[Freedombox-discuss] What dreams are made of...

[Hector Oron]

Hello Jonas,

2011/2/19 Jonas Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk>:

> No, I don't think that FreedomBox is simply "Debian in a box".

But FreedomBox does not want to be a delta we have to carry over
Debian, so at the end FreedomBox has to be Debian in a box, but we
need to tune Debian to be able to fulfill FreedomBox needs. Packaging
and get required software into Debian as a Pure Blend is needed, but
some glue code, enhancements to current upstream projects with
FreedomBox requirements are important as well, there are too many
fronts to get the right thing working.

> FreedomBox consists of 4(!) equally important parts:
>
>  FreedomBox = software + hardware + design + dreams
>
> (imagine the word "Freedom", capital "F", in front of all those parts - that
> just wouldn't fit on a single geeky 72 character text line ;-) )

Amen!

>  * Freedom software is found in Debian
>    Must be in Debian, not because Debian is better than others, but
> because software not only need to exist but also be production     ready and
> must be integrated with hundreds or thousands of other     parts and all
> parts as a whole must be production ready as well.

Plus Debian being independent from companies is quite important as
well as Freedom definition in Debian terms (DFSG) ensures users
freedom.

>  * Freedom hardware is ugly cheap old plug hardware
>    Choose the fanciest of the boxes and its cost or reliability or
> market share becomes a problem.  Choose the weakest most boring
>    of the boxes and you will remember (from constantly yourself
>    hitting the roof of the extremely limited resources) to     prominently
> tighten the software setup - and everyone else who
>    then buy that fancier box anyway has additional headroom which     is
> always good.

I would love to have a true open hardware design to develop
FreedomBox, but that is not possible, at the best of cases, we would
depend on chip manufacturers designs, so fastest way to overcome that
IMO is to be able to be platform agnostic. So if FreedomBox is Debian
pure blend, any hardware supported by Debian or Debian being easily
integrable into that hardware should be the freedom hardware platform.

>  * Freedom design
>    No comment here (yet).

I am not sure what you mean here, freedom {hardware, software,
graphics, ???} design.

>  * Freedom dreams
>    Crucial that we all dream - i.e. have opinions and ideas for
> additional future improvements over the "crap" that is currently
>    available to us in plain stable Debian.  Keep dreaming - keep
>    developing.  But please don't let that be all you do, and please
>    don't daydream too much: When meeting together here at the list,
>    on IRC and in real life, please let us work *ONLY* on the actual
>    development of FreedomBox, not Debian packaging or code needing
>    packaging.

I dream I could connect my server with other servers and interact with
them. I also dream my non-geek family members to have an easy path to
use same services I use, usually from a terminal session, at my
server.

Best regards,
-- 
 Héctor Orón

"Our Sun unleashes tremendous flares expelling hot gas into the Solar
System, which one day will disconnect us."

-- Day DVB-T stop working nicely
Video flare: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100510.html