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# About Blee: enveloping our own autonomy directed digital ecosystem
Mohsen BANAN (he/him) - Pronunciation: MO-HH-SS-EN
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Emacs has long been recognized as the ultimate integration platform, enabling
the creation of an unparalleled user environment. In 2010, Tomohiro Matsuyama,
captured this concept crisply:
"The reason why Emacs platform is good is that it cooperates with OS,
not because it is good by itself."
Building on this idea, Blee (ByStar Libre-Halaal Emacs Environment) can be seen
as yet another Emacs re-distribution, akin to Doom Emacs or Spacemacs. However,
Blee is distinct. While Doom Emacs is multi-platform oriented, Blee is paired
exclusively with Debian — and on mobile, with Termux-Android. While Doom Emacs
is Emacs-centric, Blee is digital ecosystem-centric.
To further elucidate Blee, let’s break down the subtitle of this presentation:
"Enveloping Our Own Autonomy Directed Digital Ecosystem With Emacs."
- **"Enveloping":** Blee is designed to fully integrate and encapsulate usage of
an entire digital ecosystem.
- **"Our Own Autonomy-Directed Digital Ecosystem":** In contrast to the
proprietary American ecosystems of Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Amazon,
Blee is part of *the Libre-Halaal ByStar Digital Ecosystem*. ByStar is ours.
By\* challenges the existing proprietary American digital ecosystem while
operating concurrently alongside it. ByStar's primary offerings are tangible
autonomy and genuine privacy on a very large scale. ByStar represents a moral
inversion of the proprietary American internet services model. By\* is about
redecentralization of internet application services.
Some might dismiss ByStar as an ambitious, utopian vision. In response, I’ve
authored a book titled:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
<!-- <img align="right" height="230" src="https://github.com/mohsenBanan/mohsenBanan/blob/main/images/frontCover-1.jpg"> -->
<p align="center"><font size="+3"><b>Nature of Polyexistentials:</font></b></p>
<p align="center"><b>Basis for Abolishment of the Western Intellectual Property Rights Regime</b></p>
<p align="center"><b>And Introduction of the Libre-Halaal ByStar Digital Ecosystem</b></p>
<p align="left">On Line:   <a href="https://github.com/bxplpc/120033">PLPC-120033 at Github</a> -- <a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8003846">DOI </a>
--- PDF: <a href="https://github.com/bxplpc/120033/blob/main/pdf/c-120033-1_05-book-8.5x11-col-emb-pub.pdf">8.5x11</a> --
<a href="https://github.com/bxplpc/120033/blob/main/pdf/c-120033-1_05-book-a4-col-emb-pub.pdf">A4</a>
<br>
US Edition Book Prints At Amazon:   <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1960957015"> US </a> -- <a href="https://www.amazon.fr/dp/1960957015"> France </a> -- <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1960957015"> UK </a> -- <a href="https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/1960957015"> Japan </a>
  (424 pages --- 6 x 0.96 x 9 inches)
<br>
International Edition Book Prints:   <a href="https://jangal.com/fa/product/252689/nature-of-polyexistentials"> Iran (Jangal Publishers) </a>
  (406 pages --- 23.5 x 16.5 cm)
</p>
<p align="left">Comments, Feedback:  
<a href="mailto:plpc-120033@mohsen.1.banan.byname.net">plpc-120033@mohsen.1.banan.byname.net</a>
</p>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Blee and Emacs are integral parts of ByStar.
Analysis of digital ecosystems is inherently interdisciplinary, and so is my
book. But, in this presenation, I won't be delving much into the philosophical,
ethical, moral, societal, and social dimensions of the book. This presentation,
focuses on the technical aspects of ByStar and Blee, specifically through the
lens of Emacs users and developers.
Blee’s approach to integration differs from traditional Emacs culture in three
key ways:
1. Avoiding the "Curse of Lisp": While Emacs culture emphasizes doing
everything in Lisp, Blee consciously avoids this pitfall.
2. Cultivation of Best-of-Breeds: Emacs folklore tends to follow a laissez
faire approach, but Blee is disciplined around cultivation of selected best
of breeds.
