FreedomBox

Elevate and ContactCon James Vasile attended Douglas Rushkoff's ContactCon to promote the FreedomBox. Thanks to Douglas Rushkoff and Venessa Miemis for inviting us to present and producing the event! My talk there was The FreedomBox in 4 Minutes. ... [More] He didn't just go to talk, the FreedomBox project won a prize at ContactCon, too! We'll have a full announcement about that soon. James headed straight from ContactCon to Austria's Elevate festival. While there, he hopped over to MAMA/Hacklab in Zagreb and also presented the FreedomBox in Ljubljana. Elevate was packed with great technology, media and arts events. Many thanks to Daniel Erlacher for the invitation and to Elevate for their donation to the FreedomBox Foundation. James's Elevate talk was called Freedom Out of the Box. [Less]

FreedomBox at LinuxConf North America FreedomBox Foundation's founder Eben Moglen and Tech Leader Bdale Garbee will be attending the next Linux Conference North America in Vancouver, Aug 17-19. This year's edition marks the 20th anniversary of Linux ... [More] kernel, a major milestone for the community. Bdale Garbee will speak on Wed Aug 17th at 3pm in Plaza B. Freedom, Out of the Box! by Bdale Garbeea status update on the development of "FreedomBox", a personal server running a free software operating system and free applications, designed to create and preserve personal privacy by providing a secure platform upon which federated social networks can be constructed. Prof. Eben Moglen will speak at the panel 20 years of Linux right after Bdale's speech and he will available also during other social events. Follow us on identi.ca/twitter to get last minute announcements. [Less]

IRC Chatlog 2011-08-15 15:00UTC generated by irclog-xml.pl alpha-0.04 on Mon Aug 15 09:52:03 PDT 2011 Welcome, everybody, to the scheduled Q&A with Bdale Garbee and me. We're here for an hour to answer questions and discuss the ... [More] FreedomBox. So pipe up with questions and we'll try to give the best answers we have. naif: http://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox I'll start with a question of my own for bdale: How are things going with the first release? Goldstein: I've asked Eben's external human memory storage (aka Ian Sullivan) and hope to have an answer for you shortly. naif, and http://freedomboxfoundation.org/discuss/ we're on the cusp of putting out a "developer image" for the DreamPlug that is a relatively simple Debian base image with essential build tools .. I had hoped to have it out by this morning but unfortunately day job and family reduced my available time the last few days subscribed! Goldstein: @eben> It's a class of Comp Priv Const at Columbia on the death of the fourth amendment. Audio should be available at the CPC website. Ian is with me at the moment, but we can find it for you shortly. has the required u-boot code been merged upstream yet? the initial dev image can be installed and used with the factory-provided u-boot bdale: will this image require specific hardware to run? the two features we "want" that aren't in that image are the ability to boot from an ext filesystem, so you have to maintain a small fat partition for the kernel .. and the ability to execute a script read from the filesystem so that we don't have to hard-code versioned filenames in the flash or maintain symlinks on the filesystem, but neither are immediate needs for dev work gbastien: the image in question is specifically for the Globalscale DreamPlug .. however, note that *any* Debian system can be used for development work other than assessing performance on a plug computer or working on hardware-specific enablement code bdale: You, Eben and I have talked about a first feature release. Any ideas on what that might look like and how we get from here to there? the plan is that we'll add additional software packages and configuration, re-spinning the install images as we add functionality there are three major areas I think we need to focus effort on soon the first is deciding on an approach for a configuration user interface .. we're more or less in concensus that the user interface should be a web ui, and we'd like to use as much of the existing Debian package configuration mechanics as we can on the bottom bdale: Web UI and XMPP chat? the second is fleshing out the connections between openpgp keys and the identity and trust elements of the software we want to use .. starting with monkeysphere and growing out from there Will I be able to run the software on a normal desktop/netbook from a USB stick? the third is building a core XMPP stack .. as Knygar says, the likely starting place there is XMPP chat, though once we have a base in place, a fairly rich set of connectivity services open up quickly jdeisenberg, with all software in FreedomBox packaged for Debian, I guess you will jdeisenberg: our focus to date has been on getting a reference implementation together for ARM-based plug servers, but turning that into an x86 virtualization image or a Debian Live cd/dvd/usbstick image featuring a similar package set wouldn't be hard for someone to do Is there a list (e.g. on a EtherPad or Wiki) of things that are to be decided upon? the work liw did on vmdebootstrap should be easy to fold into our freedom-maker tool, for example, to emit x86 virtualization images at the same time we emit dreamplug bits silver_hook: there's an evolving set of pages in the wiki, but I don't think there's anything so crisp as a "list of things to be decided upon" right now bdale: I was thinking more in lines of the agenda for today's meeting. * silver_hook is now known as hook vasile: so back to your original question, I think the first 'feature release' will be the addition of an XMPP server and web-oriented XMPP chat client bdale: Excellent. And are you still leaning toward ejabberd? hook: oic, the plan for today's meeting was "town hall" style Q&A * hook changes his nick ...much better now :] vasile: probably .. jonas was in the lead on that at Debconf, I don't see him on channel this morning, though bdale: OK, got it * HerraBRE is now known as BjarniRunar At the moment, I have a Sheevaplug; will the software work on that? and, in regards to the dreamplug, have the people who make it solved the overheating problem? is the dreamplug hardware completely supported by debian? i received mine last weekend and lots of stuff by default is done outside the package management system (firmware, custom kernel, etc.) vasile and I have talked about the idea that we should do this from time to time, just as another way to help folks know what we're thinking and working on, as sometimes chat like this is less stressful than trying to prepare "official announcements" and the like jdeisenberg: I can report tha tthe overheating has been solved. vasile: good to know; I am afraid to use my Sheevaplug because I don't want to burn my house down. jdeisenberg: I also have a Sheevaplug .. our bits should work fine, modulo choice of an adequately sized root filesystem device jdeisenberg: And the hardware is very much the same. Sullivan can speak to any minor differences, and he'll be in channel later. At any rate, I hope to test the image on a Sheeva at some point. bdale: I for one like this initiative, direct chat is nice. I also enjoyed the recording of your DebConf talk laziac: as I reported after our work at Debconf, we're now very close to having all the right stuff for the dreamplug upstreamed .. stock Debian doesn't quite cut it yet, you'll want a different kernel jdeisenberg: I've had a sheeva running continuously for months. It throws heat but no flames yet! @bdale regarding chat -- we are working in XCCC for a concurrent chat "FBX edition" with voting system, should be cool, we are planning to release it for a next this kind of chat.. personally, i don't like IRC, at all BjarniRunar: thanks .. fwiw, I'll also be giving a FreedomBox talk at the Linux Foundation's LinuxCon event in Vancouver this Wed afternoon. I do not expect it to be recorded or streamed, however. @bdale XMPP chat Knygar: sounds interesting .. I'm more likely to be found on irc than anywhere else right now, but that may change over time @bdale it would be at least fun, i promise speaking of which, anyone here who has questions even when we're not holding a meeting like this should feel free to poke me about them here on this channel. I "lurk" here most of the time I'm at a keyboard, and I log the channel even when I'm not around. @bdale for FNF i mean thefnf.org @all: are there any upcoming mega-infrastructure that would lead all the Freedom Networking projects? That may be compared with FSF, GNU etc. ? bdale: Could you talk a little more about the config system? So far we have: A web layer on top, config scripts on the bottom (possibly dpkg pre/post scripts). What's in the middle? Where does the box store state? Is it in /etc as per usual or do you envision a separate db holding the user choices from the web layer? the biggest differences between the Sheeva and Dream plugs from our perspective are that the Dream has an internal 2gb microsd (can be replaced with a screwdriver for access) that we can use for the root filesystem, and it has two gigE ports my personal objective would be to keep the "database" layer as thin as possible I'm also not really interested in a huge+heavy web app Can/will email be done via XMPP? to be brutally honest, this is an area I have not spent much time on yet bdale: The challenge in my mind will be to prevent bad states. Knygar: You're asking for a foundation to lead the FreedomBox Foundtion? originally, I hoped we'd have a UI specialist on board who would help us define what the infrastructure requirements are more recently, it just hasn't made it to the top of my list yet bdale: Yes, we're still looking for that person. @hook kind of Knygar: Why? (that's a serious question) @hook it is more like coordinate (hello all, sorry I'm late) bdale: Have you asked the OpenUsability guys for help yet? http://openusability.org/ i'v thought FNF is kind of whoa... what about the FNF? hook: No, I haven't. That's a good idea. Thanks. dogstar: to me, 'email' means smtp, et al .. however, vasile will attest that I've mentioned several times that to do something truly distributed and secure, we need to think more in terms of messaging other than smtp Agreed. what do you plan for a sync solution? From my point of view, dvcs-autosync (git) is the best for text files and webdav (or similar) for others (music, pictures...) [owncloud?]