[Freedombox-discuss] Policy questions

[Jonas Smedegaard]

On 11-05-08 at 07:50pm, Sandy Harris wrote:
> On Sun, May 8, 2011 at 5:00 PM, Jonas Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk> wrote:
> 
> > Sure, users are free to whatever with their FreedomBoxes - it is 
> > Free Software.
> >
> > But the FreedomBox is a *subset* of Debian with additional 
> > constraints especially on user-friendliness.  I do not consider 
> > "aptitude install whatever your heart desire" as especially 
> > user-friendly.
> >
> > I envision that we decide on some pieces in Debian, work with the 
> > maintainers of those pieces to make them possible to not only be 
> > installed in the "aptitude install, tinker with configfiles until 
> > happy" fashion that we are used to, but also supports hooking up 
> > with a dead-simple design which we invent - or (hopefully) discover 
> > that others have invented and convince someome to package and 
> > maintain in Debian.
> >
> > So I expect the "dead-simple" interface of FreedomBox to only be 
> > able to add/remove - or enable/disable if there are so few that it 
> > makes sense to inlude them all as part of the "core" - those 
> > services which are sane for the device - which means both 
> > user-friendly and considered secure.
> 
> An excellent analysis, and the same sort of vision I have.
> 
> I would add that there may be a few pieces not already in Debian,
> or not yet in the stable branch, that we turn out to need. That
> means somewhat more work.

Indeed.  But let us work with *Debian* on that, instead of taking on a 
burden of building (somewhat) a derived distribution on top of Debian.


> Also, the design we come up with must deal with policies and
> config files as much as possible. Asking a user to type a
> command to install something is not all that unreasonable.
> Asking him or her to edit most config files is.

Indeed.  I am _very_ curious what designs will emerge when someone 
really truly engage into that crucial area of this project.

Hint hint.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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