
The FreedomBox enables you to control your view of the internet - holri
https://www.zdnet.com/article/put-the-internet-back-under-your-control-with-the-freedombox/
======
whalabi
Wow, I backed this on Kickstarter in 2011 for $60.

I was supposed to receive "A custom made FreedomBox Foundation MicroSD card
reader so you can keep your freedom running in style and a MicroSD card loaded
with Freedom Box software"

...I have not received anything (yet?)

------
galonk
These home server boxes never include self-hosting email. Is it because anyone
running their own SMTP is assumed to be a spammer?

It's annoying because hosted email services are strangely expensive. Oh,
they'll let you have multiple email addresses for a low rate, but as soon as
you want multiple _mailboxes_ (which is just a separate directory as far as
the server is concerned), suddenly I'm paying way way more.

~~~
jasode
_> These home server boxes never include self-hosting email. Is it because
anyone running their own SMTP is assumed to be a spammer?_

Yes, that's part of the issue. Because many home computers got infected by
viruses to become bots sending bulk spam, email sourced from residential ip
addresses became "guilty until proven innocent".

Even the recent $499 "home email appliance" such as Helm[1][2][3] for private
encrypted email ends up using a _centralized_ service such as Amazon AWS for
the routing of email packets.

 _> Oh, they'll let you have multiple email addresses for a low rate, but as
soon as you want multiple mailboxes (which is just a separate directory as far
as the server is concerned), suddenly I'm paying way way more._

If you don't need business-class type of email service ("business" meaning
Outlook sync, shared calendars, 99.999% uptime, etc), then the cheapest way I
found for multiple mailboxes is a shared hosting plan. E.g. I pay $49/year for
5 website domains that includes email hosting with _unlimited mailboxes_. Not
just unlimited addresses/aliases but _mailboxes_. Shared hosting is way
cheaper than the $144/year that Rackspace charges for just 5 mailboxes.

[1] [https://thehelm.com/](https://thehelm.com/)

[2] [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/review-helm-
personal...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/review-helm-personal-
server-gets-email-self-hosting-almost-exactly-right/)

[3] TWIS also had a 1 hour discussion with Helm's CEO:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BhOreZKXPA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BhOreZKXPA)

~~~
jlelse
I recently switch to mailcow-dockerized on a cheap 3€/month VPS and it works
perfectly. I can create as many mailboxes as I want (until the disk is full)
and also have as many domains / email adresses connected. It's really awesome
and way easier than I imagined.

Mailcow: [https://github.com/mailcow/mailcow-
dockerized/](https://github.com/mailcow/mailcow-dockerized/)

My blog post: [https://jlelse.blog/thoughts/2019/mail-
server/](https://jlelse.blog/thoughts/2019/mail-server/)

------
rlt
My main issue with things like this is security. I don't particularly want to
be responsible for running Internet-facing services as a hobby. I would only
consider it if they had a good track record and really solid story around
security, perhaps including rapid automatic updates or a remote kill switch in
case something critical is found.

~~~
dredmorbius
People are already running home servers. It's just that we call them 'modems'
and 'routers'. Most come with few if any system updates. Enough that the FBI
have issued national alerts to reboot routers[0].

Turris Omnia[1], based on OpenWRT and maintained by the Czech national domain
registrar, is a notable exception, and it is itself a highly capable server.
It updates automatically and regularly over the network. With the (optional,
supported, and documented[2]) addition of an SSD storage, or an external drive
(USB or network), it can provide read/write-heavy services as well (otherwise
the onboard flash storage wears too quickly).

Though standing in as a personal social/media server is not its core goal.

Disclaimer: happy owner.

________________________________

Notes:

0\. [https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/05/fbi-kindly-reboot-
your-r...](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/05/fbi-kindly-reboot-your-router-
now-please/)

1\. [https://www.turris.cz/turris-omnia/](https://www.turris.cz/turris-omnia/)

2\. mSATA drive installation:
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=71_M2N3ga7s](https://youtube.com/watch?v=71_M2N3ga7s)

