Open questions

The questions

How does the very first node start?

Joining needs a maker, a supporter and a maintainer to say yes, and then a vote of the members. But on day one, a new node has none of them. Someone has to start it, maybe the network body or a founding maintainer, and that needs a clear written rule.

How do new co-operatives, chapters or local groups take in their first members? And how do they stop the founder from holding on to control?

Who sits on the network body?

We see two options. Each node could send one of its maintainers, so its own members run the network. Or the network could appoint people. We’d like to know what happens in practice.

How do federations and networks fill their boards? What happened when a board stopped listening to its members?

What should the founding principles say?

Every node should rest on the same founding principles, the charter. We haven’t written them yet.

Founding principles that groups actually followed for years, ones that groups quietly ignored, and what made the difference.

How should the whole network count votes?

Should each node get one vote, or each person? A big node and a small node would feel very differently about that.

Real examples of both, and what happened to the smaller groups under each.

How long should people have to object?

When someone asks to join, the rest of the node gets time to object. We’ve said 7 days for now. That might be too short where people go offline for days. It might also need to differ for each role.

How do groups that rarely meet, or that span time zones, make sure everyone gets a fair chance to speak up?

How long does a maintainer serve, and how do you replace one?

We know maintainers should serve for a set time and that the node can vote one out. We don’t know how long that time should be, or how many votes it should take.

Term lengths and recall rules in volunteer-run groups, and what led people to burn out.

Who hears an appeal?

Anyone removed from a node can appeal. But to whom? The node itself, a neighbouring node, or the network body?

How small self-run groups handle appeals, and which ways people actually trusted.

How does a node work when its members are in different countries?

A node like the Norway and Mauritius example has people living under different laws and in different time zones. They may never meet.

How spread-out groups decide who's a member, and how they build trust between people who share no place.

How can a node manage what it shares, fairly and where everyone can see it?

A node will share things: tools, space, hardware. Everyone should be able to see what’s there and who used it, without one person keeping the books.

How co-operatives, community groups and open-source projects keep shared resources visible and fair, and where it broke down.

What else could people use Clansurf for?

So far we’ve written up one use case, a single street. We think there are more, like people sharing computing they own. We’d like to find them from real needs, not guess them.

Needs in your area that people meet today through a platform, or don't meet at all, and who nearby already makes or provides what's needed.

What can the tech people already own do for their neighbours?

Phones, radios, a spare computer, a solar panel. Clansurf works with tech people own, so we need to know what’s actually there.

What people in your area own and use every day, what it takes to run, and what breaks.

What goes wrong with radios in real life?

Nodes on a street use LoRa radios to talk to each other without the internet. No node is running yet, so we don’t have field experience of our own.

First-hand stories from anyone who has run a LoRa mesh outdoors: range, weather, power, keeping it running.