3. Digital Ecosystem Orientation: Unlike traditional Emacs, which is
component-focused, Blee is designed in the context of the entirety of our
own digital ecosystem.
In ByStar, much of the integration occurs outside of Emacs, through a framework
called BISOS (By\* Internet Services OS). BISOS builds on Debian to provide a
unified platform for developing both internet services and software-service
continuums. BISOS and Blee are intertwined.
Now, in 2024, I am advancing Matsuyama concept with specificity:
"The reason why Emacs platform is good is that it facilitates creation of
integrated usage environments like Blee, which cooperate with Debian, BISOS
and ByStar."
An early version of BISOS and Blee is available for public use and
experimentation. To get started with BISOS, Blee, and ByStar, visit
<https://github.com/bxgenesis/start>. From a virgin Debian 12 installation
("Fresh-Debian"), you can bootstrap BISOS and Blee in one step by running the
raw-bisos.sh script. It produces "Raw-BISOS" which includes "Raw-Blee". You
can then customize Raw-Blee to create different parts and aspects of your own
ByStar DE.
I welcome your thoughts and feedback, especially if you experiment with Blee,
BISOS, ByStar, and the model and the concept of Libre-Halaal Polyexistentials.
About the speaker:
Mohsen Banan is a software and internet engineer. He was one of the principal
architects of the Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD) network specifications. He
is the primary author of two Internet RFCs. He is the principal architect of the
ByStar Digital Ecosystem and BISOS and Blee. The software and internet services
that he publicly offers all conform to the definition of Libre-Halaal Software
and Libre-Halaal Internet Services. All of his public writings are web published
and unrestricted. He has never applied for a patent. As an expert witness he has
assisted in legal efforts involving invalidation of a number of patents. He has
been using Emacs since 1986.
Previous Talks: <https://emacsconf.org/2021/talks/bidi> and
<https://emacsconf.org/2022/talks/mail>
# Discussion
## Questions and answers
- Q: You mentioned that there's two editions: one aimed at
westerners, and one for worldwide readers. I'm from Brazil, which
edition would you recommend? It's a western country, but you
didn't make the distinction exclusive for the second edition, so I
thought it would be better to ask.
- A: For everybody listening to this conference, the
**international** edition is the right choice.
- It features more aggressive stance against intellectual property
(being linked specifically to the American culture)
- There are pieces in the book where the typical American audience
might be offended
- ...But if your skin is thick enough to deal with reasonable
criticism, the international edition for you.
- Q:Thank you for this talk! How does your perspective interface with
works such as Yanis Varoufakis' Technofeudalism?
- A: Not familiar with the book.
- There is a lot of global growth and collective understanding
towards the notion that the direction we're headed in (i.e.
American digital ecosystems) is dangerous.
- We should revisit the entirety of the strategy.
- \[For the questioner\] Can you clarify? (I'll write to you :) )
- Q:To what extent do you agree that the introduction of proprietary
systems in education creates an environment for exploitation while
at the same time diluting the learning value of the curriculum? My
computing education at school amounted to learning how to use the MS
Office suite - ie, the opposite of lasting, open knowledge.
- A: The idea is that teaching and learning should be
unrestricted, such as the Muslim/Iranian saying: "Passing along
the learning is the tax on having learnt".
- "Being used as part of education"
- Q:As a specific example of how "ownership is not clean", look at the
Star Trek Picard series: they continuously asked Patrick Stewart to
come do another Star Trek series but he wouldn't because Star Trek
changed from what it used to be, at least until it they came up with
a series that honored what Star Trek used to be. Does this
intersect?
- A: Not sure if I fully get the point.
- On my criticism of the FOSS movement:
- The idea is that we have jumped on the FOSS movement and
recognized it as an alternative, but we haven't looked
deeply enough to see if our own philosophy and movement have
problems.
- The problems that I note is that the FOSS movement does not
recognize clearly and explictly that the entirity of the
intellectual property system is flawed.
- It's only now that we are seeing the FOSS movement is
broader than the Western world.