. I believe it is an important feature yeah... xmpp can handle messaging what about rsync? vasile: Sure thing bdale, API for the configuration would be good to have, so that the UI can be designed more freely @hook @imw -- FNF to lead the industries coordination (freely, openly etc.) and software stacks.. ? Francois_April: keep in mind that the reference box won't really have any storage space, so anything that implies the FBX is storing lots of data problably is an addon of some sort. Francois_April: what do you mean by 'sync'? reed: Agreed. @hook yes, very serious, are we mature enough to make something globally and non-profit bdale, something like "dropbox" are you planning on collaborate with other free networks that are already working around the world? BjarniRunar, I agree @knygar FNF just wants to help people build their own infrastructure, and sees this as a vehicle http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/CPC appears to be fresh as of April 2006 Francois_April: There's ownCloud and SparkleShare. Hi, new here. Do you think that freedombox can succeed without a physical device with it installed and with a big (so expensive) hard drive to stock personnal data ? the network part is only one bit of the FreedomBox project... the idea is to collaborate with other projects that are already doing it, no need for FBX to replicate their work reed: I think a good step would be to try and flesh out a list of configuration elements that we think we'll need for the first service or three, which will let us get an idea of just how much infrastructure/api we really need fauno: Generally speaking, yes. Do you have a specific one in mind? @imw good idea, since you list many projects and there would be more, progress, it is a nice variant i guess there was some work done at Debconf on this, but I wasn't in the middle of it Knygar: I still don't get why you're already having a foundation and would like another one.... Could you clarify that please? hook, SparkleShare is in mono and not enough stable from my point of view ...then maybe I can get an idea. hook, the FreedomBox Foundation already exists guillemin: I'm afraid I don't quite understand your question. Could you rephrase or expand on it? @hook FBX is working on FBX's but there are FreedomNodes etc. reed: I know, that's what confuses me... is Jonas here? vasile: well, i belong to one in buenos aires. there's also a coordination group of latinamerican free networks... why not just a decent rsync setup for syncing? Francois_April: Good point. OwnCloud sounds promising though. @hook all is very big and custom projects, even so they may use FBX as a base fauno: If Debian can talk to it, then so can the FreedomBox. fauno: redeslibres is great >hook< knygar is probably talking about another foundation that he's working on or something, the freedom network foundation fauno:plus funkfeuer and freifunk @hook it is not an hierarchy question for me, it is coordination Knygar: Oooooh, so a wider foundation then the Freedombox Foundation. OK, I get it now. @hook FBX doesn't have enough people and probably won't have as far as the goal is FBX's for example @hook @knygar yeah, FNF fills that role a bit, but the FNF is basically just me an Charles Wyble, for the moment hook, yes. However, owncloud could not handle automatic syncs and offline usage. dvcs-autosync could but a nice GUI is missing Knygar: my take on this is that coordination is best handled by talking about protocols and software .. coordination above that level is great talk over beer, but doesn't get any work done imw: I saw that Wyble was going to release freedomnode a few days ago; has that happened? @imw who cares the basic need is for coordination and since you could help in it and actually - helping, that is what i mean bdale, you mentioned buddycloud on your report from DebConf: what's the status of their development? did anybody contact them? jdeisenberg: not that I'm aware of Francois_April: If that's so, you could file a wish "bug" to the ownCloud. That's the best idea I have right now (that has a GUI) reed: I haven't (yet) @jdeisenberg nah. he's hard at work though. hook, OK. i'll do my impression is that jonas was sitting with some of them at CCC last week, though bdale, My mom only uses email. Has email been ruled out as an FBX app? "OwnCloud sounds promising though" +1 vasile: sorry, I wanted to ask if you think freedombox can provide an alternative to cloud apps without requiring a big hard driver to record heavy personal data (photos, videos) and without being distributed in dedicated devices. reed: I talked with the buddycloud folks at CCC bdale: yes, BTW, there are possibly popular BrowserID that relies on mailing imw: right .. anything interesting to report? fiftyfour: email could be integrated through forward, to make the transition to a new messaging protocol such as xmpp Has anyone signed up already to provide pre-installed FBX's= ? (FBX = FreedomBox, right?) bdale: it would be very nice if email would be a basic service of FBX's Knygar, that should be easy to do. Do you volunteer to do that? bdale: yeah, he's got everything that's in his 'data ownership stack' deployed on a redhat machine @imw brave idea imw, vasile: there are this regional conferences down here, there's so much interest that three were organized in less than a year... maybe you're interested on participating in the next one? @hook yes guillemin: Obviously we need storage for heavy files. That's going to be either local or somewhere "in the cloud". Maybe that's a friend's box or maybe that's a third praty hosted solution protected with encryption. hook , Yes FBX = Freedombox badle: that's as far as I know, but I talked to him briefly yesterday, and he said that he'd made progress before we cut out fauno, where is 'down here'? Knygar: you address ppl like so on irc @imw that is for XMPP fauno: Ping me after this chat and we can talk about it. I have limited travel, but I'm always willing to see if I can make it work. reed: south americe imw, what is forward? imw: any interesting news from the buddycloud folks? Goldstein: that is why i don't like it:)) vasile: ok, the date is yet to be confirmed As for distributed encrypted storage (e.g. for backups) this is something the ownCloud guys are trying to implement. reed: south america* fiftyfour: meant to say forwarding, for which there are various methods fauno: Fair enough. You can email me when you have specifics. vasile: What is the state of funding for the foundation? fauno: I plan to be in Brazil for the LF Linuxcon event later this year, it would be interesting if some other meeting(s) might line up on the schedule around then @hook and Tahoe and Camlistore and etc. in various degree imw: also interested in knowing status of buddycloud * hook is not affiliated with ownCloud, he just follows a bit of stuff and many topics here were relevant to those solutions Ugh ok, /ignore time bdale: that's good, we have even more limited traveling, but there's a group forming in brazil Knygar: Right, but without a webGUI and direct desktop access AFAIK. vasile: thanks for clarification. Goldstein: i'm sorry, strong habit, i didn't want to ignore your opinion When do you think you will need non-developpers but quite experienced users? Specific tasks in mind? fauno: bdale: vasile: so folks at CCC asked me to come down to Brasil to talk about the FNF as well, not sure the timing, might be the same event dogstar: That's a good question. We have our original kickstarter funding, and about five thousand in paypal donations since then. Of that, we have about 60K left, after fees, dream plugs, paying stefano, some printing costs (stickers, flyers, etc.). We are talking to some potential donors and making foundatio nappeals. guillemin: My pleasure. imw, will FBX forward the email for me or is it some other service @hook yes, but they evolve , maybe WebDAV imw: I'm failing to decode "FNF" .. help me out, please? :hook at least bdale: Free Network Foundation, I think. fiftyfour: your fbx could fetch your messages from your old mailserver bdale: Free Network Foundation, sorry bout that can we all talk about identity management, or did I miss that part? :vasile are there another platforms, besides Changemakers? Having migrators on the FBX IMHO should be a must. :vasile planned fiftyfour: configuring an smtp+imap email service could be done in lots of ways, none of which directly align with or promote many of the desired attributes of a freedombox. so, exactly what additional value we can or should add to the email experience of a given user is a topic where I think some research and discussion would be good knygar: the colon goes at the end, silly :hook +1 Knygar: I'm currently finishing up an nl.net proposal. :hook for migrators If we really want people to easily switch, they need to have a simple "Migrate from FaceBook" button. bdale: totally agree re:mail and s/FaceBook/any_cloud_service Knygar, do you know other foundations or groups that may be able to sponsor FBX development? send us a list hook: That's an excellent suggestion. We'd need to have the identity management layer done first, but it's a great idea. :bdale +1 for research hook: https://github.com/LockerProject/Locker could be useful for that ...which would pull all their data, (optionally) delete it