[Freedombox-discuss] Freedom Box as the server for other projects' protocols

[Boaz]

Same disclaimer as last time: non-developer's thoughts follow.


So, should Freedom Box implement some feature or other in the manner
that Diaspora does, or in the manner that Friendika does?  I don't
think that that's the right question to ask, and I'll explain why.

Firstly, as many have said before, I don't think that any
communication protocol will or should be unique to Freedom Box.
Locking anyone into particular software or hardware hardly serves the
cause of freedom, flies in the face of the powerful network effect,
and would simply be silly.  So the “Freedom Box” is merely Debian,
with a certain set of packages installed, and configured a certain
way, to be a super easy to use server for a stack of protocols, and a
particular hardware device with this software stack preloaded and
ready to go.  This software stack, or any component(s) of it, can also
be run on any other suitable hardware, and these protocols,
individually or collectively, can also be served by any other suitable
software stack.

Of course not all the protocols that the Freedom Box ultimately should
serve exist yet.  And yes, people interested in the greatest possible
success of Freedom Box should work on developing them.  And yet, in my
opinion, the work of developing new protocols should be done outside
the context of the Freedom Box project.  Once one exists, the Freedom
Box project should work on supporting it.

So the work of the Freedom Box project itself, now and into the
future, should be creating a server for protocols that already exist,
both well established protocols like SMTP and newer protocols like
DFRN.  A very very easy to use server.

What I think is useful about this approach, is that it nullifies
questions like the one posed at the beginning of the post, because we
will not be designing a special protocol for Freedom Box.

Should Freedom Box implement some feature like Diaspora or like
Friendika?  Neither, both.  Freedom Box should be capable of being a
Diaspora node, and also be capable of being a DFRN server.

What I sit up at night hoping will happen is that a single well
defined protocol stack will emerge as the standard for providing every
social communication feature that people currently enjoy from
proprietary/nonfree places.  And certainly people interested in the
success of Freedom Box should work towards that goal.  But while
multiple protocols exist for overlapping feature sets, Freedom Box
should solve the problem by striving to implement both/all of them.

Other projects design the protocol, we provide the easy to use server.

Certainly, these are only my thoughts.  I'm just proposing that this
framework might be useful in deciding what work should be done inside
and outside the framework of the Freedom Box project, and in finding a
clear direction of what to start working on.

Unsure what we should be doing?  We should be taking protocols that
exist, with implementing software that exists and is robust, and
working on getting them bundled together, stable, with automatic
updates, logical defaults, simple, intuitive, unified interface, etc.


Boaz