[Freedombox-discuss] Rouge Freedomboxes and government intervention

[Sébastien Lerique]

On 21/06/11 16:37, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> I very much see the relevancy in separation of a "harmless FreedomBox" 
> and an "activism FreedomBox".
>
> My point is that one point (out of several!) in the vision of FreedomBox 
> is that the world becomes a better place even if not directly addressing 
> then needs of activists in circumventing being hunted down or whatever 
> is their concrete needs.  The world becomes a better place *both* for 
> non-activit consumers *and* for paranoid freaks *and* for true genuine 
> heroes when the masses create a silverlining of the cloud.
>
>
> I want to address the problem of central logging of the activities of 
> the masses _separately_ from the more complex problem of activists 
> needing secrecy, anonymity and other powerful features.  Because the 
> first is easier and quicker solved than the second.  And because the 
> first helps solve the second!

For what it's worth, I agree 100% with this. "Consumer" is indeed a
sensitive/loaded word (and yes the GNU explanation make its point in
saying that one's activity on Internet is not only "consuming"), but I
think it fits well as a label for that "harmless FreedomBox" usage.

Answering to what Bert said earlier in the thread:
> I agree that the "consumer" (let say the already present in Debian and
> easily implemented) part of the Freedombox project should be build asap,
> but still this kind of questions should be considered. It often might not
> be related to what is the state of package X in the Debian archive, but
> more a question on how it could be implemented.

I also agree. That "consumer" part is present in bits and pieces in
Debian, and needs to be brought together. That seems like the first step
to me. About that, I came upon "La Distribution"
(http://ladistribution.net/), which seems to do a good job at bringing a
bunch of services together into a user-friendly interface. Not
debian-based though, AFAIK. What do you think? (as an example UI) I'll
add it to the FB wiki if people agree.

Bert added:
> And it often is better to think of both use cases at first, rather than to
> have to migrate to the first quick implementation to a new one
> implementing privacy/anonymity. This isn't incompatible with the
> implementation of the first quickly, but with the second in mind. Though
> work...

Yes. IMO that thinking and the development of the "consumer" part should
go together. That kind of double-level work ("consumer development" plus
"further thinking and planning") doesn't seem easy to me since the
"further thinking and planning" might impact key points of the "consumer
development", but IMHO it is the way to go: anonymity is part of that
"further thinking and planning", and is a huge yet very important chunk
to bite off (thanks to Sam Hartman's post on the TAC list [0]). But if
we want to get that clear _before_ anything else I'm afraid that we will
produce only (valuable) talk for a few months. (By the way, I believe
Charles N Wyble will be releasing something in the "consumer
development" area soon (?) )

(My 2cent as a interested individual. In no way an expert's view.)

Best,
Sébastien

[0]
http://lists.freedomboxfoundation.org/s/arc/tac/2011-04/msg00006.html
and the other messages in that thread