[Freedombox-discuss] Freedombox-discuss Digest, Vol 15, Issue 33

[tornow at riseup.net]

On Sun, 23 Oct 2011 00:56:45 +0000
freedombox-discuss-request at lists.alioth.debian.org wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
> 
>    1. Freedombox's pursuit of perfection undermines	its goals
>       (Joshua Spodek)
>    2. Re: Freedombox's pursuit of perfection	undermines its
> goals (Bob Mottram)
>    3. Re: Freedombox's pursuit of perfection undermines its goals
>       (Robert Martinez)
>    4. Re: Freedombox's pursuit of perfection undermines its goals
>       (Bjarni R?nar Einarsson)
>    5. [Fwd: Re: Freedombox's pursuit of perfection undermines its
>       goals] (Weaver)
>    6. Straight and Narrow. (Weaver)
>    7. Re: [Fwd: Re: Freedombox's pursuit of perfection undermines
>       its goals] (Spectral Emanation)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2011 12:31:25 -0400
> From: Joshua Spodek <joshuaspodek at yahoo.com>
> To: freedombox-discuss at lists.alioth.debian.org
> Subject: [Freedombox-discuss] Freedombox's pursuit of perfection
> 	undermines	its goals
> Message-ID: <1319301085.32389.314.camel at cinetic>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
> 
> I hope the following blog post --
> http://joshuaspodek.com/freedomboxs-pursuit-perfection-undermines-goals
> -- is appropriate here.
> 
> I wrote it to help motivate and contribute to this project. I hope
> that comes across. I don't claim the final word or best perspective,
> so I welcome people pointing out things I missed or misunderstood.
> 
> 
> -------------------------------
> 
> *Freedombox's pursuit of perfection undermines its goals*
> 
> A journalist covering Iran I saw speak last night that got me thinking
> critically about the Freedombox in a way the Freedombox community
> would benefit from, in my opinion.
> 
> Someone asked the journalist what people working for freedom in Iran
> did about governments having access to data on Facebook and similar
> tools. Being in the Freedombox community, I anticipated her saying
> something like it was a big problem and people had to avoid it. She
> didn't. She extolled the benefits of social networking and described
> how people worked around problems and celebrated Facebook, Twitter,
> etc.
> 
> Since joining the Freedombox mailing list at its start, I've seen
> months of discussions on how to make it perfect. Pursuing theoretical
> ideals has some use, but I concluded the more meaningful comparison
> is not to ideals but to alternatives people today are using.
> 
> People in Iran don?t need perfection. They have imperfect tools like
> Facebook. They benefit from something better. Absent something better,
> they appreciate the best they have, which means the people our
> community wants to help end up supporting exactly the tools we want
> to leapfrog.
> 
> Does everyone see this irony? Until we create a device in any way
> better than Facebook, the people we say Facebook is putting at risk
> *support Facebook*! They don't just use it, they promote it and
> associate it with freedom. Trying to perfect X or Y software
> component undermines support for our own project when it delays
> creating a Freedombox.
> 
> Want more irony? The people we want to perfect the Freedombox for ?
> the ones at greatest risk ? can best solve our challenges. How? By
> using Freedomboxes. They are now solving current social networking
> problems. They will solve shortcomings in Freedomboxes has better
> through experience than we will through speculation, *as long as they
> have Freedomboxes to use*.
> 
> Perhaps the worst thing we can do to support people working for
> Freedom today is to delay producing code or working devices since it
> leaves them vulnerable and gets them to use and support what we
> consider nonfree tools.
> 
> I believe the best thing we can do for them is to create a Freedombox
> of any sort, however imperfect, as long as the code is Free and it
> has any advantages over alternatives like Facebook. Yes, it will have
> problems that could put people at risk so we should publicize what
> problems we know of so free software users can do what they do best ?
> improve the code themselves or report their problems so others can
> for them.
> 
> Without user input, we?re a rudderless ship. Without users, we can
> have no user input. Without a device, we have no users. I believe to
> support freedom through creating Freedomboxes, the best we can do is
> create any Freedombox at all, however imperfect, and get it and its
> code to users. Publicize the imperfections as loudly as possible so
> users at risk can avoid them.
> 
> In the worst case users can use non-free alternatives like Facebook,
> which is no worse than today?s situation.
> 
> In the best case they will solve the problems.
> 
> 

I am just a user. I agree that it might help to show something which
would look similar to a freedombox, from the applications/services
point of view.
Simple: to show people that they can run their own Website, they can
run their own wordpress, they can run their own gallery, etc.
(not sure about facebook/twitter/and similar services).

I am not sure if that was clear.
I think for potential users it is not that clear what it all is about.
Though i try to get my head into "leaving the cloud",
http://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/LeavingTheCloud
i am not that sure what a freedombox might be.
Something like: "A typical freedombox would contain the following: list
of services here" would help . 
A live-CD which shows it would even be better
(i tried one, but don't think it hits the
nail: http://minus.com/mCVak3OAL and its very raw: apache, wordpress,
i2p, gobby/sobby, etc and i am not sure how well it is configured. It
is just an example for me, services and apps on the same machine,  to
run in Virtualbox).


back to lurking mode... sorry if i disturbed.
good luck, thanks for a good project.
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