[Freedombox-discuss] Why FreedomBox would not be a router ?

[Marc Loupias]

Hello,

i was lurking the mail archive and the website to find the architecture 
and hardware config chosen for the freedombox.

If i understand well, you guys wants to make a simple computer (like a 
plug) behind the ISP box to deliver services for the user.

Am i right ?

If theses services have to be reachable on the WAN, how do you plan to 
manage the routing config on the ISP router ?

This is a major problem. Do you plan a specific implementation for each 
ISP box (using Telnet ?) ? Is this only feasible ?

In some ISP boxes, you cannot change the DNS server. Assuming that DNS 
filtering is the easiest measure for censorship (and often the first to 
be applied), a good way to avoid this is to run a DNS server on the 
Freedombox. But it will work only if the FB is a router, not if it is 
behind the ISP's router.

Recently i have searched on the web a DSL internal card to build my own 
router. And surprise, i was not been able to find any.

Maybe the FB Foundation could solve this issue by producing a little 
piece of hardware.

Another good thing would be to have a 56k modem in the FB for urgency 
situations. When the north african revolutions have occurred and 
governments have cut off the internet, the only way to access the rest 
of the world was the standard telephone network. It would be a very 
effective technique to avoid censorship.

To summarize my point of view, i dont understand why you are discussing 
about the software part because the hardware part is critical and it is 
the hardest part to do. One person can handle the software part of this 
kind of project but for the hardware part it is just impossible. That's 
where i was thinking find the Freedombox Foundation and it seems i was 
wrong.

I think this is a mistake, the hardware first.

Last thing, some organizations questions :

Who leads the project ? Is there a leader like Linus Torvalds for the 
linux kernel or is this democratic ?
Who makes the decisions, especially concerning the money collected ?
If the software part runs on Debian, why not using the same organization 
? Some people present a different roadmap and people vote for a solution ?

I dont know where is the right way, i dont understand how all of this works.


Thanks for reading me (and my poooooor english).


Marc, a french developer.