[Freedombox-discuss] FreedomBox focus (was Re: Debian FreedomBox = Existing Debian packages on plug hardware)

[Les Orchard]

On 3/1/11 10:41 AM, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
> What about Eben's original talk about NYU a year ago, 'Freedom in the
> Cloud', where he coined the term 'Freedom Box'?
>
> I believe he mentioned both Fedora and Debian..  IMHO he was promoting
> the idea of free software in the freedom box, and selected Debian as a
> leader rather than an absolute.
If this list stays broad and general - targeting any hardware that might 
be small-ish running any free-like-speech software facilitating goals 
that are freedom-y - nothing will get done.

My take is that "FreedomBox" is Debian on self-hosted plug computers, 
running software to replace centralized social networking and enhance 
network privacy.

That's pretty focused, at least on OS and hardware. It narrows things 
down to a practical scope for a first release: What Debian packages make 
up the distro, and what glue is needed to make it work? A lot of good 
stuff already exists as Debian packages, so something interesting can be 
spun up quickly.

If you want to make something like a FreedomBox out of an Android phone 
or a Fedora distro, great. But, that should be spun off from this project.

FWIW: I'm also lurking on this other list, which might be better for 
broad discussion of distributed net issues:
http://groups.google.com/group/building-a-distributed-decentralized-internet 


-- 
l.m.orchard at pobox.com
http://decafbad.com
{web,mad,computer} scientist