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mrphs17 karma

During the past 7-8 years, the OTF leadership and the community have been working closely to make sure the funded programs answer the needs of the impacted communities. This is a vital aspect of the work that has resulted in making sure all technology produced under these funds are inclusive, open, and freely accessible by anyone around the world. The sudden purge of OTF leadership gives me no confidence that the new USAGM CEO has any interest in what the community needs. It has been through these collaborative efforts that we've been able to see open, sustainable, and expandable tech to protect people in the most hostile and oppressive environments. 

mrphs17 karma

To piggy back on Xeenarh's answer, the internet is being regulated by open standards that are defined, challenged, tested, and implemented by public working groups such as the ones you can find on Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)'s website. You can read about the process here and join the conversation. This is yet another good example of how we all benefit from open collaboration in tech.

mrphs5 karma

It's also worth to mention OTF's model in spending tax payer's money is exemplary. They are an independent organization with advisory councils that are formed by the members of the community. IMO what's important is that throughout the years, OTF has worked with those who are impacted by its programs to create a reasonably transparent and accountable system to fund open technologies that are available to general public. Look at the OTF annual budget (average ~$15mil) and its impact on the Internet Freedom vs other not-so-transparent models other gov funded entities with much larger budget of ~$50-70 mil. It is important to remember if we're using public money, the code should also be released under public domain.

All that being said, there's no need that the US Gov should be the main entity funding this kind of work. These events show us it is vital to not only diversify the funding sources for both OTF and generally the Internet Freedom community, we should also make sure those who are on the receiving end of these programs, have a say in how the money is being spent.

mrphs4 karma

Isn't it great that we have public interest organizations like Internet Archive for situations like this?

mrphs4 karma

You can also look at their actions. I'm neither inside the organization nor have I ever been. I'm one of those community members that has been working closely with OTF since the early days. The new USAGM leadership has shown 0 appetite to engage with the community members before purging the OTF leadership overnight. If we have had no conversations, how can we be sure they know or understand our concerns?

And since Psiphon was mentioned, I should add, TBOMK, all of the technologies they use to bypass censorship, are open tech and the direct result of the work of internet freedom community. Pluggable Transports (namely meek aka domain-fronting), obfs-ssh, and dns tunneling come to mind. We need funders like OTF to be able to continue the research and development of such crucial technologies in a way that is open, transparent, usable and auditable by the general public.