[Freedombox-discuss] FreedomBox Summit

[Adrian Gropper]

Hi Danny,

I love the FreedomBox project and have been following it for years. I lead
a Free software project for patient controlled independent health records
that would benefit immensely from a consumer-friendly FreedomBox but you
don't seem to be any closer to that for our use-case than you were two
years ago. I have to admit that this is my impression as a spectator and
that I have not invested much time in actually trying to get things to work
myself so please take my comments with a large grain of salt.

The problem is that the project is trying to do way too much and in too
vertical a way. It would be much more useful to me and a lot of other Free
software product developers if FreedomBox presumed separate platform and
app components. Current hardware is so cheap that it hardly makes sense to
put two different apps on the same appliance. Combining apps from multiple
developer communities on the same FreedomBox also muddies the support
relationships. To get mass adoption, people need "one neck to choke" and
that should be the app developers as much as possible.

For example, a $10 Raspberry Pi Zero W with a $8 OLED to display an IP
address and a USB keyboard to enter a wifi password could be a reference
point as a platform for about $30. After that, everything else could be
done from a Web browser on the LAN. That, along with a preset choice among
3 alternatives of dynamic DNS services to allow almost anyone to set up a
specific server app and appliance with one page of instructions. Yes, I
know the Raspberry pi has Freedom issues so a totally Free alternative
should also be available but the $30 appliance platform needs to be our
benchmark nonetheless.

Along with this alternative strategy, I would hope for more modular support
around Debian for Free software appliance developers. I'm not sure how that
would work, but app developer communities need to be able to support their
most unsophisticated customers around platform security issues, backup and
restore, and hardware migrations. Given that partnership, every feature or
app currently offered on FreedomBox and many more could be supported by
their respective communities as separate appliances with FreedomBox
completely agnostic to what they are. This would be a much more diverse and
more scalable ecosystem.

Thank you all for this really lovely project!!

Adrian




On Wed, Nov 7, 2018 at 9:42 PM Danny Haidar <haidar at freedomboxfoundation.org>
wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> I want to open a discussion about the FreedomBox Foundation's upcoming
> FreedomBox Summit. As we discussed on our progress call on October 13,
> the FreedomBox Foundation is hosting a meeting in New York City on
> Tuesday, November 13, 2018 with Sunil Mohan Adapa, James Valleroy, Eben
> Moglen, and me. The aim of the meeting is to discuss the main challenges
> facing the FreedomBox project and to plan for our future.
>
> When I first announced this meeting on our progress call, I mentioned
> that we want the agenda to include items recommended by the community. I
> want to ask each of you on this discussion list to help us out with
> this. In short, we are planning to discuss the most important issues
> facing the FreedomBox project as we continue to grow, attract new users,
> and expand into hardware sales. My questions for you: what do you think
> are the most important challenges facing the FreedomBox project? What do
> you want to see us do in the future? We want FreedomBox to become a
> mainstream consumer privacy solution. What do you think we need to do
> before we get to that point?
>
> These questions are intentionally broad--please feel free to interpret
> them however you wish and answer as narrowly or broadly as you'd like.
> As I said, we want to give the community a voice in this meeting, so you
> should feel free to raise any issue that you care about.
>
> I will take note of all the questions I get and try my best to
> incorporate your ideas into our agenda. You can feel free to email me
> your ideas in this thread, or to my email address privately at
> <haidar at freedomboxfoundation.org>. Alternatively, I also plan to bring
> this up on our upcoming progress call this Saturday, November 10--so you
> can bring your questions to that call if you want.
>
> I hope to hear from many of you!
>
> Best,
>
> Danny
>
> --
> Danny Haidar
> Vice-President for Product & Development
> FreedomBox Foundation
>
>
>
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> Freedombox-discuss at alioth-lists.debian.net
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-- 

Adrian Gropper MD

PROTECT YOUR FUTURE - RESTORE Health Privacy!
HELP us fight for the right to control personal health data.
DONATE: https://patientprivacyrights.org/donate-3/
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