[Freedombox-discuss] FreedomBox/Unhosted/PageKite for Access Innovation Prize 2012

Michiel de Jong michiel at unhosted.org
Tue Jul 3 06:59:24 UTC 2012


This is great stuff!

On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 5:29 AM, Nick M. Daly <nick.m.daly at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd *love* to see Tor and PageKite in the default image.  I don't know
> if there'll be time/expertise to get Tor into the image before EOY, but
> we should be able to include PageKite, if nothing else.  Bjarni's two
> line install instructions are confounding! :)
>
> Nick
>
> 0: http://github.com/nickdaly/freedom-maker
>
> 1: http://github.com/nickdaly/plinth
>
> 2: http://github.com/nickdaly/freedombox-privoxy

So even though ownCloud has a nicer interface than pyUnhosted, getting
apache, sqlite, GD, php5 and ownCloud 4.0.4 all on a device with
basically the power of a smartphone might be a bit ambitious. Also,
the whole point of the remoteStorage web architecture is that the
storage is just dumb storage and that all functionality and actual
niceness is in unhosted web apps to which you connect your
remoteStorage dynamically, instead of doing server-side webpage
generation.

So let me think about what steps we would need:

- add pagekite and pyUnhosted to the image.

- right now pyUnhosted outputs information (including the password you
need) to the console. that should be piped somehow to plinth, so that
the user can actually see it.

- IIUC, for privoxy to work out of the box, we still need a way for
the freedombox to become the default proxy for all devices on the
wifi. how does that work? The easiest UI for this would be if the
freedombox emits a wifi signal. people will understand that. If the
freedombox only lets through https and ssh traffic, then this wifi
signal can be unencrypted, like for instance the wifi signal at fosdem
or other big conferences, so we help with the open wifi movement
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/EFF-Pushes-For-Open-WiFi-Movement-114016
by default (of course if the user is opposed to bandwidth altruism for
some reason then they should be able to switch it off in plinth). If
the freedombox does not emit its own wifi single, then i cannot see an
easy first-use experience, but maybe i'm missing something.

- on first use, you would have to opt-in to setting up the public
interface to your remoteStorage. so plinth would need a screen that
say "choose your username and password at freedomstorage.org (or
whatever we call it)", and from that moment on, it would be dialled in
there, and ready for connecting your freedombox to unhosted web apps
as remoteStorage.

- we would have to set up said service, with for instance a 5-year
plan included in the purchase of the off-the-shelf device. i know this
proposal is only for creating the disk image, but we should also set
up a pre-order production chain. As soon as 100 orders are in, we just
organize a flashing-weekend, flash 100 devices in an afternoon, and
ship them.

- if we can resolve the first-use/wifi question then i think putting a
box with privoxy+remoteStorage-through-pagekite on the market should
be achievable.



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