there *and* inform their contacts that the person migrated to his own free solution and how they can a) contact him/her now; and b) how they can free themselves as well. Goldstein: I'm told that audio of the speech you seek exists but is in a queue to be processed and won't be ready any time soon. :bdale i have even proposed Mozilla to make a secure hosting or kind.. for a next betafarm of community .. that is a very important task, i think hook: sounds like a hackfest idea laziac: I was just thinking about suggesting that as one of the tools it's also interesting to note that while I, and Eben, and many of our parent's generation live and die by email, it seems to be a much lower priority communications mechanism for most people these days .. [shrug] bdale: so many years and not a one serious floss web-mail package, am i wrong? hook: nice idea bdale: I think it's still high priority in the workplace, even for people who don't use it much personally. bdale, agreed, email can be bad One thing that the FBX could do for e-mail would be to opportunistically encrypt/decrypt mail when GPG keys are available for the recipient. This would be in line with the project's goals. Does FBX already have a groupware solution? BjarniRunar: gnu anubis can do that iirc That'd be a must for NGOs, civil groups etc. vasile, only because of legacy ... but this is off topic :bdale as i say - BrowserID is likely to make it important bjarnirunar: keys should be present by default on the box, imho Maybe Kolab + Roundcube ( we're working on making that a reality) hook: what do you mean by groupware? :bdale also - registrations with necessary mail would be here for years, i'm afraid hook, great job! not sure it fits the FBX needs, but good nonetheless BjarniRunar: it depends on what problem you're trying to solve .. smtp daemons can choose to opportunistically encrypt content in flight, but if the point of encryption is personal privacy, that's much better handled in the email client we need to talk about naming, as well imw: E-mail. Calendar, ToDos, Notes server (via IMAP in Kolab's case), etc. that can be shared between users, made public, you can delegate tasks etc. hook: maybe did folks get the e-mail i sent this morning? Beyond the tech, how will FBX really get the scale it needs for security and the mesh level networking? bdale: of course, but most of the things the FBX is supposed to help with would actually be better done in the client imw: yes hook: that seems outside of the initial spec, to me, but would be good later I think we should focus on core functionality, for now imw: yes .. I'm not ignoring you. as I mentioned earlier, working out how we get from openpgp keys to useful identity and trust elements for configuring and using apps is a high priority for me imw, reed: It depends on what FBX is there for. If it's to empower groups like NGOs and civil initiatives as well, then it's a must. bdale: cool. sorry I missed the beginning of the chat. There is already some work done on desktop to import data from clouds (facebook for example). Some desktops (gnome for example) or mobile phones already provide a way to get contacts, chat etc. from cloud. May be the user should not ask freedombox to import facebook data. Rather the user connect his device to freedombox and freedombox gather information from configured online services. joncamfield: Scaling mesh is hard. Interlinking them is hard too. My hope is that the dedicated mesh projects keep making progress. Right now, though, there are meshes running at the level of 5000 nodes, which is pretty good. bdale: there seems to be a critical interplay between naming and identity management * hook should be working on that blasted BSD question hook, afaik FBX is more of a personal device, at least in its current incarnation a good shared calendar service is highly desired, but it seems far enough from ready that I'm thinking of writing it up as a challenge in my blog imw: interplay, yes vasile: the key is not to scale, but to federate Is anyone else besides me and Jonas coming to Brussels for this? http://epfsug.eu/content/epfsug-invites-freedombox imw: and between social networking vasile: 2.4 for the home, 5ghz for the neighborhood, 3650mhz for the region could work imw: Yes, I include federation in the term scale, perhaps inappropriately. That's what I mean by interlinking them. bdale: I'm pretty happy with how Kolab works (at least from the end-user perspective). vasile: gotcha. well, it's especially hard when everything at the top of the stack is still centralized, and the mesh is being used to hop to a gateway imw: what is the worst frequency for human beings, environment - among these? bdale: But that might be a bit bloated if you only need it for the calendar vasile: but as soon as you introduce decentralized services, it takes a load off, because local traffic stays local knygar: it's really only bad for you if you hold it 2mm from your brain imw: or from other parts.. knygar: delivered energy is an inverse square to distance, I've been looking at radicale .. going from that to a useful fbx service isn't trivial, though, I think imw: Yes, eliminating some of the roundtrip would reduce the hops. I wonder how big the gain would be. bdale: whats radicale? vasile: a topic for research, certainly imw: http://radicale.org/ a simple calendar server using caldav i love this! imw: Certainly. bdale: thanks the idea of individuals having calendars and deciding what portion of them to be able to share is a good basis vasile: Radicale seems cute'n'nifty :] Everybody: this chat has been scrolling fast. If you tried to say something and it was missed, please try again. We are at the close of our scheduled hour, so get those questions in. Bdale and I will be lurking, but I like the intensity of having people focused on things all at once. Is there a (preferably distributed) search engine planned as well? Is anyone else besides me and Jonas coming to Brussels for this? http://epfsug.eu/content/epfsug-invites-freedombox vasile: I think the chokepoint project might have some info on how much traffic is actually local traffic, but if not we need to get it e.g. Seeks seems promising and YaCy is also an option. hook: in all our meetings, we've never seriously considered including search. In fact, we've explicitly excluded it a few time, at least when sketching assumptions. vasile: why is that? hook: depends on what you want to search .. I don't have any thoughts about "google on fbx", or anything like that .. but at the other end of the continuum xapian and things that use it like notmuch rock my world Is email excluded? Seniorexpat: I'm not, can't speak for others I'm not saying it can't happen, just that in the constellation of possibilities, I wouldn't consider it the bright star by which we steer this ship. seniorexpat: i'd love to, but I can't vasile, bdale: That's too bad, but I can see why. hook, look at the archives of the list, the problems IIRC are storage needs and processing power So when (or how) can we start actually playing with the FBX software stack to see what is or should be in it? hook: I'll fight to have search included, I think it's important hook: the idea that we may want some search-like location finding mechanism seems reasonable, but I currently think that's more in line with application-level functionality, like some of what the buddycloud folks and other groups like that are working on than a totally generic "searc" hook: Search is expensive. gbastien: we've got to build it before we can play with it imw: If you build it and it can fit, there's always a chance. bdale: vasile: do y'all have dreamplug lying around? *dreamplugs imw: We have dreamplugs, yes. And more on order. imw: Hehe, I'd love one too gbastien: the best starting point today is to grab some hardware that can run Debian, and start playing with the daemons mentioned in http://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/LeavingTheCloud and/or here vasile: is there any chance that I (or others) could come play with them, or that you could distributed them? bdale, is Email excluded? hook, http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2010-October/000191.html and around that vasile: also, does the foundation have an office where I can come bug you/ give you a high five? reed: Thanks *distribute Search is not just expensive, it is a problem which is not trivially distributable. You can have distributed search, but the quality will be abysmal compared with what the Googles can do. It is a theoretically hard problem which benefits dramatically from centralization. imw: I, Eben, Ian Sullivan and Clint Adams all work our of SFLC's office in New York City. I would ask, would there be GNU/Hurd variation as well, but I already know the answer bdale: Thanks, I've been following the project for a while now but can't see how I can fit in, as a software developer fiftyfour: I'm not sure what 'excluded' means, exactly .. I do not personally have any plans to work on an smtp+imap config for our reference implementation, but if you or someone else have a solid proposal, I'm happy to hear it imw: You're welcome any time you're in town. vasile: cool. =) ...I'd still love to see it one day. I think Hurd's might be more suited for such stuff. I work from a home office in the woods in Colorado .. easiest to find me at a conference sometime, I suspect As for getting a dream plug, I imagine we'll be selling some. And if you're doing serious work on the hardware, we can work something out too. bjarnirunar: true. we've got to get work. hook: if/when Debian actually releases a hurd variant .. bdale: When I imagine somebody showing up at your place unannounced, I picture them riding an ATV and wearing snow shoes. bdale: swell bdale: AFAIK it will in the next release. But the bigger problem is that Hurd is not yet ported to ARM :P imw: Well, when I say 'hard problem', I mean that it may