[Freedombox-discuss] FreedomBox at Software Freedom Day

[John Walsh]

Hi Marc,

> On 11-09-04 at 02:19pm, Marc Manthey wrote:
> > I looked at the http://freedomboxfoundation.org website and 
> i was not 
> > able to find any links related to the actual state of the 
> project nor 
> > the recommened software hardware pages , whitch i can remember some 
> > month before.
The most recent presentation about FreedomBox can be found below;
http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2011/debconf11/low/70
4_FreedomBox_progress_report.ogv

Subsequently, there was an update/clarification of the work at the
FreedomBox hacking below;
http://www.gag.com/bdale/blog/posts/FreedomBox_in_Banja_Luka.html

I don't know where the slides in the video are stored, but I suspect they
will not be of much use to you as they are in English ;( In the past, I
couldn't find the "FreedomBox in a Box" logo, but I used the "cow in the
box" logo which can be saved from this wikipage;
http://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox

Hopefully, this will be enough information for you to put a presentation
together at your local Software Freedom Day Event. Thank you for
representing FreedomBox. Good Luck!!!

> > 
> > I would strongly recomment set up a website which is appropriate to 
> > the 21th century
IMHO, I think the Foundation website looks quite modern.
> 
> This is a Debian mailinglist.  Debian is a do-o-cracy and our 
> information is maintained at a wiki starting at the page 
> http://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox - you are quite welcome to 
> contribute yourself to those wiki pages!
> 
> The website you comment on belongs to a different (albeit 
> related) organisation, the FreedomBox Foundation.  Comments 
> about that website is probably most fruitfully targeted their 
> contact point, listed here: 
> http://freedomboxfoundation.org/contact/ .
> 
However, Jonas's response reminded me how confusing the freedombox message
was to me the first time I heard about FreedomBox. I remember thinking the
Foundation website gave the impression that the FreedomBox is a subproject
of the Foundation and that the TAC through the Foundation drives the
development of the project. Then I discovered that the wiki was running on
Debian, which suggested the project was being run by Debian. Then I found
that it was not being run by Debian, but was a "Debian Blend". On top of
that there is a FreedomBox Planet floating around.

Off the top of my head, we need to do a better job at selling our message
and I have the following suggestions;

The FreedomBox is our product and it deserves a domain of it's own rather
than be a wiki page of Debian. I am only saying hide that we are using
Debian infrastructure. Is that possible?

On the FreedomBox domain we could have an About Us page, which would tell
the FreedomBox story. In a nutshell, it would say Eben started the project
with the aim... Additionally, the About page would explain we are a Debian
Blend which is a part of Debian. Finally, the About page would document the
Foundation as the custodian of the FreedomBox, linking to Foundations
website. I'm in two minds if the About page should mention the role of the
TAC or should that remain on the Foundation website?

On the FreedomBox domain there could also be a Getting Involved page
(Contribute and Donate sounds the same to me) which would list the Working
Group Teams and Volunteer jobs. There could also be a News page which could
default to foundation news, but could have links to other news resources
like planet, press, twitter, facebook etc. There would also be the usual
links of Contact, Donate and "language".

Currently, everything is (accidently) in the name of the foundation rather
than the freedombox, which gives the impression that foundation drives the
project.

I think you get the idea that we need to better sell the box and we probably
can't do that until we protect the product name. At the same time, I think
we need to de-emphasize the Foundation so that it feels more like our
project.

One of the great things about this proposal is that the majority of the work
(web page text) can be done by non-developers \0/ although we would still
need the help of web developers to structure the website. Maybe we could
tart up wiki pages, but that would make the site insecure?

Don't get me wrong. I appreciate all the work already done and we could
probably re-use the existing content. I hope you see this as constructive
criticism ;)

I'm tired now, but I welcome all feedback and I would like to make a call
out to all non-developers to help us send out a better FreedomBox message.

Kind Regards

-- fiftyfour