
But building infrastructure and tools is also not enough. We also need<br>
to build our own open source and open hardware wifi routers.<br>
<br>
We can't use off the shelf devices because most of them are getting<br>
more and more closed, they are also change too often so you can't plan<br>
anything with them. Most consumer devices change every few months, so<br>
as soon as they are released they aren't supported in OpenWrt, and few<br>
months later when you get support for them they are already replaced<br>
by a different model or revision.<br>
<br>
As much as doing all of this seams crazy, this is exactly what my team<br>
and I have been doing for last 3 years. And I believe in this so much<br>
that I have also stared a social entrepreneurship company.<br>
<br>
Reason for starting a company was motivated by earning a profit, but<br>
to show that I'm 100% serious and dedicated to this idea. I have put<br>
my money where my mouth is, so all of our (my wife and mine) money is<br>
used to make this happen. We believe we have a good business plan and<br>
I'm sure we will be self-sustainable and be able to support this idea<br>
from profits that we gather., but for now is company if far from being<br>
profitable. Juliusz can tell you that we drive over 25 year old car :)<br>
But all our team members get payed for their contributions, to be<br>
precise, all except my wife Mili and me.<br>
<br>
We are trying to get some EU funding and collect some grants, but I'm<br>
very careful about that. Because most important to us is to have a<br>
self-sustainable business model which would mean that we would stay<br>
independent. Also if we would focus only on getting "free money" from<br>
grants then we would have would to find new source of income once we<br>
deplete current one...<br>
<br>
Getting "free money" could become a honey trap, because some people<br>
and projects that go this route fail after few years. They become very<br>
good at getting free money that they just like it much more (or<br>
overhead is too much) than doing real work, so projects actually stop<br>
doing any real work. We are very conscious of this. So we are only<br>
asking for enough money to help us accelerate our development (hire<br>
few full time people) but we will never ask for so much money that we<br>
feel "safe". I have learned that in order to produce good results you<br>
have to have correct incentives setup.<br>
<br>
And we have seen also how many open source and open hardware projects<br>
fail because enthusiasm wears our after a few years, also life happens<br>
- people get married, get children, and of course then priorities<br>
change. You have to provide for your family and first that goes out of<br>
the picture are hobbies and open source projects that you work on.<br>
<br>
This is why I started a company, to have enough money to pay for<br>
developers to work on open source projects so that they can bring food<br>
to their families.<br>
<br>
This is far too long email, but please let's continue this discussion.<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
Valent.<br>
<br>
[1] <a href="https://nodes.wlan-si.net/map/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://nodes.wlan-si.net/map/</a><br>
[2] <a href="https://hackaday.io/project/10453-meshpoint-wifi-router-for-humanitarian-crisis" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://hackaday.io/project/<wbr>10453-meshpoint-wifi-router-<wbr>for-humanitarian-crisis</a><br>
<div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><br>
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