~~~
diminoten
Wait so is your argument that people are already vulnerable so being
vulnerable twice is okay?

~~~
dredmorbius
No.

It's that the stumbling block of "people won't run servers" is already untrue.
People do.

(They may not realise it, but they do.)

They run fairly limited servers, with fairly low attack surfaces and assets,
and they (with no small fault of vendors) administer them very poorly. But
they run servers.

I am both enthusiastic about what FreedomBox are trying to do and apprehensive
of both possible success and consequences (I've been submitting multiple
related articles to HN myself over the past few days). I'm watching the
discussion with interest, there are good points being made.

If you break down the challenge, it has multiple parts.

Hardware really _isn 't_ the problem -- a $25 RaPi, the Olimex box, a Turris
product, or one of Zotex's Pico systems[0] could serve amply, at price-points
up to about $300, with full ownership of data, hardware, and link.

Software _mostly_ isn't -- the basic pieces exist, though some are rough. The
federated social space, probably Friendica, is a good bet. Mastodon addreses
microblogging. For blog-type interactions, RSS/Atom and a feed reader or
aggregator works well, and would be a good addition to the FreedomBox.

Social graph -- user adoption -- is a huge issue, though it's also somewhat
self-sorting. Early adoptors of such technologies tend to be a fairly high-
affinity and the space, _if_ it develops sufficient early momentum, something
that could be as few as several 100s or 1,000s of active users (and that could
be 10k - 10m registrations or trials) may take root. Though early organic
growth may appear slow.

It's the soft areas can be frustratingly hard: picking the technology stack,
from harware to OS, protocols, and implementations. This is where choice cuts
two or three ways, often leaving bloody stumps. For the advocates, it's a
battle for supremacy, for the general public its all a confusing blur. A
hidden benefit of tech monopolies is that the constrain choice and simplify
decisionmaking.

As we've learnt over the past five years or so, the social consequences, large
and small, of wholly unregulated _or_ cabalistically controlled media systems
are huge, and how FreedomBox or equivalents peturb that dynamic isn't clear,
though I might be prepared to place some bets.[1]

Media systems simply do not and _can not_ resist hierarchical consolidation
for reasons of basic graph theory, though the particulars of that
consolidation and the administration, objectives, and guiding principles of
key hubs fall along a wide continuum. Even with FreedomBox, it's certain that
people will share resources and systems -- possibly a handful as families,
households, and friends, possibly communities of hundreds, thousands, or
millions. Services are _cheap_ \-- the direct provisioning costs of Diaspora
run about $0.25/user-year[2], which is the definition of "too cheap to meter".
As a service, bundling at less than 100-1,000 users is logistically
impossible. Among my thoughts is how community bundlng might be facilitated.

Running persistent network services over consumer-grade broadband (or worse)
is also a major pain in the backside, often through vendor limitations, though
those are imposed with good reason. Registering and keeping control of a
domain space is an obstacle to most people. Maybe not you, maybe not some of
your friends, but yes, the general public.

And then we get to the direct service-administration risks: anything from
service interruptions to hardware failure, data loss, system compromise,
botnets, malware, denial of service, surveillance, credentials fraud,
blackmail, legal regulations (copyright, patents, privacy, libel), and more.
Decidedly nontrivial.

FreedomBox at least is building from some of the best possible bases: Debian
GNU/Linux, experts in online law[3], Free Software, open protocols, and
simple, inexpensive hardware. It might succeed, and if it fails, the lessons
should be highly illuminating.

But, and back to my point previously, the hurdle of getting people to run
dedicated server appliances is _not_ the core challenge, though possibly
having them do that without realising they're doing so is informative.

________________________________

Notes:

0\.
[https://www.zotac.com/product/mini_pcs/zbox_p_series](https://www.zotac.com/product/mini_pcs/zbox_p_series)

1\. I'm somewhat involved in a project in this space,
[https://Darcy.is](https://Darcy.is)

2\. Experience from [https://pluspora.com](https://pluspora.com), run by two
people and hosting 10k+ users. Mind that additional admin and moderation
services add to this.

3\. Eben Moglen, a/k/a "Richard Stallman's lawyer", and Yochai Benkler ( _Th
Wealth of Networks_ ), whom I'm very late to the party in discovering just
within the past week, among many others.

