[Freedombox-discuss] Kickstarter's initial goal was reached

[Thomas Lord]

Bdale, this sounds great and also leaves me wondering 
something:

> What you need to realize is that the "Free Software project" side of
the
> freedom box vision, which is what most folks here can easily identify
> with and want to participate in, is only one part of the equation.  If
> we really want the results of such a project to materially improve
> freedom in the world, then eventually we need people everywhere to be
> able to walk into a local technology hardware provider and be able to
> just buy a pre-loaded freedom box off the shelf.  At least as easily
as
> they can buy a wireless access point or router, or a notebook
computer.
> And hopefully as easily as they can acquire a mobile phone!


Fantastic but it raises this paradox I've been trying to
wrap my head around.   Maybe its good to raise this earlier 
rather than later: 

We want to (quickly but also in a lasting way) distribute
and decentralize personal computing and communication.
We want it, with the help of freeboxfoundation to get really
big and very accessible.

How do we prevent the freedom box project (both the software side
and the larger "get it on the shelves" side) from *itself* becoming
exactly the kind of centralized point of control we want to get
away from?

I am worried about problems like these: 
    ~ shouldn't we try to avoid having too many users get
      their software stacks from exactly the same entity?
    ~ shouldn't we especially be worried about too many users
      getting automated or semi-automated updates from the 
      same entity?
    ~ if all of the developers of the core stack are under
      one umbrella, isn't there a non-ignorable risk of 
      overt or covert political or economic interference with
      that project?

Of course there is a flip side.   A risk of the opposite situation:
    ~ suppose that freedombox development and production really
      is distributed and decentralized.   Perhaps we should call
      this situation "freedomboxES" rather than "freedombox" to 
      emphasize that while boxes of different makes and variant 
      stacks might inter-operate, there is no singular, privileged
      source defining what a freedombox is or controlling what you
      get when you buy one.

      Suppose all that - then - how can average people who see these
      products on a shelf in a store have any sense of which ones to 
      trust?



> Arranging for that to happen requires a lot of things beyond just
coming
> up with a great technical architecture, and writing and assembling
> together great software.  It also requires educating, building
> relationships with, and negotiating with senior technologists and
> business decision makers in top-tier companies in the IT industry.
And
> *that* would be, at best, *very* hard to do in a purely
volunteer-driven
> way with no money. 

In my opinion, it has to somehow wind up that we don't
have a few huge companies serving as the de facto sole 
conduits for freedom box software.   History suggests 
both that they won't be able to resist economically 
exploiting that oligopoly AND that they'll be an attractive
point of attack for entities that wish to interfere with 
the freedom-creating / freedom-protecting mission of the project.


> In the US, if you want to hire even a few people and pay some travel
> expenses to get them to the right places... even if those people are
so
> passionate about the work that they're willing to work for something
> like a minimal stipend instead of a "real IT salary", $500k isn't
really
> very much money.

It seems low, to me, for the mission.

In the name of decentralization, perhaps a worthy goal is to
try to very, very quickly get to a situation where many small
businesses can begin to (a) make money using freedombox technology;
(b) enough money to pay for their own contributions to development;
(c) and enough money to, if they choose, pay membership dues
to the foundation.


> Could all of this work wait until there's some sort of finished
software
> release to shop around?  Perhaps.  But is that the right way to
proceed?

(I think you are right on that issue.  I think that the 
foundation is a good move.)


> > If we fail to wow people with our first release, we will face the
> > whiptail wrath of a target user base scorned.

> I understand this concern, but I'm not as worried about it as I might
> be, because I suspect that most of the kickstarter money is coming
from
> people close enough to our passion to understand that getting to the
> complete vision isn't a trivial slam-dunk technically.

> But I guess we'll see.

My bigger concern about the software side, so far, is that
if we have too many "highest priority" goals it will either:

a) never get done

b) get done as a "proof of concept", unusable, unmarketable, 
and stuck in a perpetual state of "next year is the year it
finally takes off".

Regards,
-t