[Freedombox-discuss] What's the plan?

[Michiel de Jong]

I understand nobody did any hackfest meeting yesterday, but in the light of
this news:

http://freedomboxfoundation.org/news/Bdale_Garbee_Joins_Foundation/

I would like to summarize what I think we achieved in the 3 hackfests we
did. I must say I lost track of the mailling list this last week, because
it's just going too fast. But with regard to the seven goals [1] of the
foundation, I myself have so far concluded:

1 - social
not doable with current debian packages. need to watch (and help) other
projects like federated social web (which includes identi.ca and diaspora)
2 - backup
probably doable, but needs more discussion. need to think of how you select
your friends for backup purposes. what if none of your real-life friends
have freedomboxes?
3 - network neutrality
not currently doable, but there is a lot of research into both hardware and
software for wifi mesh, both on this list, and in other projects. for some
people, freedombox may be more about wifi mesh than about anything else,
which may pose a problem of expectations, if people think we'll have that
working by autumn.
4 - anonymous publication
Tor provides anonymity, on top of which you can publish. gnunet provides
anonymous file sharing, but is in a more experimental stage. by including at
least Tor, this goal can probably be done.
5  - home network security
we don't really understand this one. maybe it just means that the freedombox
can work as a NAT router and firewall if you want it to and don't have any
other router in your house already. it may also mean that you can set up a
http proxy on it that blocks known dodgy sites (like phishing sites etc.)
6 - encrypted mail
you could set up a web-based mail client that does pgp and connects to an
imap server somewhere else. the spam filtering would have to be done in the
remote imap server, not on the freedombox. people have also suggested that
we shouldn't bother with this one, and discourage the use of email
altogether, in favour of for instance xmpp-based messaging
7 - voice
there is a project that puts asterisk on a plug server, but given the size
and state of asterisk it's not clear if we could get that into a first
version within 6 months.

i think this list of 'first conclusions' is worth something, although it's
probably incorrect, because i have missed parts of the mailing list
discussions (especially the most recent ones). If i missed something
important, please don't be offended, and please correct it (we might want to
use the wiki for this, in that case). i'll shut up for a bit now, but will
keep lurking on the mailing list until i have some more time to try to help.

Let's give Bdale Garbee a warm welcome as the tech lead put forward by the
foundation, and listen what he has to say. As the foundation puts it: "Now
the real work can begin."[2] - exciting!

[1] http://freedomboxfoundation.org/goals/
[2] http://identi.ca/notice/66732693

cheers!
Michiel
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