JAWUG

I'm getting really irritated with third parties, commercially interested parties, and even _gasp_ goverment trying to get in on the whole community wireless thing. Out of the woodworks, appear airhive.net and the CSIR COIN project. All wanting in on this Wifi thing. All seemingly wanting "in" on the WUG's and their communities.

What are they thinking? JAWUG started as a three person small Wifi network. These people (Daffy, Lemon etc) got other people interested. An organization was formed with the idea of giving people free peer-to-peer connectivity with Wireless equipment.

I joined up, and in the few months I've been part of JAWUG we've had a lot of discussions, done a lot of research, and I ended up giving JAWUG a stable home on the net. I'm buying a LinksysWRT54G every month. I put them up at people's homes in my community. I share my ADSL. I want to get rid of the IP monopoly.

This brings me to the point of why sponsored "community networks" by entities with "commercial, or government" interest is a bad idea:

JAWUG started working on a local NodeDB with maps that are actually usable and suitable for local conditions. The biggest stumbling block - access to DEM and suburban maps.

Things places like the CSIR has access to. However all attempts to cooperate with them on this have failed. Hell, I couldn't even get past their reception's cluelessness. Let me put the CSIR mentality into perspective. I attended an opensource conference attended by lots of highflying CSIR representatives, about two years ago, where the CSIR speakers "hyped" their interest in OpenSource+ software loudly proclaiming how it would change the landscape of IT in South Africa. They promised that they were going to be donating to OpenSource+ development in South Africa. They shouted that their version of sourceforge.net hosted by the CSIR would be "awesome" and a "birthplace" for South African OpenSource+ software.

Where are we two years down the line? Nowhere. There is no worthwhile "technology crucible" at the CSIR. They're contributing negligible infrastructure to OpenSource+ development in South Africa. Their meraka.org.za (Sotho for 'common grazing ground') is nothing more than a fucking phpNuke driven site devoid of content and facilities. Of course, it features a fuckload of CSIR logos.

And I still can't get DEM data (that my tax money paid for to begin with) unless I pay the CSIR, or pay the Chief Directory of Surveys and Mapping an extortionate fee (even tho the CSIR OSC is supposedly 'participating in the Geographical Information Systems project'). We can get data for free from the United States, but not at a resolution enough to be useful. Yet the CSIR still gets funding, every year, by pulling projects such as COIN, and OSC out of their arses so that it looks nice on their grant requests.

All of a sudden companies like Airhive, the CSIR and people from their COIN are interested. Why, I have to ask?

NewsFlash+: What JAWUG is doing is essentially still against the law. How about you twits go lobbying ICASA to free the restrictions on the frequencies before you start climbing on the community network bandwagon for commercial gain? I'm sure ICASA would be interested to listen to the CSIR as part of their consulting process... AirHive wants to start a billing system for mesh-node internet connectivity, yet they're struggling to understand the basics of 802.11 networking and signalling! What are you thinking ?

How about you start offering some of the essential services required to build a community network, like DEM data, hosting and what not? The stuff we're currently paying for out of our pockets? JAWUG is a group of private citizens doing this thing on their own, paying for it on their own, advertizing and spending hours of development time on firmware and adapting mesh routing software such as OLSR to suit our line-of-sight problems and network topologies. We go to people's houses, to do signal testing, we do everything we can to make this network viable. We share information and research, and our time.

We have a rigid network they claim! We don't do meshing they claim! Geezuz, we're having a hard enough time convincing people to buy the actual hardware, and get connected. We're having a hard enough time getting the nodemapping system in place due to all the restrictions to GIS data. Regardless of that, we actually _have_ a community network. Granted, not huge, but growing day by day.

And it's adapting to the changing conditions as it grows. The social and economic aspects are actually more daunting than the Wireless technology itsself, yet these people apparently want to start jumping into the technology side, and attract venture capital on the basis of an idea!

Let me let you idiots in on a little secret. JAWUG is probably further along the line in implementing, and researching a hybrid meshed/fixed topology than any of you can dream. We're further along the way with custom firmware that addresses issues such as the "hidden node" problem using token-passing MAC layer access. We're further along the way in understanding 802.11 signalling than some of these parties will be in the next two years. We understand the social and economic problems in building a network such as this from experience, not theory. We have a JawugKit, we have relationships with suppliers. And we've done all this with ZERO funding in our spare time.

We have practical experience. Fuck you. We don't need you and your commercial interests. We've winged it ourselves so far. We can do it some more. Bring something tangible to the table, or go do your experiments on your own time and money. Leave JAWUG alone.

It's for geeks, by geeks. Not for commercial entities to be piggy-backed off and exploited. I'm all for sharing information, and open systems, but not off the back of JAWUG's efforts. Contribute tangibly, freely and unencumbered or fuck off.

• http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=21449