[Freedombox-discuss] How do we encourage public adoption of Freedom Box

Tue Jul 3 09:31:41 BST 2018

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> I wonder weather Eben Moglen uses FreedomBox and what does he
> think of it.
Yes, Eben Moglen uses FreedomBox. He uses the same Mumble service
that we use for our hack calls and progress calls and it runs on
a FreedomBox. I don't know about what other services he uses.

FreedomBox is a Debian pure blend. All software that goes into
FreedomBox comes in the form of Debian packages including the
FreedomBox software itself. So, it makes sense to stay on
Debian's code hosting infrastructure and use Debian's wiki. We
could always run a MediaWiki instance on the Foundation's
FreedomBox if we wanted to.

Github.com is centralized in the sense that there's only one
instance of it in the world. Debian is running its own instance
of GitLab on which FreedomBox is also hosted since all FreedomBox
packages are native Debian packages.

> Who can guaranty that this will be the true in
> the future as well? Who can guaranty that one day Microsoft
> will not acquire Debian as it acquired Ubuntu and GitHub?

Nobody can guarantee anything about the future, but we can only
extrapolate based on what happened in the past. A for-profit
venture-capital backed company has a good chance of being
acquired by a bigger company. This might be a reason why Debian's
code isn't hosted on GitLab.com which might be acquired any time.
Such acquisitions are extremely dangerous for free software and
commons content. Recently, a company called 500px was acquired by
another and they deleted all the CC licensed content on their
system because it was not generating any profit. They didn't even
offer a backup and most of the content was lost. We wouldn't want
to face something similar with the centralized GitHub or GitLab.
AFAIK, Salsa is running on some infrastructure donated by HP and
maintained by a university. I don't know what kind of a world it
would be if corporations start buying universities.

Debian is a an organization of volunteers and FreedomBox
Foundation is a non-profit entity. It's not like buying GitHub or
Canonical. If Microsoft acquired Debian (theoretically), it still
has no control over the volunteers who can simply leave and form
another Debian. Although, for me, it's an unimaginable thing,
like RMS joining Microsoft.

