[Freedombox-discuss] Some advice on moving Plinth forward?

[Mathieu Jourdan]

Hi Alistair,

Le 15 février 2012 15:06, Alistair Davidson
<alistair.l.davidson at gmail.com> a écrit :
> So, let's move towards some user stories.
>
> I'm a coder but not so hot at routing etc, so I'm going to act like a dumb
> designer who is ignorant of technical limitations ;) Here are a few of my
> ideal stories, and some technical questions:
>
> Alice is concerned about privacy. She wants to buy a device that will
> automatically manage this for her. She buys a Freedombox, and following the
> instruction sticker on the plug, she plugs an ethernet cable from her modem
> to the freedombox, which then acts as a router using sensible default
> settings. (is this the correct process?)

She also has to plug one more cable to link her freedombox to her
personal computer, in order to configure it.

But other people may have multiple computers directly connected to a
switch-router-modem appliance, then routing may not be needed and DHCP
may be pointless.

> Bob is like Alice, but has a USB-only ADSL modem his ISP gave him. How is
> Linux USB modem driver coverage looking these days?
>
> Carol wants fine-grained control of her privacy. Following instructions on
> the sticker, she types "freedombox" into the address bar of her browser ( do
> we have control of DNS at this point?) This takes her to a top-level page.
> She clicks the "Privacy" button and is presented with a simple interface for
> controlling privoxy etc. An "Advanced" button allows her to access more
> complicated features when needed.

If Carol's network topology is the same as Alice, I would say
freedombox could answer DNS requests in most cases. But for having
properly configured DNS resolution, Alice's computer may get network
parameters from freedombox DHCP, meaning she may have to (re)boot her
computer after plugging it.

Anyway, having to configure privoxy is a pain. Configuring freedombox
shouldn't be more complicated than creating an account on any service
provider. I think Carol just wants to tell her box who she is, get her
data back from service providers and enjoy.

Personnaly, I know lot of people having access to the Internet through
« a box », but no one except computer engineers having tried to
configure anything on it. Most people never heard about IP address or
domain name, while using it every day. Maybe freedombox could teach
them, I don't know, but it can't ask them anything about network or
security if we truly aim to rule the world.

> David wants to log in to websites using his OpenId. When he visits websites,
> "freedombox" is an option alongside Facebook and Google. He clicks the "Log
> in with Freedombox" link, and is asked for his password in an iFrame
> supplied by his own Freedombox (can we make this work when he is not on his
> own network?).
>

I think we should.

Regards,
Mathieu