be impossible in practical terms to get anywhere close to what one would consider acceptable quality. It's not just about elbow grease. i think more than anything this project needs focus. we need a list of critical features and we need to be able to tell people with other ideas to come back when those critical features are done. it would also make it easier to know the best way to contribute, since for me it's been very unclear how i can help. thoughts? Does the FreedomBox Community have recommended software alternatives to Twitter and Facebook? bjarnirunar: I know. It was a bit tounge-in-cheek. we need uncrackable encryption, too. when it was new, I thought the Hurd was pretty cool .. I have to admit that I haven't been able to stir up much excitement in myself about whether it makes it into Debian Wheezy or not... laziac: I agree. We're inching our way toward that. Goldstein, statusNet is a good start imw: ok Uncrackable encryption is easy though, just throw away the keys. bjarnirunar: =) laziac: I'm happy to see other people (you?) add things to the wiki pages, including lists of unanswered questions that need attention I'd probably recommend giving GnuSocial a look gnu social is based on statusnet, no? bing: yes have people considered the overlap between fbx and the torouter project Dunno imw: Yes I was talking to ioerror, and he seems to basically consider them the same deal look at statusnet 1.0, very different from previous versions imw: Jacob Applebaum is on the TAC, he's one of the drivers of the torouter project IIRC. right, that's sort of my concern right now, we're all volunteers, and so as is always true in this context, we work on the things that interest us the most and where we see how to make some forward progress .. more help, whether on the technical bits, or how to find some large donors so that we can hire people to work on the bits that aren't very fun, would be great! (Jacob == ioerror, for those who don't know) And StatusNet is a FB replacement, yes? do people see the box including tor by default? I think it should do encryption by default, but not anonymization Goldstein, nothing can replace facebook, with its 700Million users... statustnet has some of its features though or both? imw: For a certain set of problems, routing around censorship or filters becomes the same problem as anonymization. and possible include the facilities for anonymization, if a user wants to start an anonymous session, but that should be very clearly defined imw: I see this box as capable of anonymity, but not necessarily running all your traffic through tor by default. vasile: cool. exactly. excuse me - tor problems.. are there a logs of this chat>? reed: Well I disagree, but I think that does answer my immediate question haha imw: But by the time we get where we are going, who knows what the state of Tor will be? vasile: true. things have been improving rapidly. yep. Knygar, we'll publish the logs later today reed: thank you I think it highly likely that an fbx reference implementation will include tor packages. it's not yet entirely clear to me how much of the functionality is turned on by default, etc this all leads back to persistent names right bdale: and voting I don't think we should expect folks to maintain a dns record voting for tor or not, i mean..) the interplay between naming, identity, authentication and social is at the heart of the backend, if you ask me imw: oh, maybe ExpertBox's? imw: Yes, that's the FreedomStack imw: +1 .onions are perfect for an easy to use name that cannot be censored easily, has no overhead for the user, etc imw: agreed ioerror: but you've got to be running tor yep as a *client* ioerror: User unfriendliness of md5sumnames is overhead imw: mdns can do name resolution without a dns server, but it seems the performance is awful on medium sized networks :s tor as a node would be reasonable I believe that we marked the hour allocated to the meeting, some of us may need to go to work in that case dkg's talk from Debconf has good material on this topic area for those who haven't listened to it yet ioerror: sure, but you've still got to be running it BjarniRunar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooko's_triangle OK, friends, that was our hour. Bdale, any final thoughts? ioerror: I know Some of this is very reminiscent of Freenet's distributed architecture, has any of that code or thoughtwork been incorporated? ioerror: that means that for anyone to access a service hosted on a fbx, they would have to run tor or navigate to a tor-to-web site that was set up, no? imw: and how does any other solution solve this problkem? imw: no ioerror: I'm suggesting that it's not a solved problem BTW, all the talks of DebConf that are somewhat related to FreedomBox are linked from http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/news/FreedomBox_at_DebConf2011/index.en.html (sorry, was also in multiple overlapping twisty meetings, all different) imw: i do not think anyone has proposed a protocol for interacting with names imw: i am suggesting that the naming system is however complete with .onions great to see the interest/enthusiasm here .. I sincerely home that some of it translates into contributions to the wiki content, and/or more specific proposals of software and configuration that we should consider for fbx .. as much as I love "just talking about things", we need to focus as much energy as we can on protocols and bits to make real progress s/home/hope Is there a place to share links about design (relevant Art), discuss purpose etc ? bdale: vasile: final question - when there would be Working Groups and how they would be.. My final thought: THANKS to everybody for participating. We'll do it again soon. I am, once again, impressed by this community's expertise and dedication to freedom. generated by irclog-xml.pl alpha-0.04 on Mon Aug 15 09:52:03 PDT 2011 [Less]

IRC Chatlog 2011-08-15 15:00UTC generated by irclog-xml.pl alpha-0.04 on Mon Aug 15 09:52:03 PDT 2011 Welcome, everybody, to the scheduled Q&A with Bdale Garbee and me. We're here for an hour to answer questions and discuss the ... [More] FreedomBox. So pipe up with questions and we'll try to give the best answers we have. naif: http://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox I'll start with a question of my own for bdale: How are things going with the first release? Goldstein: I've asked Eben's external human memory storage (aka Ian Sullivan) and hope to have an answer for you shortly. naif, and http://freedomboxfoundation.org/discuss/ we're on the cusp of putting out a "developer image" for the DreamPlug that is a relatively simple Debian base image with essential build tools .. I had hoped to have it out by this morning but unfortunately day job and family reduced my available time the last few days subscribed! Goldstein: @eben> It's a class of Comp Priv Const at Columbia on the death of the fourth amendment. Audio should be available at the CPC website. Ian is with me at the moment, but we can find it for you shortly. has the required u-boot code been merged upstream yet? the initial dev image can be installed and used with the factory-provided u-boot bdale: will this image require specific hardware to run? the two features we "want" that aren't in that image are the ability to boot from an ext filesystem, so you have to maintain a small fat partition for the kernel .. and the ability to execute a script read from the filesystem so that we don't have to hard-code versioned filenames in the flash or maintain symlinks on the filesystem, but neither are immediate needs for dev work gbastien: the image in question is specifically for the Globalscale DreamPlug .. however, note that *any* Debian system can be used for development work other than assessing performance on a plug computer or working on hardware-specific enablement code bdale: You, Eben and I have talked about a first feature release. Any ideas on what that might look like and how we get from here to there? the plan is that we'll add additional software packages and configuration, re-spinning the install images as we add functionality there are three major areas I think we need to focus effort on soon the first is deciding on an approach for a configuration user interface .. we're more or less in concensus that the user interface should be a web ui, and we'd like to use as much of the existing Debian package configuration mechanics as we can on the bottom bdale: Web UI and XMPP chat? the second is fleshing out the connections between openpgp keys and the identity and trust elements of the software we want to use .. starting with monkeysphere and growing out from there Will I be able to run the software on a normal desktop/netbook from a USB stick? the third is building a core XMPP stack .. as Knygar says, the likely starting place there is XMPP chat, though once we have a base in place, a fairly rich set of connectivity services open up quickly jdeisenberg, with all software in FreedomBox packaged for Debian, I guess you will jdeisenberg: our focus to date has been on getting a reference implementation together for ARM-based plug servers, but turning that into an x86 virtualization image or a Debian Live cd/dvd/usbstick image featuring a similar package set wouldn't be hard for someone to do Is there a list (e.g. on a EtherPad or Wiki) of things that are to be decided upon? the work liw did on vmdebootstrap should be easy to fold into our freedom-maker tool, for example, to emit x86 virtualization images at the same time we emit dreamplug bits silver_hook: there's an evolving set of pages in the wiki, but I don't think there's anything so crisp as a "list of things to be decided upon" right now bdale: I was thinking more in lines of the agenda for today's meeting. * silver_hook is now known as hook vasile: so back to your original question, I think the first 'feature release' will be the addition