I think if it ultimately protects customer data in a significant way, I would be for it.
Are you able to share any more detail on how you determined this is the best route? It would be a significant implication for many other pieces of open source software also if so.
(And I say this is someone who just recommended cal.com to someone a few days ago specifically citing the fact that it was open source, that led to increased trust in it.)
I think if you are committed to switching back to open source as soon as the threat landscape changes, and you have some metric for what that looks like, that would be valuable to share now.
I would like to see the analysis that you're referencing around open source being 5-10x less secure.
Open source is one of the main reasons I recommended cal.com to everyone — I just did so yesterday again in fact!
I'm disappointed to hear this especially since I don't think the rationale makes sense, from what I understand of the security landscape, and it also makes me a little more skeptical of cal.com in general.
There is a lot of potential in this. Not just for government democracy, but for also introducing democratic elements into tech/AI policy, when that tech has impact comparable to many governments.
I worked in tech, and after some formative experiences, shifted to working on helping ensuring ensure that tech's impact on society can serve the public interest. But that leaves the question of what "what is the public interest"?
Sortitition / lottocracy / deliberative democracy / mini-publics all roughly refer to the same way to answer that question — providing a representative microcosm with the space to deeply examine an issue, and come to a set of recommendations and decisions on it. Unlike with electoral democracy, it's faster to spin up and experiment with, and it's harder for bad actors to entrench power (elections can be useful, but they're one of many tools in the democratic toolbelt).
I've now started an organization focusing on applying this and other democratic paradigms to decision-making about AI (https://aidemocracyfoundation.org/) as a way to solve a variety of challenging governance problems across the AI stack.
If you're curious about it, our ICML paper goes into more detail: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.09222 .
With all due respect George, I now disagree, even if I did agree in 2012 (when we road tripped together to SXSW; celebrating the destruction of SOPA!). I still think SOPA was terrible! But my broader thinking has dramatically evolved as I learned more about how technology and power interact in society.
You assume a common fallacy that I often bring up on HN — the magical decentralization fallacy — "the mistaken belief that decentralization on its own can address governance problems."
Are you able to share any more detail on how you determined this is the best route? It would be a significant implication for many other pieces of open source software also if so.
(And I say this is someone who just recommended cal.com to someone a few days ago specifically citing the fact that it was open source, that led to increased trust in it.)
I did find the video valuable, for reference for others: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYEPLpgCRck
I think if you are committed to switching back to open source as soon as the threat landscape changes, and you have some metric for what that looks like, that would be valuable to share now.
I would like to see the analysis that you're referencing around open source being 5-10x less secure.