<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div>Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2015 09:32:50 -0400</div><blockquote type="cite"><span>From: Nick Mathewson <<a href="mailto:nickm@alum.mit.edu">nickm@alum.mit.edu</a>></span><br><span></span><br><blockquote type="cite"><span>On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 8:56 AM, Nusenu <<a href="mailto:nusenu@openmailbox.org">nusenu@openmailbox.org</a>> wrote:</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>Hash: SHA512</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span></span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>Hi,</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span></span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>I like prop242 [1] because it doesn't "Nuke MyFamily" [2] but replaces</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>it with a better approach. "Better" in terms of scalability and</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>maintainability.</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span></span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>I don't know of any current 'tools' (except the tor client itself)</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>that use MyFamily data but Virgil's [3] gamification website and</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>compass group-by family feature [4] would depend on it.</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span></span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>So before spending time on features that depends on an uncertain</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>descriptor field, it is probably better to wait till the fate of that</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>property (MyFamily) has been decided.</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span></span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>The reason for this email is to find out when that fate will be</span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>decided upon? (expected answer: before tor 0.2.7.x-final is released)</span><div style="display: none;"><br></div></blockquote><span></span><br><span>I don't know that we have a date here, or a consensus that it ought to</span><br><span>be done. Whether any changes happen in 0.2.7 here is going to depend</span><br><span>on whether we've got a solid answer one way or another on the question</span><br><span>of MyFamily.</span><br><span></span><br><span>So, what do we think? I'd say that MyFamily is likely to continue to</span><br><span>serve a useful purpose, and that removing it entirely would be</span><br><span>premature given how often people come up with fun new routing and path</span><br><span>selection and guard selection ideas.</span><br><span></span><br><span>On the other hand, prop242 is a fair bit of work to do, and I don't</span><br><span>know whether it will rise to a high enough priority over all the other</span><br><span>stuff we need to do. And who knows, maybe somebody will come up with</span><br><span>a solid argument in favor of removing MyFamily entirely? It's worth</span><br><span>thinking about.</span><br></blockquote><div><br></div>I can think of one good social/technical reason to keep MyFamily or similar feature(s):<div><br></div><div>It provides a useful mechanism for the Tor relay community to distinguish between Sybils, technically capable enthusiastic new operators, and operators who can't/won't maintain their relays.</div><div><br></div><div>I've seen this sort of communication a few times, but I'm not sure how frequently it happens:</div><div><br></div><div>Someone says: "Thanks for signing up N Tor relays, please add MyFamily to each of them so we don't choose any of them in the same path."</div><div><br></div><div>If the operator complies, they become part of the Tor network.</div><div>If they decline or ignore, they are excluded from the Tor network.</div><div><br></div><div>It would be a shame to lose such a useful technique for weeding out the bad onions, even if it relies on us finding them in the first place.<br><br><div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">teor</span></div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">teor2345 at gmail dot com<br>pgp 0xABFED1AC<br><a href="https://gist.github.com/teor2345/d033b8ce0a99adbc89c5">https://gist.github.com/teor2345/d033b8ce0a99adbc89c5</a><br><br>teor at blah dot im<br>OTR C3C57B23 349825DE 929A1DEF C3531C25 A32287ED</span></div></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div></div></body></html>