of an XMPP server and web-oriented XMPP chat client bdale: Excellent. And are you still leaning toward ejabberd? hook: oic, the plan for today's meeting was "town hall" style Q&A * hook changes his nick ...much better now :] vasile: probably .. jonas was in the lead on that at Debconf, I don't see him on channel this morning, though bdale: OK, got it * HerraBRE is now known as BjarniRunar At the moment, I have a Sheevaplug; will the software work on that? and, in regards to the dreamplug, have the people who make it solved the overheating problem? is the dreamplug hardware completely supported by debian? i received mine last weekend and lots of stuff by default is done outside the package management system (firmware, custom kernel, etc.) vasile and I have talked about the idea that we should do this from time to time, just as another way to help folks know what we're thinking and working on, as sometimes chat like this is less stressful than trying to prepare "official announcements" and the like jdeisenberg: I can report tha tthe overheating has been solved. vasile: good to know; I am afraid to use my Sheevaplug because I don't want to burn my house down. jdeisenberg: I also have a Sheevaplug .. our bits should work fine, modulo choice of an adequately sized root filesystem device jdeisenberg: And the hardware is very much the same. Sullivan can speak to any minor differences, and he'll be in channel later. At any rate, I hope to test the image on a Sheeva at some point. bdale: I for one like this initiative, direct chat is nice. I also enjoyed the recording of your DebConf talk laziac: as I reported after our work at Debconf, we're now very close to having all the right stuff for the dreamplug upstreamed .. stock Debian doesn't quite cut it yet, you'll want a different kernel jdeisenberg: I've had a sheeva running continuously for months. It throws heat but no flames yet! @bdale regarding chat -- we are working in XCCC for a concurrent chat "FBX edition" with voting system, should be cool, we are planning to release it for a next this kind of chat.. personally, i don't like IRC, at all BjarniRunar: thanks .. fwiw, I'll also be giving a FreedomBox talk at the Linux Foundation's LinuxCon event in Vancouver this Wed afternoon. I do not expect it to be recorded or streamed, however. @bdale XMPP chat Knygar: sounds interesting .. I'm more likely to be found on irc than anywhere else right now, but that may change over time @bdale it would be at least fun, i promise speaking of which, anyone here who has questions even when we're not holding a meeting like this should feel free to poke me about them here on this channel. I "lurk" here most of the time I'm at a keyboard, and I log the channel even when I'm not around. @bdale for FNF i mean thefnf.org @all: are there any upcoming mega-infrastructure that would lead all the Freedom Networking projects? That may be compared with FSF, GNU etc. ? bdale: Could you talk a little more about the config system? So far we have: A web layer on top, config scripts on the bottom (possibly dpkg pre/post scripts). What's in the middle? Where does the box store state? Is it in /etc as per usual or do you envision a separate db holding the user choices from the web layer? the biggest differences between the Sheeva and Dream plugs from our perspective are that the Dream has an internal 2gb microsd (can be replaced with a screwdriver for access) that we can use for the root filesystem, and it has two gigE ports my personal objective would be to keep the "database" layer as thin as possible I'm also not really interested in a huge+heavy web app Can/will email be done via XMPP? to be brutally honest, this is an area I have not spent much time on yet bdale: The challenge in my mind will be to prevent bad states. Knygar: You're asking for a foundation to lead the FreedomBox Foundtion? originally, I hoped we'd have a UI specialist on board who would help us define what the infrastructure requirements are more recently, it just hasn't made it to the top of my list yet bdale: Yes, we're still looking for that person. @hook kind of Knygar: Why? (that's a serious question) @hook it is more like coordinate (hello all, sorry I'm late) bdale: Have you asked the OpenUsability guys for help yet? http://openusability.org/ i'v thought FNF is kind of whoa... what about the FNF? hook: No, I haven't. That's a good idea. Thanks. dogstar: to me, 'email' means smtp, et al .. however, vasile will attest that I've mentioned several times that to do something truly distributed and secure, we need to think more in terms of messaging other than smtp Agreed. what do you plan for a sync solution? From my point of view, dvcs-autosync (git) is the best for text files and webdav (or similar) for others (music, pictures...) [owncloud?]. I believe it is an important feature yeah... xmpp can handle messaging what about rsync? vasile: Sure thing bdale, API for the configuration would be good to have, so that the UI can be designed more freely @hook @imw -- FNF to lead the industries coordination (freely, openly etc.) and software stacks.. ? Francois_April: keep in mind that the reference box won't really have any storage space, so anything that implies the FBX is storing lots of data problably is an addon of some sort. Francois_April: what do you mean by 'sync'? reed: Agreed. @hook yes, very serious, are we mature enough to make something globally and non-profit bdale, something like "dropbox" are you planning on collaborate with other free networks that are already working around the world? BjarniRunar, I agree @knygar FNF just wants to help people build their own infrastructure, and sees this as a vehicle http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/CPC appears to be fresh as of April 2006 Francois_April: There's ownCloud and SparkleShare. Hi, new here. Do you think that freedombox can succeed without a physical device with it installed and with a big (so expensive) hard drive to stock personnal data ? the network part is only one bit of the FreedomBox project... the idea is to collaborate with other projects that are already doing it, no need for FBX to replicate their work reed: I think a good step would be to try and flesh out a list of configuration elements that we think we'll need for the first service or three, which will let us get an idea of just how much infrastructure/api we really need fauno: Generally speaking, yes. Do you have a specific one in mind? @imw good idea, since you list many projects and there would be more, progress, it is a nice variant i guess there was some work done at Debconf on this, but I wasn't in the middle of it Knygar: I still don't get why you're already having a foundation and would like another one.... Could you clarify that please? hook, SparkleShare is in mono and not enough stable from my point of view ...then maybe I can get an idea. hook, the FreedomBox Foundation already exists guillemin: I'm afraid I don't quite understand your question. Could you rephrase or expand on it? @hook FBX is working on FBX's but there are FreedomNodes etc. reed: I know, that's what confuses me... is Jonas here? vasile: well, i belong to one in buenos aires. there's also a coordination group of latinamerican free networks... why not just a decent rsync setup for syncing? Francois_April: Good point. OwnCloud sounds promising though. @hook all is very big and custom projects, even so they may use FBX as a base fauno: If Debian can talk to it, then so can the FreedomBox. fauno: redeslibres is great >hook< knygar is probably talking about another foundation that he's working on or something, the freedom network foundation fauno:plus funkfeuer and freifunk @hook it is not an hierarchy question for me, it is coordination Knygar: Oooooh, so a wider foundation then the Freedombox Foundation. OK, I get it now. @hook FBX doesn't have enough people and probably won't have as far as the goal is FBX's for example @hook @knygar yeah, FNF fills that role a bit, but the FNF is basically just me an Charles Wyble, for the moment hook, yes. However, owncloud could not handle automatic syncs and offline usage. dvcs-autosync could but a nice GUI is missing Knygar: my take on this is that coordination is best handled by talking about protocols and software .. coordination above that level is great talk over beer, but doesn't get any work done imw: I saw that Wyble was going to release freedomnode a few days ago; has that happened? @imw who cares the basic need is for coordination and since you could help in it and actually - helping, that is what i mean bdale, you mentioned buddycloud on your report from DebConf: what's the status of their development? did anybody contact them? jdeisenberg: not that I'm aware of Francois_April: If that's so, you could file a wish "bug" to the ownCloud. That's the best idea I have right now (that has a GUI) reed: I haven't (yet) @jdeisenberg nah. he's hard at work though. hook, OK. i'll do my impression is that jonas was sitting with some of them at CCC last week, though bdale, My mom only uses email. Has email been ruled out as an FBX app? "OwnCloud sounds promising though" +1 vasile: sorry, I wanted to ask if you think freedombox can provide an alternative to cloud apps without requiring a big hard driver to record heavy personal data (photos, videos) and without being distributed in dedicated devices. reed: I talked with the buddycloud folks at CCC bdale: yes, BTW, there are possibly popular BrowserID that relies on mailing imw: right .. anything interesting to report? fiftyfour: email could be integrated through forward, to make the transition to a new messaging protocol such as xmpp Has anyone signed up already to provide pre-installed FBX's= ? (FBX = FreedomBox, right?) bdale: it would be very nice if email would be a basic service of FBX's Knygar, that should be easy to do. Do you volunteer to do that? bdale: yeah, he's got everything