Freedom Box

Eben Moglen idea

a Personal Server running a Free Software operating system, with free applications designed to create and preserve personal Privacy.

http://freedomboxfoundation.org/

Aug'2012 release:

• A big part of the vision for the Freedom Box project revolves around the "Boxs", tiny Plug Server-s (Embedded Hardware) that are capable of running full size computing loads cheaply and with little use of electricity. In many respects these are wireless routers given the brains of a smart phone. If you want to change the software on a router or smart phone today you normally need to worry about bootloader images, custom roms, and a whole collection of specialized build and install tools. We wanted to the Freedom Box to move beyond this fragmented environment and, with the help of some embedded device experts, we have managed to make our development hardware into a fully supported Debian platform. That means that anyone with a device can install Debian on it just like a laptop or desktop computer. This support is very important for ensuring that the work we do on the Freedom Box is as portable and reusable as possible.
• Some goals of the Freedom Box can be accomplished with one user and one Freedom Box but many, like helping someone route around repressive government firewalls, will require groups of people and groups of boxes working together. One of our greatest architectural challenges has been finding a way for boxes to communicate securely without so slowing down or breaking network access as to make the system unpleasant to use. We have now outlined and built the first version of our proposed solution: Freedom-buddy. Freedom-buddy uses the world class TOR network so that boxes can find each other regardless of location or restrictive firewall and then allows the boxes to negotiate secure direct connections to each other for actually sending large or time sensitive data. We believe this blended approach will be most effective at improving the security and usability of personal-server communications and all the services we plan to build into those servers.
• They're planning on a "Plinth" Web-based front-end. The proof-of-concept looks like it uses CherryPy.
• It looks like a number of people are installing it on a Dream Plug.
  • <http://commons.thefnf.org/?title=Freedom Box>

May'2012 interview

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom Box>

<http://wiki.debian.org/Freedom Box/ExampleProjects>

VoIP plans <http://wiki.debian.org/Freedom Box/VoIPVideoAndInstantMessaging>

How much overlap with Open W R T? http://lwn.net/Articles/505280/