Dashamir Hoxha <dashohoxha at gmail.com> wrote:
> I wonder weather Eben Moglen uses FreedomBox and what does he
> think of it. I also wonder why FreedomBox is all about
> self-hosting, but it does not host itself. For example
> YunoHost, which is another Debian based alternative, at least
> is hosting itself and does not rely on Debian infrastructure
> for everything. Relying on Debian infrastructure, from the
> technical point of view, is not much different than relying on
> Google infrastructure. They are both centralized solutions. If
> you claim that Google is evil but Debian is not, who can
> guaranty this? Who can guaranty that this will be the true in
> the future as well? Who can guaranty that one day Microsoft
> will not acquire Debian as it acquired Ubuntu and GitHub?
> 
> Regards,
> Dashamir
> 
> On Mon, Jul 2, 2018 at 8:56 AM Joseph Nuthalapati
> <njoseph at thoughtworks.com> wrote:
> 
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> >
> > Chuck,
> >
> > This is something that I think about all the time. Self-hosting
> > as a solution is still not in the reach of non-technical users.
> > This is one of the problems that FreedomBox aims to solve.
> >
> > There are a few barriers to overcome, even for privacy-conscious
> > people:
> > - - People still believe that it takes significant computing resources to
> > host servers.
> > - - Even those who are capable of self-hosting don't do so as they believe
> > it takes too much time and energy to maintain their own servers.
> > - - Fear of losing all their work due to some freak accident like a
> > software update failure, disk failure etc.
> >
> > FreedomBox hosted on a single board computer solves the first
> > two. Building a good backup system will solve the third. We are
> > currently working on it.
> >
> > FreedomBox is currently not very popular even within the free
> > software community. We have to do more marketing, give talks at
> > conferences etc.
> >
> > Though it's been 7 or 8 years, FreedomBox hasn't yet fully
> > achieved Eben Moglen's vision. We have yet to release a consumer
> > appliance that can be just plugged in and works seamlessly. We
> > will soon have a demo server and AWS cloud images for trying out
> > FreedomBox before taking the step of installing it at home.
> >
> > There are billions of people using Android phones. If we make
> > FreedomBox just as easy to use, then we might achieve a lot of
> > adoption. BTW (unrelated), we are working on making a companion
> > Android app too for FreedomBox.
> >
> > There was a recent fediverse thread on self-hosting where people
> > suggested that community hosting is a better model than
> > self-hosting. We should work on that as well.
> > https://social.masto.host/@njoseph/100299477861821188
> >
> > Some things I think we need to do to have more adoption:
> > - - Make installation easier (appliances, cloud images, install fests etc.)
> > - - Make using FreedomBox on a day to day basis easier (web app and
> > Android app)
> > - - Have a few really popular applications available (MediaWiki, Mastodon,
> > Wordpress etc.)
> > - - Highlight the convenience and utility aspects of FreedomBox along with
> > the privacy and security aspects
> > - - Make FreedomBox cool and not boring so that we attract millennials
> > - - Have big public deployments like framasoft/disroot to show off what
> > FreedomBox can do
> > - - Endorsements by people popular in this space and more conference talks
> >
> >
> > Adrian Gropper <agropper at healthurl.com> wrote:
> > > Hi Chuck,
> > >
> > > I completely agree with you!
> > >
> > > You might check out some of the following groups that I also
> > > belong to:
> > >
> > > - https://blogs.harvard.edu/vrm/
> > > - https://diglife.com
> > > - https://mydata.org
> > >
> > > Adrian
> > >
> > >
> > > On Sat, Jun 30, 2018 at 6:33 PM Chuck <rextv9 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hi,
> > > >
> > > > I have been watching the Freedom Box initiative since February 2010,
> > when
> > > > Eben Moglin first kicked it off.  With the new public awareness of the
> > lack
> > > > of privacy using social media the time is ripe to reinvigorate the
> > public
> > > > discussion about the merits of Freedom Box.  Jaron Lanier author of
> > delete
> > > > your social media accounts has had a lot of media coverage recently.
> > > >
> > > > Lanier TED Talk:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ-PUXPVlos
> > > > Lanier appearance on ABC's the VIEW:
> > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSGT1dvDUYo
> > > > Lanier's book:
> > > >
> > https://www.amazon.com/Arguments-Deleting-Social-Media-Accounts/dp/125019668X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1530394793&sr=8-1&keywords=jaron+lanier&dpID=41A5b9TMwwL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch
> > > >
> > > > This forum is primarily focused on Technical discussions, is there a
> > > > better forum to make this proposal?
> > > >
> > > > The advertiser based, centralized social media systems are not the
> > answer
> > > > for the future.  I suggest that having install fests, hands-on
> > > > opportunities to install Freedom Box would go a long way towards
> > getting
> > > > public adoption.  The freedombox.org website has material that is
> > over a
> > > > year old.  Having worked with non-technical people the Freedom Box
> > > > resources currently available appeal to technically competent computer
> > > > users -- how we bridge that gap could have a tremendous effect on
> > Freedom
> > > > Box adoption.
> > > >
> > > > I welcome your thoughts, comments, and suggestions.
> > > >
> > > > Regards,
> > > > Chuck Jewell
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Freedombox-discuss mailing list
> > > > Freedombox-discuss at alioth-lists.debian.net
> > > >
> > https://alioth-lists.debian.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Freedombox-discuss mailing list
> > > Freedombox-discuss at alioth-lists.debian.net
> > >
> > https://alioth-lists.debian.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
> >
> > - --
> > - --
> > Regards
> > Joseph Nuthalapati
> >
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> > _______________________________________________
> > Freedombox-discuss mailing list
> > Freedombox-discuss at alioth-lists.debian.net
> > https://alioth-lists.debian.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss

- -- 
- -- 
Regards
Joseph Nuthalapati

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