Title:

Software Freedom in an Online World: Identity Management and Data and
Service Portability

Description:

As no-cost proprietary service providers on the internet proliferate
and their adoption increases, it is important for Free Software
advocates to understand the new challenges to Software Freedom.
A background of the economic, social, privacy, and ethical issues will be given.
Details of new trends, movements, and projects will be described
to explain what is happening and how to get involved.

Declarations of Online Rights

The following are links to documents which make declarations about users' rights online.

The CyberSpace Charter of Rights

I recently came across this CyberSpace Charter of Rights by Stephen Downes, dated from 1999. It seems quite appropriate for the present day. And it would appear we have made little progress in the right direction.

•  http://www.downes.ca/post/184

I copied the body of the Charter below in case the original should ever disappear.  However, the additional commentary at the original location is also quite useful.

The first step to setting up the SharedUniverse software is to set up Drupal. I plan to document this with my own set of screencasts, showing how to set up the specific modules which are used to give Drupal all of the features shown here. Meanwhile I found the following website which shows how to set up a simpler installation of Drupal.

• http://www.howtotuts.com/2008/01/12/how-to-create-a-web-site-using-drupa...

Overview

Free Software gives rise to unprecedented economic realities and possibilities. For the first time in history, significant amounts of economic value are able to be created with near zero variable cost. Software is essentially free to duplicate and run, and it can dramatically benefit its users. This raises new possibilities for the advancement of human good if a way can be made to pay the fixed costs and produce the software in the first place.

The following are organizations, projects, and websites which seem to be like-minded with the SharedUniverse Project in the pursuit of users' freedom.

• http://www.dataportability.org/
• http://www.movemydata.org/
• http://groups.google.com/group/social-network-portability
• http://practicalportability.org/
• http://www.opsn.net/
• http://groups.google.com/group/social-network-portability
• http://diso-project.org/wiki/Main_Page

• http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/08/18/GoogleWorkingOnSocialNetwor...
• http://valleywag.com/tech/brad-fitzpatrick/livejournal-creator-leaves-as...
• http://bradfitz.com/social-graph-problem/
• http://groups.google.com/group/social-network-portability

• Online Computing Freedom - Online Computing Freedom is the ability to choose and change your service provider(s) of virtual world services at will, to take all of your data with you, and to modify or retract the data you have entered from non-favorable service providers. An increase in user freedom means increasing the power of the users and decreasing the power of the service providers. A user who is enjoying Online Computing Freedom is not locked-in to or constrained by a service provider to which he has entrusted some of his data.

Documentation Overview

The documentation of the SharedUniverse Project is primarily in four books maintained online at shareduniverse.net.

The following pages will increasingly contain all of the information necessary to install, configure, and operate the SharedUniverse software.

The following pages will increasingly contain all of the information necessary to use the SharedUniverse software.

Our Mission

The mission of the SharedUniverse project is to protect and enhance each person's Online Computing Freedom in the Virtual World by doing the following:

The Mission of the SharedUniverse Project

• The mission of the SharedUniverse project is to protect and enhance each person's Online Computing Freedom in the Virtual World.

What Problems Are We Trying to Solve?