- The labels of Free Software and Open Source are not
necessarily correct.
- We are not paying enough attention to establishing
relationship with society.
- There's a whole chapter in the book dedicated to this topic.
- \[To the questioner\] Clarification please
- The point of the question was even though a media company
owned Star Trek they couldn't do what they wanted with the
series if you involve other people. The question was also
open ended so you did answer it by taking it where you
wanted it to go.
- Q: I am involved in Politics in my country, my party is very
sympathetic to FOSS ideals and I've been pushing for better policy
with regards to public procurement. Do you have any recommended
reading materials designed for such an audience?
- A: The idea is that my own book would be an excellent resource. I'd say the bibliography in the book contains various other pointers that could be quite useful.
- Q: How can we promote a culture of more active thought with regard to
the societal impacts of ethical and philosphical choices made in the
wider FOSS community?
- A:
## Notes
- Am I too young to understand? Maybe I need to read the book
- Aah I get it!! IPR forces single ownership of what are
polyexistentials
- From YouTube: gnome is not halal. gnome is western
- Did he elaborate on how GNOME is haram by his
definition? Oh, sorry, nevermind, the quote on GNOME isn't from
the speaker.
- interesting. and - obviously - radical thoughts. not sure
about if Americanism critique is the core, but moreover a general
critique of (extreme) capitalism mechanism. but that's certainly
not merely a "Western" issue. imo
- Okay, I have to admit, I love this
political/philosophical dissection of software's impact on
society. Very interesting.
- It's like an extension of the GNU (free software)
thought. I think I need more literature on that topic\...
- Essentially a free, open-source and
privacy-respecting ecosystem akin to those provided by the big
tech companies (Google, Microsoft, Apple).
- Great talk on Polyexistentials. Awesome to see
EmacsConf including international voices .
- He hit the nail on the head: This point has been on
my mind: Capitalism creates artificial scarcity and then
manufactures junk to fill it. How can that be overcome? So that we
get software that is actually needed \...
- I don't know if this is a problem
with Capitalism which can be many things to different people to
the point the term might not mean much. I have a problem with
people competing through corrosion rather than compition. For
example google is restricting access to google drive api making
everybodys app but googles worse. Capitilism "not fake
Capitalism" predospes a free market which would limit this
- The blee panel actually is cool!
- Very thought-provoking talk!
- Dovetailing nicely / with other talks from EmacsConf 2024
- Working **on** Emacs vs working **for** Emacs
- Peter mentioned "too much choice"
- Mixing org-mode with programming languages
- org-babel has successfully integrated org-mode with all
kinds of languages
- Has happened within the context of literature programming
- cf. Literate Programming for the 21st Century (EmacsConf
2024)
- Traditional programming mixed with org-mode
- polymode is key to that
- Several concepts which were introduced like "dynamic blocks
everywhere" and "COMEEGA" would probably require other talks
- Probably my favourite talk of the event
- Wonderful talk!
- This presentation gets better and better.
- I don't know if this is a problem with
Capitalism which can be many things to different people to the point
the term might not mean much. I have a problem with people competing
through corrosion rather than compition. For example google is
restricting access to google drive api making everybodys app but
googles worse. Capitilism "not fake Capitilism" predospes a free
market which would limit this
- going to go checkout the book later as half way
thorugh the talk i got term overload
- Great talk, great software.
- Thank you for the presentation Mosen.
- while this heavy topic is certainly a major critique of
capitalism as such, i certainly would not mix in here any sort of
religion-related things. hence leveraging "Halaal" for this is
quite disturbing.
- I skipped the whole thing because I suspected it would just annoy me for no other reason than that one term. (Maybe this was excessively prejudicial of me, but seriously, not my religion, I suspect I'd be unwelcome.) (maybe this is an English-specific thing, Do Not Mention Religion, because last time we mentioned it we had centuries of religious wars.)
- Hard topic, it feels like we are in an era of closing open-source software, eg redhat
- YouTube comment: Phenomenal thinking. I will be reading the Nature of Polyexistentials
- YouTube comment: Dude was cooking with this one 🔥🔥🔥🔥
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