[Freedombox-discuss] Roadmap proposal

[Mike Warren]

I may be way off-base here, but I've always imagined the freedom-box
as a "logical" device, not necessarily physical. That is, I could
imagine many users having a "virtual" freedom-box (especially, e.g.,
developers) and that each device is more analogous to an identity than
a physical person or house. That is, I could imagine having multiple
logical freedom-boxes (e.g. one for "personal" stuff and one for
"development" stuff etcetera).

Looking to the future, too, isn't it Very Likely that people may want
to host their "freedom box" somewhere besides physical hardware? (Or,
at least, the "freedom box" may be just one of the logical computers
they have hosted on their own hardware)?  Obvious current examples are
"cloud"-based things like EC2 or virtual private servers and the like,
but I think it would be most flexible to concentrate on a VM approach;
if it's kept small enough and so fourth the option still exists to put
it on one piece of hardware, but if we keep making hardware faster and
bigger like we are, it's more likely that a household will have one
box which hosts a VM for each family member rather than one very-tiny
box for each family member...

Also by virtualizing it, you don't have to take physical hardware with
you to move the thing: you could encrypt the image, upload it
somewhere and retrieve it to place on physical hardware again later
(e.g. after crossing borders).

IMO, virtualization is a hedge against future hardware directions: if
it turns out that tiny pluggable computers are churned out in mass
quantities, great! If instead we get larger VM hosts becoming the
norm, great! Also, it would make the whole thing easier to develop,
debug and test.

Which isn't to say there shouldn't be minimum (or maximum) "hardware"
requirements, but they should be fulfill-able by a VM.

-- 
mike warren