[tor-dev] #15060: Decide the fate of MyFamily / prop242 better families

[teor]

> Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2015 09:32:50 -0400
> From: Nick Mathewson <nickm at alum.mit.edu>
> 
>> On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 8:56 AM, Nusenu <nusenu at openmailbox.org> wrote:
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>> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I like prop242 [1] because it doesn't "Nuke MyFamily" [2] but replaces
>> it with a better approach. "Better" in terms of scalability and
>> maintainability.
>> 
>> I don't know of any current 'tools' (except the tor client itself)
>> that use MyFamily data but Virgil's [3] gamification website and
>> compass group-by family feature [4] would depend on it.
>> 
>> So before spending time on features that depends on an uncertain
>> descriptor field, it is probably better to wait till the fate of that
>> property (MyFamily) has been decided.
>> 
>> The reason for this email is to find out when that fate will be
>> decided upon? (expected answer: before tor 0.2.7.x-final is released)
> 
> I don't know that we have a date here, or a consensus that it ought to
> be done.  Whether any changes happen in 0.2.7 here is going to depend
> on whether we've got a solid answer one way or another on the question
> of MyFamily.
> 
> So, what do we think?  I'd say that MyFamily is likely to continue to
> serve a useful purpose, and that removing it entirely would be
> premature given how often people come up with fun new routing and path
> selection and guard selection ideas.
> 
> On the other hand, prop242 is a fair bit of work to do, and I don't
> know whether it will rise to a high enough priority over all the other
> stuff we need to do.  And who knows, maybe somebody will come up with
> a solid argument in favor of removing MyFamily entirely?  It's worth
> thinking about.

I can think of one good social/technical reason to keep MyFamily or similar feature(s):

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.

I've seen this sort of communication a few times, but I'm not sure how frequently it happens:

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."

If the operator complies, they become part of the Tor network.
If they decline or ignore, they are excluded from the Tor network.

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.

teor

teor2345 at gmail dot com
pgp 0xABFED1AC
https://gist.github.com/teor2345/d033b8ce0a99adbc89c5

teor at blah dot im
OTR C3C57B23 349825DE 929A1DEF C3531C25 A32287ED

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