[Freedombox-discuss] Introductions

[paxcoder]

On 08/29/2010 04:58 AM, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> On la, 2010-08-28 at 21:11 +0200, paxcoder wrote:
>    
>> We are settled on distributed storage.
>>      
> Are we? Can you provide a URL to the mail message where we decided
> that?
>    
I think the general opinion is distributed storage instead of clouds, 
because it's in accordance with the aim of the project. Would you 
disagree? I'm not sure how keeping your data at the third party plays 
into this whole "keep your own data" thing, no offense.
> Did we also decide that we can not, must not, support the option for a
> user to buy online storage space from a suitable provider they trust
> more than an experimental distributed online storage system?
>    
You'd have to define "support". I know I'm not coding a cloud client, 
whether someone else wants too, they are free to do that. But all 
developers should have a say whether such a thing would be included in 
the official distro or not. In the spirit of the original talk, though, 
I would say we're trying to substitute both SaaS and other services 
provided by third parties with our own.
> Is there a decision that we must be incompatible with business models
> for providing services to freedom box users, especially when those
> business models are fully compatible with freedom, since it would be
> really unfortunate for anyone to be able to fund development of the
> boxes by running a business around it?
>    
Businesses are just not what we should focus on at this point. It's not 
that we're against "compatibility with business models" - let companies 
build their businesses around our software if they want, there's no 
problem with that. But it's also not one of our goals to make software 
for them (goals are listed at the wiki), it's to make an affordable box 
do things that will give more freedom to the people. Cooperation with 
companies is desirable, but it should not be allowed to change the 
purpose of the project. I say worry about what companies want to use our 
project for later, start building a FreedomBox now.
> I must be missing all the committee meetings. Maybe I should apply to be
> on the Freedom Box Foundation Board at the next Annual General Meeting.
>    
Sarcasm on the mailing list, and not a single line of code yet. Your 
opinion is noted, and addressed. Do you really want us to cast our votes 
now (and if so, how)? Or can we simply start working on the goals set at 
Debconf 10 first, please?

Thank you.
--Luka Marčetić