Governance

[creativecuriosity]

Meta issues, such as governance, while not existing as a matter of technical consensus, do have the potential to negatively affect the network and software. We are, after all, developing ultimately for a wet-ware interface.

It might make sense to delineate very specific laws concerning what exactly this adventure means.

Making promises concerning priorities and core beliefs to users can only help to apply Occam's razor to any future debates - a CLAM network with fewer assumptions is more secure.

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Thoughts? Additions? Deletions?

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The CLAM Constitution

• Right of Universal Use
  • Every person, without exception, has the right to universal use. No change to the network shall prevent the network from functioning on commonly available and accessible technology. The CLAM network is decentralized and accessible to the common person and shall remain accessible to the common person.
• Right of Free Use
  • Every person, without exception, has the right of free use. No change to the network shall restrict, prevent or exclude a participant or group of participants from accessing the network. The CLAM network is universally accessible and shall remain universally accessible.
• Right of Private Use
  • Every person, without exception, has the right to privacy. No change to the network shall require or incentivize the identification of participants in the network. The CLAM network is supportive of private use and shall remain supportive of private use.
• Right of Source Use
  • Every person, without exception, has the right to source use. No change to the network shall obfuscate or restrict the ability to review the logic and technology of the network. The CLAM network is open source and shall remain open source.

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Equally important is to establish an efficient methodology to review and implement changes - similar to the Bitcoin BIP process.

[creativecuriosity]

Re: https://github.com/nochowderforyou/clams/issues/221 @dooglus In general I don't think it's possible for a decentralised system to be "universally available" (#218: The CLAM network is universally accessible and shall remain universally accessible) without also being vulnerable to DoS attacks (DoS'ers are people too). The way to prevent DoS is to make it too expensive for the attacker to carry out his attack. In doing so you likely also make it too expensive for the poorest member of the community to use the system.

The intent was to express that a core principle of the CLAM project is, and should remain, decentralization. i.e. Design decisions which necessitate a centralized server to maintain throughput do not embody the principles of the project. Better an expensive network that anyone can join without permission on common hardware than a cheap network that is centralized. If we wanted a centralized solution we should have forked Redis or memcache - they are more efficient.

Is there some qualifying or different language that you can suggest that might better encompass that ideal?

If I can get some agreement on principles, I would like to add the resulting document to the website and close the issue.

[creativecuriosity]

Closing this issue and posting the above language to the website.

If there are additional suggested changes to the language of the above; it can be dealt with separately.