[Freedombox-discuss] Ubuntu and Freedom Box?

[Jonas Smedegaard]

On Sun, Nov 07, 2010 at 03:44:15PM +0100, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
>Eben Moglen in his seminal talk 'Freedom in the Cloud' (the inspiration 
>behind FB) suggested building 'The Debian GNU Linux Social Networking 
>Stack'.  He also mentions Ubuntu
>
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOEMv0S8AcA#t=40m45s
>
>Having rewatched the vid here's the items he mentions needs to built:

You watched an early talk reflecting on needed tools.  Yes, that talk 
mentioned pieces missing today.

Eben held multiple talks related to cloud computing, however.  Each of 
the talks targeted a different audience, and the pointers on "what to 
do" was clearly refined to target each specific audience.

At the (later!) talk Eben gave at Debconf10, the main message (as I 
interpret it) was that *nothing* needs to be built but instead we (as in 
Debian developers) merely needed to throw together existing inventions 
and make them dead easy to administer when running on cheap embedded 
devices like the SheevaPlug.

So if your passion is in reorganising big corporations currently earning 
by building central logging structures, then go watch the Eben talk 
given to Google - and get involved in Google or similar entities.

And if your passion is in inventing missing pieces of future revisions 
of a FreedomBox, then go watch e.g. the Eben talk at Internet Society, 
and get involved in that project fancying you the most.

And if your passion is in piecing existing inventions together, and 
while at it map out which pieces others might want to invent for future 
revisions, then join this FreedomBox project! :-)


Don't get me wrong: I don't want to turn off enthusiasm - on the 
contrary: I am worried if anyone joining the FreedomBox project seeing 
it as a platform for _inventing_ Free tools. We are slow moving even in 
_consuming_ Free tools that exist today, and I therefore recommend that 
new inventions be developed at hacklabs already oriented towards that.
:-)


Oh, and don't feel second-class if you happen to not fit the label of 
"Debian developer": All things official Debian involves official Debian 
developers, but many others are involved too. And same here: The 
FreedomBox project is a team effort with some Debian developers involved 
and some "outsiders" providing very valuable contributions - be it 
knowledge, opinions, testing, documentation, translation etc.  Some of 
it relevant now, some (like translation) only later.


  - Jonas

-- 
  * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
  * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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