that's in his 'data ownership stack' deployed on a redhat machine @imw brave idea imw, vasile: there are this regional conferences down here, there's so much interest that three were organized in less than a year... maybe you're interested on participating in the next one? @hook yes guillemin: Obviously we need storage for heavy files. That's going to be either local or somewhere "in the cloud". Maybe that's a friend's box or maybe that's a third praty hosted solution protected with encryption. hook , Yes FBX = Freedombox badle: that's as far as I know, but I talked to him briefly yesterday, and he said that he'd made progress before we cut out fauno, where is 'down here'? Knygar: you address ppl like so on irc @imw that is for XMPP fauno: Ping me after this chat and we can talk about it. I have limited travel, but I'm always willing to see if I can make it work. reed: south americe imw, what is forward? imw: any interesting news from the buddycloud folks? Goldstein: that is why i don't like it:)) vasile: ok, the date is yet to be confirmed As for distributed encrypted storage (e.g. for backups) this is something the ownCloud guys are trying to implement. reed: south america* fiftyfour: meant to say forwarding, for which there are various methods fauno: Fair enough. You can email me when you have specifics. vasile: What is the state of funding for the foundation? fauno: I plan to be in Brazil for the LF Linuxcon event later this year, it would be interesting if some other meeting(s) might line up on the schedule around then @hook and Tahoe and Camlistore and etc. in various degree imw: also interested in knowing status of buddycloud * hook is not affiliated with ownCloud, he just follows a bit of stuff and many topics here were relevant to those solutions Ugh ok, /ignore time bdale: that's good, we have even more limited traveling, but there's a group forming in brazil Knygar: Right, but without a webGUI and direct desktop access AFAIK. vasile: thanks for clarification. Goldstein: i'm sorry, strong habit, i didn't want to ignore your opinion When do you think you will need non-developpers but quite experienced users? Specific tasks in mind? fauno: bdale: vasile: so folks at CCC asked me to come down to Brasil to talk about the FNF as well, not sure the timing, might be the same event dogstar: That's a good question. We have our original kickstarter funding, and about five thousand in paypal donations since then. Of that, we have about 60K left, after fees, dream plugs, paying stefano, some printing costs (stickers, flyers, etc.). We are talking to some potential donors and making foundatio nappeals. guillemin: My pleasure. imw, will FBX forward the email for me or is it some other service @hook yes, but they evolve , maybe WebDAV imw: I'm failing to decode "FNF" .. help me out, please? :hook at least bdale: Free Network Foundation, I think. fiftyfour: your fbx could fetch your messages from your old mailserver bdale: Free Network Foundation, sorry bout that can we all talk about identity management, or did I miss that part? :vasile are there another platforms, besides Changemakers? Having migrators on the FBX IMHO should be a must. :vasile planned fiftyfour: configuring an smtp+imap email service could be done in lots of ways, none of which directly align with or promote many of the desired attributes of a freedombox. so, exactly what additional value we can or should add to the email experience of a given user is a topic where I think some research and discussion would be good knygar: the colon goes at the end, silly :hook +1 Knygar: I'm currently finishing up an nl.net proposal. :hook for migrators If we really want people to easily switch, they need to have a simple "Migrate from FaceBook" button. bdale: totally agree re:mail and s/FaceBook/any_cloud_service Knygar, do you know other foundations or groups that may be able to sponsor FBX development? send us a list hook: That's an excellent suggestion. We'd need to have the identity management layer done first, but it's a great idea. :bdale +1 for research hook: https://github.com/LockerProject/Locker could be useful for that ...which would pull all their data, (optionally) delete it there *and* inform their contacts that the person migrated to his own free solution and how they can a) contact him/her now; and b) how they can free themselves as well. Goldstein: I'm told that audio of the speech you seek exists but is in a queue to be processed and won't be ready any time soon. :bdale i have even proposed Mozilla to make a secure hosting or kind.. for a next betafarm of community .. that is a very important task, i think hook: sounds like a hackfest idea laziac: I was just thinking about suggesting that as one of the tools it's also interesting to note that while I, and Eben, and many of our parent's generation live and die by email, it seems to be a much lower priority communications mechanism for most people these days .. [shrug] bdale: so many years and not a one serious floss web-mail package, am i wrong? hook: nice idea bdale: I think it's still high priority in the workplace, even for people who don't use it much personally. bdale, agreed, email can be bad One thing that the FBX could do for e-mail would be to opportunistically encrypt/decrypt mail when GPG keys are available for the recipient. This would be in line with the project's goals. Does FBX already have a groupware solution? BjarniRunar: gnu anubis can do that iirc That'd be a must for NGOs, civil groups etc. vasile, only because of legacy ... but this is off topic :bdale as i say - BrowserID is likely to make it important bjarnirunar: keys should be present by default on the box, imho Maybe Kolab + Roundcube ( we're working on making that a reality) hook: what do you mean by groupware? :bdale also - registrations with necessary mail would be here for years, i'm afraid hook, great job! not sure it fits the FBX needs, but good nonetheless BjarniRunar: it depends on what problem you're trying to solve .. smtp daemons can choose to opportunistically encrypt content in flight, but if the point of encryption is personal privacy, that's much better handled in the email client we need to talk about naming, as well imw: E-mail. Calendar, ToDos, Notes server (via IMAP in Kolab's case), etc. that can be shared between users, made public, you can delegate tasks etc. hook: maybe did folks get the e-mail i sent this morning? Beyond the tech, how will FBX really get the scale it needs for security and the mesh level networking? bdale: of course, but most of the things the FBX is supposed to help with would actually be better done in the client imw: yes hook: that seems outside of the initial spec, to me, but would be good later I think we should focus on core functionality, for now imw: yes .. I'm not ignoring you. as I mentioned earlier, working out how we get from openpgp keys to useful identity and trust elements for configuring and using apps is a high priority for me imw, reed: It depends on what FBX is there for. If it's to empower groups like NGOs and civil initiatives as well, then it's a must. bdale: cool. sorry I missed the beginning of the chat. There is already some work done on desktop to import data from clouds (facebook for example). Some desktops (gnome for example) or mobile phones already provide a way to get contacts, chat etc. from cloud. May be the user should not ask freedombox to import facebook data. Rather the user connect his device to freedombox and freedombox gather information from configured online services. joncamfield: Scaling mesh is hard. Interlinking them is hard too. My hope is that the dedicated mesh projects keep making progress. Right now, though, there are meshes running at the level of 5000 nodes, which is pretty good. bdale: there seems to be a critical interplay between naming and identity management * hook should be working on that blasted BSD question hook, afaik FBX is more of a personal device, at least in its current incarnation a good shared calendar service is highly desired, but it seems far enough from ready that I'm thinking of writing it up as a challenge in my blog imw: interplay, yes vasile: the key is not to scale, but to federate Is anyone else besides me and Jonas coming to Brussels for this? http://epfsug.eu/content/epfsug-invites-freedombox imw: and between social networking vasile: 2.4 for the home, 5ghz for the neighborhood, 3650mhz for the region could work imw: Yes, I include federation in the term scale, perhaps inappropriately. That's what I mean by interlinking them. bdale: I'm pretty happy with how Kolab works (at least from the end-user perspective). vasile: gotcha. well, it's especially hard when everything at the top of the stack is still centralized, and the mesh is being used to hop to a gateway imw: what is the worst frequency for human beings, environment - among these? bdale: But that might be a bit bloated if you only need it for the calendar vasile: but as soon as you introduce decentralized services, it takes a load off, because local traffic stays local knygar: it's really only bad for you if you hold it 2mm from your brain imw: or from other parts.. knygar: delivered energy is an inverse square to distance, I've been looking at radicale .. going from that to a useful fbx service isn't trivial, though, I think imw: Yes, eliminating some of the roundtrip would reduce the hops. I wonder how big the gain would be. bdale: whats radicale? vasile: a topic for research, certainly imw: http://radicale.org/ a simple calendar server using caldav i love this! imw: Certainly. bdale: thanks the idea of individuals having calendars and deciding what portion of them to be able to share is a good basis vasile: Radicale seems cute'n'nifty :] Everybody: this chat has been scrolling fast. If you tried to say something and it was missed, please try again. We are at the close of our scheduled hour, so get those