[Freedombox-discuss] Freedombox-discuss Digest, Vol 8, Issue 37

[James Vasile]

On Mon, 07 Mar 2011 10:37:00 -0500, Joshua Spodek <joshuaspodek at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 2011-03-06 at 11:33 +0000,
> freedombox-discuss-request at lists.alioth.debian.org wrote:
> > Step 1:
> > 
> > Let's pick 5 apps.   I suggest email mailbox hosting, chat,
> > instant messaging, blogging and FB-ish "walls".   
> > 
> > When I tell the relatives "Here, plug this in and fire up
> > your browser" -- and when they then ask "Uh, what's it do?" -- 
> > this is the list of 5 answers: email mailbox, chat, messaging, 
> > etc.
> 
> For this group, I propose a step 0, which is to pick the minimum amount
> of applications or packages necessary for the plug to be useful to a
> debian developer or packager without restricting any necessary
> applications or packages to come later.
> 
> "Minimum" could mean minimum number of packages or minimum amount of
> time or work. Others can later remove unnecessary ones if they are dead
> weight.
> 
> This threshold -- being useful to this community -- is lower than making
> it useful for mainstream users and it will have the side effect that
> your step 1 will happen on its own.

My guess is that the early version of the Freedom Plug is not going to
have full-featured end-user apps like FB-ish walls.

If I had any say in the design (which I do not), I'd probably be looking
at it like this: What's the list of things the box needs to do in order
to gain a place in some users' homes?  If the box is a router, media NAS
and print server, it's got the same feature set as an airport.  Build
backup into it for a big win.  That's a pretty good start.

On that, we might add some "find me anywhere on the net and talk to me
securely" capability.  This makes it a file server and maybe a
dropbox-like device.  That small feature set is a pretty attractive
package.  It's also is the start of the freedom stack.

Then we might identify other users/boxes who get privileged access to
the file server.  We start building identity functions into the stack.
Etc.

The point here is not the specific roadmap I've outlined so much as a
natural progression of useful stuff with the freedom stack developed
over time that makes the useful stuff meet our ethical standards.  At
each point it's got a compelling reason to use it and those reasons grow
over time in bite-sized chunks.

At some point the chunks add up to a great stack that can underpin
something like Diaspora.  

-J