2015-02-11 I truly believe that access to the internet must not be restrict- ed (unless you do it to yourself only, in order be become more productive). At one remote place, I run an unencrypted wireless network. Where I currently live, this is not possible because of the legal risks for me, caused by the amount of strangers passing by. But there is Freifunk. [0] I knew it quite some years but never took a deeper look. This blogpost [1] brought it to my at- tention again. This message [2] finally made me decide that I want to act now. (How would I ever convince people that it is good and easy and without risks if I wouldn't use it myself?) Here is a summary that might help to understand Freifunk. [3] Unfortunately, I had to realize that Freifunk is hardly *one* de- central net but rather many separate local groups that each have their own flavor of Freifunk. The question of how to deal with the rural area shows Freifunk's problem clearly: They are still too much bound to the scenario of groups within a limited area where everyone knows each other. Different Freifunk flavors are only market segmentation and self praise but they are not the road to this (again) decentral net that we all love to have ... and as well, they are not the road to convice people to partici- pate (active or passive). This is depressing! Freifunk bases on a great idea, but it won't break through as long as everyone prefers to look for himself rather than build the big thing. One cannot emphasis it enough: If you want to make any relevant progress, you must try to automate every task you have mastered. The first step is to tackle the problem once, by own intellect or by own hand. The second step is to understand the problem as that you can solve it again, explain it, and automate the solver. Then you should better teach the solution and automate it, because otherwise you can't leave it behind to tackle new problems. Another such general principle, that every programmer should al- ready know by heart, but apparently this is not the case: Have a single point of definitive information. Don't copy information around. If you need it elsewhere, query it from the definitive source. Create temporary copies if you like, but ensure that it's clear, at anytime to anyone, that this is just an information cache (that we can erase whenever we like) and where the defini- tive information is stored. Writing good software would be so much easier if everyone fol- lowed a handful of decades old rules ... [0] http://freifunk.net [1] http://blog.stefan-betz.net/2015/01/27/freifunk-als-gaeste- wlan/ [2] http://www.ub.uni-dortmund.de/listen/inetbib/msg54874.html [3] http://irights.info/artikel/wlan-fuer-alle-freifunk- ratgeber/24726 http://marmaro.de/lue/ markus schnalke