questions in. Bdale and I will be lurking, but I like the intensity of having people focused on things all at once. Is there a (preferably distributed) search engine planned as well? Is anyone else besides me and Jonas coming to Brussels for this? http://epfsug.eu/content/epfsug-invites-freedombox vasile: I think the chokepoint project might have some info on how much traffic is actually local traffic, but if not we need to get it e.g. Seeks seems promising and YaCy is also an option. hook: in all our meetings, we've never seriously considered including search. In fact, we've explicitly excluded it a few time, at least when sketching assumptions. vasile: why is that? hook: depends on what you want to search .. I don't have any thoughts about "google on fbx", or anything like that .. but at the other end of the continuum xapian and things that use it like notmuch rock my world Is email excluded? Seniorexpat: I'm not, can't speak for others I'm not saying it can't happen, just that in the constellation of possibilities, I wouldn't consider it the bright star by which we steer this ship. seniorexpat: i'd love to, but I can't vasile, bdale: That's too bad, but I can see why. hook, look at the archives of the list, the problems IIRC are storage needs and processing power So when (or how) can we start actually playing with the FBX software stack to see what is or should be in it? hook: I'll fight to have search included, I think it's important hook: the idea that we may want some search-like location finding mechanism seems reasonable, but I currently think that's more in line with application-level functionality, like some of what the buddycloud folks and other groups like that are working on than a totally generic "searc" hook: Search is expensive. gbastien: we've got to build it before we can play with it imw: If you build it and it can fit, there's always a chance. bdale: vasile: do y'all have dreamplug lying around? *dreamplugs imw: We have dreamplugs, yes. And more on order. imw: Hehe, I'd love one too gbastien: the best starting point today is to grab some hardware that can run Debian, and start playing with the daemons mentioned in http://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/LeavingTheCloud and/or here vasile: is there any chance that I (or others) could come play with them, or that you could distributed them? bdale, is Email excluded? hook, http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2010-October/000191.html and around that vasile: also, does the foundation have an office where I can come bug you/ give you a high five? reed: Thanks *distribute Search is not just expensive, it is a problem which is not trivially distributable. You can have distributed search, but the quality will be abysmal compared with what the Googles can do. It is a theoretically hard problem which benefits dramatically from centralization. imw: I, Eben, Ian Sullivan and Clint Adams all work our of SFLC's office in New York City. I would ask, would there be GNU/Hurd variation as well, but I already know the answer bdale: Thanks, I've been following the project for a while now but can't see how I can fit in, as a software developer fiftyfour: I'm not sure what 'excluded' means, exactly .. I do not personally have any plans to work on an smtp+imap config for our reference implementation, but if you or someone else have a solid proposal, I'm happy to hear it imw: You're welcome any time you're in town. vasile: cool. =) ...I'd still love to see it one day. I think Hurd's might be more suited for such stuff. I work from a home office in the woods in Colorado .. easiest to find me at a conference sometime, I suspect As for getting a dream plug, I imagine we'll be selling some. And if you're doing serious work on the hardware, we can work something out too. bjarnirunar: true. we've got to get work. hook: if/when Debian actually releases a hurd variant .. bdale: When I imagine somebody showing up at your place unannounced, I picture them riding an ATV and wearing snow shoes. bdale: swell bdale: AFAIK it will in the next release. But the bigger problem is that Hurd is not yet ported to ARM :P imw: Well, when I say 'hard problem', I mean that it may be impossible in practical terms to get anywhere close to what one would consider acceptable quality. It's not just about elbow grease. i think more than anything this project needs focus. we need a list of critical features and we need to be able to tell people with other ideas to come back when those critical features are done. it would also make it easier to know the best way to contribute, since for me it's been very unclear how i can help. thoughts? Does the FreedomBox Community have recommended software alternatives to Twitter and Facebook? bjarnirunar: I know. It was a bit tounge-in-cheek. we need uncrackable encryption, too. when it was new, I thought the Hurd was pretty cool .. I have to admit that I haven't been able to stir up much excitement in myself about whether it makes it into Debian Wheezy or not... laziac: I agree. We're inching our way toward that. Goldstein, statusNet is a good start imw: ok Uncrackable encryption is easy though, just throw away the keys. bjarnirunar: =) laziac: I'm happy to see other people (you?) add things to the wiki pages, including lists of unanswered questions that need attention I'd probably recommend giving GnuSocial a look gnu social is based on statusnet, no? bing: yes have people considered the overlap between fbx and the torouter project Dunno imw: Yes I was talking to ioerror, and he seems to basically consider them the same deal look at statusnet 1.0, very different from previous versions imw: Jacob Applebaum is on the TAC, he's one of the drivers of the torouter project IIRC. right, that's sort of my concern right now, we're all volunteers, and so as is always true in this context, we work on the things that interest us the most and where we see how to make some forward progress .. more help, whether on the technical bits, or how to find some large donors so that we can hire people to work on the bits that aren't very fun, would be great! (Jacob == ioerror, for those who don't know) And StatusNet is a FB replacement, yes? do people see the box including tor by default? I think it should do encryption by default, but not anonymization Goldstein, nothing can replace facebook, with its 700Million users... statustnet has some of its features though or both? imw: For a certain set of problems, routing around censorship or filters becomes the same problem as anonymization. and possible include the facilities for anonymization, if a user wants to start an anonymous session, but that should be very clearly defined imw: I see this box as capable of anonymity, but not necessarily running all your traffic through tor by default. vasile: cool. exactly. excuse me - tor problems.. are there a logs of this chat>? reed: Well I disagree, but I think that does answer my immediate question haha imw: But by the time we get where we are going, who knows what the state of Tor will be? vasile: true. things have been improving rapidly. yep. Knygar, we'll publish the logs later today reed: thank you I think it highly likely that an fbx reference implementation will include tor packages. it's not yet entirely clear to me how much of the functionality is turned on by default, etc this all leads back to persistent names right bdale: and voting I don't think we should expect folks to maintain a dns record voting for tor or not, i mean..) the interplay between naming, identity, authentication and social is at the heart of the backend, if you ask me imw: oh, maybe ExpertBox's? imw: Yes, that's the FreedomStack imw: +1 .onions are perfect for an easy to use name that cannot be censored easily, has no overhead for the user, etc imw: agreed ioerror: but you've got to be running tor yep as a *client* ioerror: User unfriendliness of md5sumnames is overhead imw: mdns can do name resolution without a dns server, but it seems the performance is awful on medium sized networks :s tor as a node would be reasonable I believe that we marked the hour allocated to the meeting, some of us may need to go to work in that case dkg's talk from Debconf has good material on this topic area for those who haven't listened to it yet ioerror: sure, but you've still got to be running it BjarniRunar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooko's_triangle OK, friends, that was our hour. Bdale, any final thoughts? ioerror: I know Some of this is very reminiscent of Freenet's distributed architecture, has any of that code or thoughtwork been incorporated? ioerror: that means that for anyone to access a service hosted on a fbx, they would have to run tor or navigate to a tor-to-web site that was set up, no? imw: and how does any other solution solve this problkem? imw: no ioerror: I'm suggesting that it's not a solved problem BTW, all the talks of DebConf that are somewhat related to FreedomBox are linked from http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/news/FreedomBox_at_DebConf2011/index.en.html (sorry, was also in multiple overlapping twisty meetings, all different) imw: i do not think anyone has proposed a protocol for interacting with names imw: i am suggesting that the naming system is however complete with .onions great to see the interest/enthusiasm here .. I sincerely home that some of it translates into contributions to the wiki content, and/or more specific proposals of software and configuration that we should consider for fbx .. as much as I love "just talking about things", we need to focus as much energy as we can on protocols and bits to make real progress s/home/hope Is there a place to share links about design (relevant Art), discuss purpose etc ? bdale: vasile: final question - when there would be Working Groups and how they would be.. My final thought: THANKS to everybody for participating. We'll do it again soon. I am, once again, impressed by this community's expertise and dedication to freedom. generated by irclog-xml.pl alpha-0.04 on Mon Aug 15 09:52:03 PDT 2011 [Less]

