[Freedombox-discuss] towards a business plan

[Thomas Lord]

Yannick thanks, by the way, for the analysis of the
state of available telephony software.

On this bit:


On Sun, 2011-03-06 at 16:22 +0100, Yannick wrote:

> [....] I will put it as simple as I can :
> from my point of view, the project is not about "something that works",
> "efficiency", "open source", "business", etc. Of course this matter. But
> the core is "freedom". With means something appealing that works based
> upon freedom.

> Freedom is not "open source" or "business".


Yes.  Let me be very clear that I don't think that 
the freedombox project should be defined as the goal
of creating "1,000" small businesses.

Some of us who like the strategy, though, can work
on this 1,000 small businesses approach as our 
method for helping the freedombox project gain 
strength, resources, and users.

Personally, I am concerned that if the community
does not succeed in creating a society of small
businesses --- yet does make a freedombox technology
that becomes popular --- that a few large businesses
will inevitably come to dominate the project.  
Such large businesses can come to quietly dominate choices
about what technology is developed.   They can easily,
without so easily being noticed, reintroduce losses
of personal privacy by "centralizing" in ways that are
hard to spot.

I am also concerned that if we do not quickly
create a small business culture among those of us
who want to build and promote the freedombox, it will
be more likely that the project stalls are goes too 
slowly.

Yes: the project is about freedom.   Business is a tool.


> Technically put, each freedombox has to be intelligent providing a lot
> of services replacing centralized ones, not a stupid terminal relaying
> central services like google, facebook, etc. In France we do have a word
> for those terminals: "minitel". Today we are on the way to going back to
> this. Ask around you, it is where the business is...

I know.  In the United States, research in the 1960s and 1970s 
on time sharing operating systems was partly driven by the 
notion that the telephone company (or perhaps a firm of 
similar power) could have a monopoly on computers -- with 
terminals in every home.   It is an old dream and, in many ways,
modern web technology and data center technology has brought it
back to life.    Freedombox is, in part, about resisting that 
trend.



> This is the reason why i promised to give money to the project, to pay
> development!

> Best regards,
> Yannick

To you as well,
-t




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