On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 07:34:14PM +0100, mick wrote:
We've lined up our first funder (BBG, aka http://www.voanews.com/), and they're excited to have us start as soon as we can. They want to sponsor 125+ fast exits.
Forgive me, but what do they want in return? ("He who pays the piper...")
Part of BBG's job is to make sure that everybody in the world can reach their content for Voice of America, Persian News Network, etc. Certain countries censor those websites, so they need tools like Tor that let people reach their websites anyway.
The individuals we're working with at BBG are sympathetic to the notion that security is an important component of circumvention: https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/articles/circumvention-features.html But when centralized-design tools like Ultrasurf put all their energy into performance and little into security: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/ultrasurf-definitive-review this disparity in performance overshadows the disparity in security, making it harder for them to justify recommending Tor. So they want to make the Tor network more pleasant for their users.
So long as we don't lose track of the fact that anonymity loves company (we need Tor to work well for all sorts of users in all sorts of locations), it's a great match.
--Roger