FreedomBox IRC meeting on Aug 15 FreedomBox Foundation will host a one hour meeting on IRC with executive director James Vasile and tech leader Bdale Garbee on August 15th. You'll be able to ask questions about the advancement of the project, the ... [More] challenges it is facing and the opportunities that are being tapped. Join the channel #freedombox on OFTC network on Monday the 15th at 9AM UTC-6. If you're not familiar with IRC you can use this web-based IRC client. Update: read the log of the conversation here. [Less]

FreedomBox IRC meeting on Aug 15 FreedomBox Foundation will host a one hour meeting on IRC with executive director James Vasile and tech leader Bdale Garbee on August 15th. You'll be able to ask questions about the advancement of the project, the ... [More] challenges it is facing and the opportunities that are being tapped. Join the channel #freedombox on OFTC network on Monday the 15th at 9AM UTC-6. If you're not familiar with IRC you can use this web-based IRC client. Update: read the log of the conversation here. [Less]

FreedomBox Update After DebConf Many hackers involved in FreedomBox had the chance to meet in Banja Luka at DebConf11. Bdale Garbee gave a speech highlighting the status of the development. The full recording of the session is available on Debian's ... [More] site. If you already know the basic of FreedomBox project, skip to minute 33 to hear the latest development and the next steps. [Less]

Interesting talks for FreedomBox at DebConf There are going to be lots of interesting occasions to learn about FreedomBox and start hacking on the system during Debian's DebConf 2011, starting officially on July 24th. We have selected a few talks ... [More] related directly or indirectly to FreedomBox from the full agenda: FreedomBox Progress Report: Using Debian to Create and Preserve Freedom, by Bdale Garbee ARM BoF:Porting, news and discussions, by Steve McIntyre Delivering Multi-Platform Applications:Build on Debian, run anywhere, by Bdale Garbee Debian as though cryptographic authentication mattered, by Daniel Kahn Gillmor Bootstrapable Debian: Cyclic dependencies, staged builds and cross-compiling, by Wookey Blending Debian: Debian Pure Blends as a way to structurise the project, by Andreas Tille Distributed Naming BoF, by Daniel Kahn Gillmor Debian dErivatives eXchange (DEX) BoF, by Stefano Zacchiroli All the talks will be streamed live and there will always be an IRC channel live to ask questions to the speakers. Stay tuned for more details, follow @freedomboxfndn on Identi.ca. [Less]

FreedomBox Update A lot of people have been asking for an update, which is a good indication that we need to update folks more often. Bdale Garbee will be at DebConf11. He and Clint Adams will be running a hackfest. If you are going to be there ... [More] (a lot of FreedomBoxers are also Debian devs), please track him down and ask him any question you have about the box. His answers will be thoughtful and perhaps surprising. I will be at ContactCon. If you are going, please let me know so we can connect! I'm told the smart phone high five has been the subject of some fevered hacking. Stefano Maffulli organized hacking on that in small community events and it is starting to produce useful work. Now to get that code in to a gittable place! The need for a roadmap is clear. Everywhere I go people want a framework into which they can start putting their work. The TAC is pondering that and I hope we will have it shortly. In the short term, Bdale and the TAC are working on a build release. This will be a basic build system on top of which we can start putting packages. It will give us all a common reference point to hack from. The mailing list is a hotbed of development discussion. Jonas Smedegaard is a one-man packaging machine (I hear he'll be at DebConf too!), and that's a huge step. Others projects, like PageKite are building pieces that we hope can be integrated into FreedomBox soon. Debian-style development is chaotic. There are too many ideas to take them all, but before this is through, I think we'll have considered every possible combination of software. I hope that shortly some of those discussions will result in meta-packages that configure combinations of software to work nicely together. Speaking of configuration, we are thinking hard about a configuration process and model. With the many possible package configurations, each with its own method of storing configuration and state, handling conflicts (as well as expert-user tweaks made outside the normal interface) will be difficult. We have some design ideas for that structure, but I sense this is an area where we will adopt somebody else's design rather than invent anything new. Administratively, we've assembled the Foundation pieces. We have a board. Yesterday, the board converted me from a presumptuous volunteer into the executive director. I don't think that changes what I will do except it allows me to do more of it and I can feel a little more comfortable making statements about what the Foundation is up to. We have done a lot of work with Marvell and Global Scale. Helping the box manufacturers streamline license compliance is a big task, but we've been making real progress. Clint identified some parts of the Dream Plug that didn't build properly or for which the true source wasn't available. After some dialog with upstream, we're getting all that source. The next step is helping upstream publish that code in a routine way. Stefano and I have been searching for UX and human interface designers who might help us with one of the most difficult parts of this project. Eben Moglen, Ian Sullivan, Bdale and I have had many phone conversations about how the user configures the box. We agree it needs as few buttons as possible. We agree it needs sane defaults as well as expert modes. We agree it listens on port 80 but also talks to your phone. Beyond that, we agree we need expert help. We have had offers of help from hacker spaces in California and Texas! We would like to connect with as many hacker spaces as possible. Stefano and I are trying to make a hackfest-in-a-box kit and hack spaces are the perfect place to deploy those kits. If you are involved in a hack space and can pull some awesome geeks together for a night of fun, I want to talk to you. Finally, I have ordered stickers and t-shirts so we will finally get those to our Kickstarter funders. And now that we know we can distribute GPL-compliant boxes we can get those out too! That's the update. More soon. Best regards, James Vasile [Less]

Scholar and Internet Guru Yochai Benkler Joins FreedomBox Board FreedomBox Foundation is pleased to announce the latest addition to its Board of Directors, Harvard University law professor Yochai Benkler. The notable scholar and social scientist is ... [More] the author of the influential works Coase's Penguin and The Wealth of Networks, as well as his newest book, The Penguin and the Leviathan: How Cooperation Triumphs over Self-Interest. "We're excited to have Yochai on board. He will provide insight into the most important challenge of the FreedomBox, that is, understanding how this technology can fit seamlessly into the daily lives of people," said Eben Moglen, president of the foundation. FreedomBox Foundation is a non-profit project with the mission of developing a network device and open source software that protects privacy, anonymity and security on the Internet, a cause to which Benkler is personally and professionally dedicated. "The FreedomBox will change the way people talk to each other on the Internet," he said. "We are giving people control over their digital lives by protecting these basic human rights." The long-range goal of the project is to make "Freedom Boxes" available to the average consumer. Benkler is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard, and co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Since the 1990s, he has enlightened the world about innovation and collaboration in the digital commons as well as information production and freedom in the networked economy and society. Benkler's forward-thinking books and other socially-engaged works have earned him many awards, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award, the Ford Foundation Visionaries Award, the Public Knowledge's IP3 Award and the Donald McGannon Award for Social and Ethical Relevance in Communications Policy Research. The Financial Times has cited his work as "perhaps the best work yet about the fast moving, enthusiast-driven Internet." Benkler joins a growing board of well-respected free and open source software veterans, which boasts the help of former Debian Project Leader Bdale Garbee in addition to Moglen, founding director of the Software Freedom Law Center. Board members, all volunteers, play an active role in technical development, administration and fundraising. Benkler has advised a range of national and international communications and intellectual property regulators and policy makers, and his work can be freely accessed at benkler.org. FreedomBox Foundation was started by Moglen and staff from the Software Freedom Law Center as an organizational home for the various community development efforts that are already building freedom box systems. "Freedom boxes, smart devices whose engineered purpose is to work together to facilitate free communication among people safely and securely beyond the ambition of the strongest power to penetrate, can make freedom of thought and information a permanent, ineradicable feature of the net that holds our souls," said Moglen. Press Details Source: FreedomBox Foundation For immediate release July 5, 2011 Contact: James Vasile, 212-461-1906, vasile@freedomboxfoundation.org [Less]