[Freedombox-discuss] Anonymous Proposals

[Philip Hands]

On Mon, 21 Feb 2011 23:51:13 -0800, Matt Joyce <matt at nycresistor.com> wrote:
> Here's the first of many anonymous proposals.  I am working on trying to
> break down the freedom box project into sections we can chew on.  Too many
> people seem to be leading charges in random directions for lots of different
> reasons.  I think like many of us that we need to clearly define what we are
> doing before we go about defining how we intend to do it.

Firstly, your comment about random directions seems to imply that you'd
like to prevent some people from doing what they feel is most likely to
produce their vision of what the Freedombox should be, because it
doesn't fit in with your (or some future consensus) vision of what the
Freedombox should be -- that's not really how things work around here.

We're not exactly overwhelmed by people doing stuff, so I'd say anyone
that actually feels like doing something should be applauded rather than
discouraged -- who are we (the talkers) to decide what's useful for the
doers to be working on?

Secondly, you appear to be proposing a new project to provide one of the
bits of the jigsaw for the Freedombox you envisage.  That's great, and I
wish you luck with the construction, but I tend to agree with Jonas that
we should be sticking at what we're good at here, and just doing the
integration of the pieces that already exist into a coherent whole.

Feel free to recruit people to the cause of building your new anonymous
whatnot from here or elsewhere, but please don't try to stop people
working on whatever they think is the important bit -- Debian has always
run in many directions at once -- that's how we get to try out most of
the plausible solutions to a problem, and pick one or two of the better ones.

If we end up with two or three distinct incarnations of the Freedombox,
well it may be a bit of a branding disaster, but it'll provide solutions
for more people in the long run, and anyway, one of them will probably
emerge as the definitive Freedombox, and will probably have features and
capabilities that none of us are currently imagining -- better that than
killing people's enthusiasm by telling them where in the problem space
they must work, and so getting nothing.

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
|)|  Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]    http://www.hands.com/
|-|  HANDS.COM Ltd.                    http://www.uk.debian.org/
|(|  10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London  E18 1NE  ENGLAND
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