[Freedombox-discuss] the cloud desktop

Sat Feb 26 23:45:37 UTC 2011

Well right now all I have is the gitorious project linked from yrcloud.com. Its written in python django. Just get the code a write subclasses for Sender and Receiver under yourmail.

I have a lot of work to do on getting all the code working, docs, demoes, etc. I am still pretty early in this project.

Your anon idea does seem to have several attributes of a distributed social network, like Diaspora, something I hope to support sometime. Those deal with issues of trust, messaging, security, etc. I was wondering how your proposal might compare to that.
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Matt Joyce <matt at nycresistor.com> wrote:

That's awesome sir.  Got details on that somewhere?

On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 1:56 PM, Joseph Annino <joeaguy at joeaguy.com> wrote:

This is a very interesting proposal. I have seen a lot of talk about how we need something better than smtp/pop/imap. That is a hard nut to crack, but I think it is really important. Just look how facebook is supplanting emai for some kinds of communication.

My project includes abstract service, sender, and receiver classes. There is no reason why it couldn't act as a client for your service, among others. Right now I just wrote basic pop and smtp classes, but again, other classes can be added in.

I think we need to support the protocols people are used to and expect well, but freedombox, etc, should grow into a platform that also offers better alternatives and makes them easy and attractive to a range of users.

Its looking like freedombox may be attracting its own little universe of related projects.
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Matt Joyce <matt at nycresistor.com> wrote:

My proposal for the plug here:

http://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Proposals/AnonProposal

Is intended to deal with that.  If we focus on locking down the secure mesh transport layer and a functional distributed object store for the boxes we solve a hell of a lot of issues and allow for direct integration into any existing technology.

But some of the folks in this list are hell bent on running their own mail servers and such.  So there is going to be some fracturing in this community right from the get go.

-Matt

On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 10:23 AM, Joseph Annino <joeaguy at joeaguy.com> wrote:

I have been thinking about a lot of the same issues as Freedombox since last LibePlanet where RMS presented the "Who does that server really serve?" paper.  The reaction from the crowd seemed to be "but I really like all these Google, etc, cloud services, how can I keep using this kind of thing?".  These services I sort of think of as being a kind of "desktop in the cloud".  They provide a simple easy to use consistent interface that will work anywhere.  That is the huge appeal, but they of course have all the pitfalls of central control currently.  I wanted to try and make a free equivalent that gives people back choice and control over their data.

This seems to be a little different than the discussion of Freedombox is see at the moment, being more focused on making a linux distro out of existing parts.  That is really important, but I think the next step is to to make a free cloud desktop, a sort of "gnome for the cloud".

I have been working on something like this for a while, which I have called "Pick Our Your Cloud".  You can link to its gitorious repository from yrcloud.com.  I've made it all AGPLv3.

I haven't shared this project with many people, all the work on it so far is just me, and just in whatever spare time I can find.  It is far from complete.  I have started with a gmail equivalent, since that is where Google started, and messaging serves as a good central point to branch out from.  It is implemented as a Django app that communicates with a JS/jQuery frontend via JSON-RPC calls.  I am hoping that over time it can grow into a sort of desktop that lets you get at several apps that can share some common facilities and integration.  Think of how all the various services Google offers all work together via your Google account.

I was originally targeting virtualized clouds, like Amazon's new micro instances.  This code should be able to run fine on a variety of low end hardware, so long as it can have a reasonable amount of flash storage.  Certainly an Atom (or equivalent) box could handle it.  I also want to try this out on some of the $100 variety of ARM plugs, like the PogoPlug.

So I know I am doing a lot of plugging my own project.  I could use some advice and collaboration on it, and maybe someday it could sit on top of the Freedombox OS.  But regardless of what happens with my project, I wanted to open up the discussion about a "cloud desktop", how do we make a user experience that is useful to a wide audience.

I live near Danbury CT, so I can always get down to NYC if anything is ever going on.  This is an exciting project and I would like to help out.

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