He doesnât want much change, to make SAFE an appropriate solution for the âDigtal Asset Managementâ market does he?
What may need to happen to enable this, however, is some kind of optional secondary tier that sits above the core protocol that supports at least the following:
- The ability to forward-book capacity at a pre-agreed price (i.e. a futures contract)
- Options to stipulate the geographical regions where data is allowed to be held
- Transactional transparency so you can see where your data is stored (i.e. what nodes)
- Auditing to identify when data was retrieved and by who.
I donât think he understands the security implications of asking for the last 3 items. The whole point is that we donât know where the data is physically stored and nor can you tell who is accessing it. In time, I am sure people will understand why though.
The interesting thought that this raises is that corporate structures will be stuck with traditional insecure and expensive cloud solutions, because they will require things that just cannot be gotten from the SAFE Network.
Itâs the thing about this project that most people wonât get till it has changed the entire world landscape: the existing structures and ways of thinking have no way to grasp what a truly decentralized, individual-empowered ecosystem will work like. They, understandably, overlay their view of reality on a technology that fundamentally changes the playing field in ways that donât allow their realities to remain. Talk about a Trojan horse!
Indeed, I think business will want the benefits of SAFE, but will be prevented by legal or internal policy constraints. But they could create their own private SAFEnetwork or even use single safe libraries.
I can definitely see it happening and would be fun to be involved in these types of roll-outs and their inevitable merging back into the worldwide SAFEnetwork.
I was trying to brainstorms these scenarios in this post:
But they could create their own private SAFEnetwork or even use single safe libraries.
Chris, have you seen Sigmoid Solutions, from Scotland by coincidence? 
2014 - Sigmoid Solutions coming soon⌠someone needs to redefine soon I reckon
Is this some dodgy @nicklambert side projectâŚdoes David know about this treachery 
Iâm guessing this was setup because the network was close to going live and then the decision to go to Rust was made.
I would have got away with it if it hadnât been for you pesky community members! (Scooby Doo anyone?)
I wrote the DAM News article referred to at the top of this thread. Iâd like to clear up a few points.
What I have in mind is an optional extension to the SAFE protocol that uses it as its core (e.g. âSAFE Enterpriseâ, or whatever you want to call it). Those that donât wish to use this arenât obliged to and are not disadvantaged if they do not.
What is valuable in an enterprise/corporate context is the redundant distributed storage and encryption elements. The negative points (for that group of users) are the lack of transparency to see to where data is held and the inability to make decisions about the criteria used for selecting storage venues. These are essential because in many large organisations (public and private sector) there are strict rules about where data is allowed to be held (and a burden of proof on the data owner in the event of an audit). These are not just internal policies, some of them are legal ones where organisations are at risk of litigation if they fail to comply.
I accept that these âenhancementsâ are not positive points for everyone (possibly quite the opposite) hence why an optional extension to the core protocol seems like the best way to handle it. Ultimately, if SAFE is going to be widely adopted, either there has to be a campaign to get this legislation changed across multiple jurisdictions and educate numerous IT executives in the process, or an extension protocol is implemented that offers a compromise option, but without invalidating the core proposition. The former is a political campaign with a combined marketing/education element, the latter, an engineering challenge. I know which one I would rather take on.
I acknowledge that to provide this, a storage node might need to expose itself in a way that isnât currently necessary (or perhaps even possible). Again, support for this would be optional. To provide this âserviceâ, it would be reasonable for participating nodes to charge a renewable fee to hold fragments from SAFE Enterprise users (which could be combined with the deposit to forward book capacity at a pre-agreed price â the other issue I mentioned).
Overall, I think SAFE is a good idea and I like it, but it seems that it is at some risk of being plundered by a larger tech interest who will clone it and then strip out the parts that will pose a problem for enterprise users and sell it into that market (and perhaps take the opportunity to load a lot of other unwanted proprietary stuff in at the same time). To avoid that happening, some thought will have to be given to these sort of issues, re-asserting the current benefits alone might be insufficient.
Thanks for writing the article Ralph.
