

The Freedom Box Alternative to Facebook - jambus
http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/at-work/innovation/the-freedom-box-alternative-to-facebook

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Newky
One fundamental problem, I just don't understand in these distributed social
network systems is what happens when youur "social box" goes down, electricity
cut, or in the case where someone doesn't want their PC running a power bill
all day long. In houses where people don't use a local server or don't need
anything on all the time (this is a realistic scenario in my experience), how
does this work in the context of the freedom box.

Does that mean my social presence is offline when I am ??

Seems fundamentally flawed.

~~~
pessimizer
As far as I can tell, the Freedom Box _is_ the server, so you would only go
offline if you unplugged the wall wart containing the software. It also seems
like there's a chance that you wouldn't go down if your internet went down, as
long as you had enough of a concentration of Freedom Boxes nearby that your
packets could be delivered via mesh to someone whose internet had not gone
down, or directly.

This Freedom Box stuff is new to me, and I'm finding Moglen talking about it
very difficult to parse. I'm going to try the speech at
[http://freedomboxfndn.mirocommunity.org/video/4/freedom-
in-t...](http://freedomboxfndn.mirocommunity.org/video/4/freedom-in-the-cloud)

If this allows my friends to get off facebook, and allows me to get back the
sort of community of distant friends that I had when I was on facebook without
the middlemen and any ominous privacy implications, I'm all for it. Also, I'd
love to directly share content with non-technical people I know without the
overhead of domain names and webhosting.

At the price point of <= $100 dollars in return for an actual physical
product, I'm sure I could get most to all of my friends to use it. Myself,
I'll just install the software to my HTPC (which has evolved into the central
server for my house) for free, but I think that with a price point that low,
my non computer-savvy friends would pay to get off of facebook in return for
something they could touch, wasn't complicated, and couldn't be shut down at
the whim of some corporate board.

Just my thoughts though. If you require a presence on the social web
regardless of power cuts, then I guess it's a dealbreaker for you.

~~~
Newky
Please don't get me wrong, I really like the idea, I just think that my non
tech savvy friends will immediately dismiss the idea of "normality" we have
come to assume with the facebook pages always being on.

The hard truth is many of the people I talk to use facebook primarily to look
at other peoples pages, if you look at facebook chat now and see exactly how
many are online, it at best makes about half of your friends invisible.

I think this is a better solution than facebook if feasible to implement

~~~
pessimizer
If all of that facebook-page-type-stuff was saved on the wart, then we
wouldn't be prevented from browsing through it while they were personally
offline with their computer powered down. I assume that would be the plan -
but if I'm wrong, I would share your doubts about this catching on as a drop-
in facebook replacement.

-edit-

To be clear, I'm imagining pictures, an activity stream, a presence server,
and maybe a calendar and a blog sitting directly on the wart - independent of
a separate computer to such an extent that a person wouldn't even have to own
an actual desktop or laptop to use the appliance to its full extent, maybe
just a cell phone app to update these things, or even updating them through
public or other people's computers over the internet. If friendly neighbors
left their freedomboxes open to your through traffic, it might not even
necessitate a local internet connection.

~~~
Newky
Ok, sorry my original comment was incorrect, I meant "by me being offline" by
the physical device being unplugged or say electricity lost. And yes the wall
plug idea is nice and really I would love this to be a reality, but there will
have to be some sort of breakthrough in this distributed nature.

Some sort of p2p hosting solution, not sure how it would work exactly.

~~~
pessimizer
Noticed from the Kickstarter page:

"Such boxes exist in the form of plug computers and mesh routers, tiny,
inexpensive machines that can take the place of other electronics in your
life, that draw so little power (often as little as 5W) that they can be run
off of batteries or solar panels."

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/721744279/push-the-
freed...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/721744279/push-the-freedombox-
foundation-from-0-to-60-in-30/)

------
doublerebel
To replace the firewall/router AND host all my private personal data in one
box, I'm going to need a ton of convincing about security. This appliance will
be a hot target for exploits, and they're going to have to do an incredible
amount of ongoing testing and updates. I can't imagine this is feasible for
the $100 price tag they are quoting.

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motters
There is an inordinate amount of philosophising in the freedombox camp. Really
it's just a distro project, and nearly all of the packages required already
exist. What remains is just an easy installation procedure such that you can
enter some details and are then ready to go. They should put the philosophy
and speculation about alternative platforms to one side and make a serious
effort to start releasing early, because there are folks out there who could
really benefit from these devices.

~~~
codeup
If the amount was ordinate, they wouldn't have come up with the idea and work
on the implementation in the first place. So the issue is what you think about
their philosophy and implementation.

~~~
motters
<http://youtu.be/T-CkD98FJ24>

~~~
codeup
Do you have a tl;dr? The title is bad already, "freedom or tyranny". I think
there is more to this than good vs. evil. But looking at RMS, you can see that
black/white thinking can produce licenses that work great in the hands of
people who think more colorful (the free software scene).

------
altrego99
Why can't this be a software application instead?

~~~
altrego99
Oh pardon me. It was answered. Although the answer doesn't make any sense,
atleast to me.

~~~
SkyMarshal
That was my first question too. Why not just make it out of a modified
software firewall? That way you can run it on your wireless mobile devices as
well, and not be vulnerable when connecting from Starbucks or wherever.

It looks like they have plans for that too. The physical box part is
apparently for Apple-ish, plug-and-play ease of use, while software will also
be available:

 _> James Vasile: Well right now we’ve convened a technical advisory
committee. These are people who have deep expertise in the various difficult
things that the Freedom Box is going to have to do extremely well. And those
people are right now coming up with a road map for development that will lead
us to actual software that can be loaded onto boxes, not just Freedom Boxes, I
mean, if you want to load this onto your PC that will be an option although
you’ll need somewhat more technical knowledge than simply plugging in a box.
But we’re at the road-map stage right now. People are planning the
architecture and figuring out what existing free and open source software we
can pick off the shelf and put in the box to do most of the things that we’re
planning on accomplishing._

