[Freedombox-discuss] What's the plan?

[Mathieu Jourdan]

Hy all,

This is my first message to this list, so let me introduce myself first.

I live in Grenoble (France), where I prepare for earning a master degree in
computer networks. I follow a sandwich course : I also work as a system
administrator for a 500 persons company. I am a member of the association
April, which promotes Free Software in France. I heard about freedombox for
the first time about one year ago, when Eben Moglen has been interviewed by
Glyn Moody. I heard again when the foundation called for funds on
kickstarter and really discovered the project. Then I heard about other
similar projects (no-box, fdmbx ;-), through the wiki or after some
searches. I'm glad to see people from those projects bringing their
experience to this YAF (yet another freedombox) which seems to me the most
interesting one because of its ambitiousness due to the wide variety of
technical and social challenges.


2011/3/14 Michiel de Jong <michiel at unhosted.org>

> I understand nobody did any hackfest meeting yesterday, but in the light of
> this news:
>
> http://freedomboxfoundation.org/news/Bdale_Garbee_Joins_Foundation/
>
> I would like to summarize what I think we achieved in the 3 hackfests we
> did. I must say I lost track of the mailling list this last week, because
> it's just going too fast. But with regard to the seven goals [1] of the
> foundation, I myself have so far concluded:
>
> 1 - social
> not doable with current debian packages. need to watch (and help) other
> projects like federated social web (which includes identi.ca and diaspora)
> 2 - backup
> probably doable, but needs more discussion. need to think of how you select
> your friends for backup purposes. what if none of your real-life friends
> have freedomboxes?
> 3 - network neutrality
> not currently doable, but there is a lot of research into both hardware and
> software for wifi mesh, both on this list, and in other projects. for some
> people, freedombox may be more about wifi mesh than about anything else,
> which may pose a problem of expectations, if people think we'll have that
> working by autumn.
> 4 - anonymous publication
> Tor provides anonymity, on top of which you can publish. gnunet provides
> anonymous file sharing, but is in a more experimental stage. by including at
> least Tor, this goal can probably be done.
> 5  - home network security
> we don't really understand this one. maybe it just means that the
> freedombox can work as a NAT router and firewall if you want it to and don't
> have any other router in your house already. it may also mean that you can
> set up a http proxy on it that blocks known dodgy sites (like phishing sites
> etc.)
> 6 - encrypted mail
> you could set up a web-based mail client that does pgp and connects to an
> imap server somewhere else. the spam filtering would have to be done in the
> remote imap server, not on the freedombox. people have also suggested that
> we shouldn't bother with this one, and discourage the use of email
> altogether, in favour of for instance xmpp-based messaging
> 7 - voice
> there is a project that puts asterisk on a plug server, but given the size
> and state of asterisk it's not clear if we could get that into a first
> version within 6 months.
>
>  i think this list of 'first conclusions' is worth something, although it's
> probably incorrect, because i have missed parts of the mailing list
> discussions (especially the most recent ones). If i missed something
> important, please don't be offended, and please correct it (we might want to
> use the wiki for this, in that case). i'll shut up for a bit now, but will
> keep lurking on the mailing list until i have some more time to try to help.
>
>
Thank you Michiel for this summary, which surprised me a bit !

1 - social
Can't we just package status.net to replace identity.ca ? To replace
Facebook, do we really need something more than a blog and a basic
permission system which restricts access to only certain groups of contacts
? I haven't read anything about sharing files, even big ones (music,
videos...), but we already do have p2p packages !
2 - backup
Backup should also be possible to a local external hdd, but it should be
really simple.
3 - network neutrality
Very important point but I think it's lower level (kernel) than what
FreedomBox is (some glue between the most relevant packages).
4 - anonymous publication
Tor provides anonymity, but where do you publish then ? On a centralized
plat-form ?
5 - home network security
I don't really understand too.
6 - encrypted mail
An imap server somewhere else !? Discourage the use of e-mail !? What if I
need to send plain mails, for example to apply for a job ? I have to
continue providing my logs to Google ? What do I'll have to do with the
freedombox if I can't use it for non-pgp traffic, or if it doesn't protect
my mails from companies and governements ?

Also, I was wondering how good do ARM processors support encryption (with
mails and with filesystems), and streaming hd video files ?


> Let's give Bdale Garbee a warm welcome as the tech lead put forward by the
> foundation, and listen what he has to say. As the foundation puts it: "Now
> the real work can begin."[2] - exciting!
>

Welcome Bdale !


> [1] http://freedomboxfoundation.org/goals/
> [2] http://identi.ca/notice/66732693
>
> cheers!
> Michiel
>
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>
>
Regards,
Mathieu
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