I think the licensing will prohibit this time of thing. Any company cloning (forking) the network would need to carry a GPL (open source license) to the ânewâ network and any derivative works then made from it would also need to carry the same open source license. This would scare most large corporates away. They would also need to write a new authentication mechanism to enable a private network, or a network running within that company that would enable them to restrict access to only their users. In doing so they would be in conflict with the patents held by the MaidSafe Foundation.
Dang I should have thought about thatâŚhow does this relate to companies wanting to run labs prior to full integration?
It would be great to work with a company that was planning on transitioning.
From my viewpoint this is the situation, governments and companies must be bleeding with these massive data leaks in the personal information of employees.
Itâs been mentioned on here previously, that Maidsafe have had contact with the British National Health Service regarding the storage of personal health records.
Itâs good that you were able to see how the network would need to bend to the needs of DAM, but now realize itâs the other way around. Your going to be very busy 
Then they will be disadvantaged when businesses that are not under such constraints start emerging and using SAFE. Also laws can be changed with enough political pressure. Once businesses see the value in SAFE theyâll start lobbying to have laws changed to allow businesses allowed to use it, or they could try to have it banned. But the latter wouldnât really work that well given that everyone will be using it.
It was always known and assumed SAFE might be forked, even that a fork might be made propriety like you describe. Thatâs not the issue nor is that what Maidsafe is trying to prevent. If they want to fork the software then thatâs their choice. Itâs open source software, thatâs part of the deal. But think about what youâre saying: They would fork the software and take out much of what makes it valuable to the populace. Then theyâd load in a whole lot of bloatware on top of it. Whoâs network would you rather use? Corpnet or SAFE? Also their altcoin will be of drastically lower value too as theyâd be a new network, lower population and with a lower quality network. So let them fork the network, they wouldnât be able to compete unless they actually create better product. And if they do create better product we can copy them! And yes the corporates do need to take the GPL into consideration as well.
@chrisfostertv : Indeed, I think business will want the benefits of SAFE, but will be prevented by legal or internal policy constraints. But they could create their own private SAFEnetwork
Yes, I did say thatâŚbut then Nicks silver hammer came down and squashed any hope of greatnessâŚ
[quote=ânicklambert, post:11, topic:7804â]
I think the licensing will prohibit this time of thing. Any company cloning (forking) the network would need to carry a GPL (open source license) to the ânewâ network and any derivative works then made from it would also need to carry the same open source license. This would scare most large corporates away. They would also need to write a new authentication mechanism to enable a private network, or a network running within that company that would enable them to restrict access to only their users. In doing so they would be in conflict with the patents held by the MaidSafe Foundation.
[/quote]
True although this doesnât stop businesses from using SAFE as is. It just stops businesses from forking it and making it private.
@ralphwindsor and @chrisfostertv are absolutely right in what has been said about how companies are required to approach data by law and internal policies. I think these rules are designed for safer data within the confines of the existing centralised approach to data security. Releasing that data is actually safer existing as encrypted fragments on a large global and open network will be something that will take time and is up to us to educate people about.
I think it is extremely dangerous to believe that companies wonât just break the law and lobby the government later, if not just loophole through a law in the first place, or that changes to or subtractions from the safenet code in a fork would necessarily be undesirable to users/companies.
For instance, most people do not care about privacy and especially anonymity. To these people, a maidsafe clone that simply uses physical addresses instead of XOR address would be objectively better than the original maidsafe.
I admit I donât understand this, in light of the following (http://blog.maidsafe.net/category/bitcoin/):
Furthermore, MaidSafe are Open Source with all our code available under GPL3. This means that we donât own it, it is there for everyone to use (and always will be) and can be forked independently from MaidSafe.
It can be forked but no-one could use the fork? Or use it commercially? Iâve been going around and around with this, so could someone explain it to me?
Managed authentication, i.e. the ability to control who accesses your network is an antithima to maidsafe and SAFE network. It is how many large corporates work though. So instead of Freedom and Privacy for individuals this is a mechanism to control people. It is another set of technology and patents separate from SAFE.
Hope that helps.