The Freedom Box: Make technology that supports freedom. Turn freedom on!
"The Free Software movement isn't dead. It's right here. And it isn't "Open" anything."
"The Free Software movement isn't dead. It's right here. And it isn't "Open" anything."
That of course is a reference to the use of the term "open source", a term that came into use in 1998 to downplay and de-politicize the radical political agenda of the free software movement. "Open source" is a software development model. The free software movement is a social movement that promotes freedom for computer users.
Free Software Foundation Europe
First off.....thanks radiorahim
I have been looking for such diversity in thinking to confront the way things are going on the internet and this looks promising to me.
I do not know if what I am proposing here now is redundant in the face of such devices. Smart Hub's are placed by Union leaders throughout their places of business for executive to access information without using intranets of companies. Maybe this will overcome this need for companie to exploit our data access standing in the way of rights and freedoms in an union shop with regard to information gahtering?
I have been looking for ways to suppress the tracking of, that is used by company software.
So the devices are being manufacture and will be sold through companies? Which companies?
Freedom Box Projectp
Inspired by Eben Moglen's vision of a small, cheap and simple computer that serves freedom in the home. We are building a Debian based platform for distributed applications.
Freedom Box is about:
- privacy
- control
- ease of use
- dehierarchicalization
Vision Statement
We live in a world where our use of the network is mediated by organizations that often do not have our best interests at heart. By building software that does not rely on a central service, we can regain control and privacy. By keeping our data in our homes, we gain useful legal protections over it. By giving back power to the users over their networks and machines, we are returning the Internet to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.
In order to bring about the new network order, it is paramount that it is easy to convert to it. The hardware it runs on must be cheap. The software it runs on must be easy to install and administrate by anybody. It must be easy to transition from existing services.
There are a number of projects working to realize a future of distributed services; we aim to bring them all together in a convenient package.
See: FreedomBox
Spectrum. All of the things that the Freedom Box will do can be done right now by anyone who has a modest degree of skill setting up web servers using GNU/Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. You can just use that old dusty cast-off PC that's been sitting in the broom closet.
The problem is that most folks don't have these kinds of skills and realistically will never develop them.
So what the Freedom Box Foundation is working on are the software "packages" so that setting things up on a Freedom Box is relatively easy...or at the very least as easy as setting up a common household router.
The software will be "given away" to anyone who wants it. That includes "do it yourselfers" (DIY'ers) and hardware manufacturers.
Most common household routers and network attached storage boxes that you buy at your local electronics big box store these days are running on embedded GNU/Linux or FreeBSD Unix.
Just another thought Spectrum. It would be much better if you didn't quote three long paragraphs...maybe just a couple of sentences. People ARE capable of using their mouse to click on a link.
Bump!
If you care about internet privacy and your freedom to be anonymous online, take a few minutes and watch this video.
Eben Moglen - The Freedom Box (15 minutes)
Has anyone had experience with open source auction software, as in the free kind? I've been looking into it a little for a person who has little to no experience with computers and internet in general. He has hundreds of items he's collected over the years and wants to sell them. We've looked at ebay and Canadian pickers sites, but they are all about monthly rates, item insertion fees etc and that's all on top of Paypal's transaction fees. Anyway, I think the internet is a real good idea, and people should be able to do a little trade and personal selling without all these other guys latching on for the ride so to speak. I'm thinkin' a couple of hundred bucks for something like PHPProbids might not be a bad investment for my friend on low income and tight budget.
What I would suggest Fidel is that you start a new thread. Your question is an interesting one but has nothing at all to do with this thread.
Here is a Youtube video of a talk given by Bdale Garbee on the current status of the Freedom Box project. The talk was given at LinuxConf Australia in January, 2012. It's a largely technical talk, so a little on the techy side after the first ten minutes or so.
Quite a bit of progress has been made, the tough part is making the user interface simple so that relatively non-technical computer users can make use of it. If anyone knows folks who are good with user interface design, the project could use their help!
Edited to add: This project is particularly relevant as today the Harper government introduced their internet spying legislation.
Version 0.1 of the Freedom Box software has just been released.
Details of what's included in the software can be found here
Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Centre and Bdale Garbee from the Debian Project spoke at the FOSDEM Conference in Brussels a couple of weeks ago on the current state of development of the Freedom Box.
Moglen spoke more on the political/philosophical side of the project and Garbee spoke on the technical issues (some of which are a little on the geeky side)
You can find video of their presentation (51 minutes) here. The video is in "free as in freedom" webm format instead of proprietary flash format. That means it will play natively inside of any web browser with HTML5 support (Firefox, Chrome, Chromium or Opera) without the need for any kind of external plug-in programme.
The other day I was thinking of the tons of ancient DOS based PC games created and largely forgotten about, and the difficulty people are having these days playing them on later generation PCs with windows based operating systems. So after about half an hour of research and testing I found that free downloads of either dosbox or D-Fend Reloaded are available that work quite well.
The other day I was thinking of the tons of ancient DOS based PC games created and largely forgotten about, and the difficulty people are having these days playing them on later generation PCs with windows based operating systems. So after about half an hour of research and testing I found that free downloads of either dosbox or D-Fend Reloaded are available that work quite well.
I think we are just talking about servers and the process of computer development using Freedom Box as a aggregate. So in that sense, to include all previous info that is easily transferable. I think your software additions are just a extension of software development yes?
Dream Plug
Are we talking about this hardware product?
The Freedom Box Project is mainly working on the software stack for devices that can enable private online communications. One of the devices that I believe they were trying to use was the Dream Plug. Also under consideration is the Raspberry Pi because of it's newfound popularity.
The biggest obstacle that they're running into is the proprietary hardware...hardware for which there are no "free as in freedom" device drivers. It's driving the developers crazy. Wonderful little device that the Raspberry Pi is, it still contains proprietary hardware.
There is one other device in the works (the name I forget offhand) that is looking a bit more promising...that does have free hardware and would be a better candidate for the Freedom Box software stack. In the meantime though, there are tens and maybe hundreds of millions of castoff PC's gathering dust in basements, broom closets, garages, storage sheds etc. that also would make very good Freedom Boxes.
The other day I was thinking of the tons of ancient DOS based PC games created and largely forgotten about, and the difficulty people are having these days playing them on later generation PCs with windows based operating systems. So after about half an hour of research and testing I found that free downloads of either dosbox or D-Fend Reloaded are available that work quite well.
I guess a little thread drift, but I have run some older DOS based applicatons successfully with DOSBOX under GNU/Linux. Another that I haven't tried is DOSEMU.
The biggest obstacle that they're running into is the proprietary hardware...hardware for which there are no "free as in freedom" device drivers. It's driving the developers crazy. Wonderful little device that the Raspberry Pi is, it still contains proprietary hardware.
I know a secondary school teacher who has, in the past, done a course unit on HDL and introduced the kids to ASIC and FPGA's. I was lucky enough to have him as an associate teacher during my practicum. http://opencores.org/