~~~
pabs3
FTR: Eben Moglen is no longer working for the FSF:

[https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-announces-change-in-general-
cou...](https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-announces-change-in-general-counsel)

~~~
dredmorbius
Fair point, though Moglen still references the a/k/a, as here, from 2017:

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZUN44U_oTUA](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZUN44U_oTUA)

(Timestamp: 10m45s, though the full preso is highly recommended -- Moglen
somewhat lengthly introducing Yochai Benkler.)

------
duskwuff
As I've mentioned on other stories about this device (like [1]), a part of the
user story that's still missing is how these devices are supposed to interact
with each other. Running a few web services inside your home network is neat,
I guess, but not very useful if they're only accessible within that network.

There's also a lot of weird overlap between the services provided by the
various apps installed by FreedomBox. It's unclear how much, if any,
integration work FreedomBox is doing, or if the user is expected to do that on
their own.

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19722179](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19722179)

~~~
rchaud
If it's a web server, then it would be accessible outside your home Internet
network, would it not?

Regarding the use cases for something like this, I can think of a few:

\- Roll-your-own cloud storage (pics, documents, videos) and access them
anywhere you are. No need to hand over more of your data to iCloud, Dropbox
etc

\- Host a personal website. For the types that complain about being
deplatformed from Twitter or whatever, here's the solution.

\- Pihole or the nearest equivalent. All devices could have network-wide
adblocking automatically.

------
bloopernova
Interesting concept. A user friendly Pi-alike that runs services locally so
you don't have to trust the big corporations. (said corporations may have very
different goals than you do for your data, he says as neutrally as
possible...)

I'm very happy that such things are possible nowadays: small inexpensive
hardware running Linux, with some well constructed software UI on top. Similar
to what Mozilla is doing with their IoT webthings gateway (which I have
running on my Retropie since most of the time it sits idle and sips tiny
amounts of power). I know it's "on the shoulders of giants" but I think we
shouldn't underestimate the power that an open, hackable platform like the Pi
gives back to people.

------
throw7
The website says the hardware has built-in battery backup that can run it for
4 to 5 hours if power goes out. That is pretty dang cool.

------
Animats
This should support home automation devices, especially security cameras.
Don't let that stuff go off-premises. Maybe log encrypted video to an external
site, but with a key the external site does not have.

------
azinman2
Wonder who their target demographic is. People balk at paying for email from a
known provider, let alone buy a box to run it out of their own home for $100.
You’d have to have a lot of motivation to do so, and it feels like the Venn
diagram of people who are savvy and motivated enough to care about digital
privacy, intersected with those with technical skills feels like nearly 90%
overlap. And I’m not so sure the privacy group is so sizable. I’d probably be
in this camp but I really don’t want to have to worry about spam filters,
triggering them in others by sending from my home ISP, nor dealing with backup
or corrupted databases. Wonder what their plan is there...

The average person who wants this without being their own sysadmin should
probably just use Apple products. I work for Apple and can attest that privacy
isn’t just marketing — it permeates all decision making in every discussion
I’ve been a part of... sometimes making it harder or impossible to create the
things we’d like to have (privacy wins). I know many on HN will want their
“freedom” as in “freedom box,” but the average user massively benefits from an
ecosystem designed to make things as easy, desirable, and supported as
possible.

~~~
kelnos
I assume you're getting downvoted due to the Apple advocacy in your second
paragraph, and hopefully not for your first paragraph. I entirely agree with
that. I wish I didn't have to be cynical about things like this, but I just
don't see the market for this device, and when it comes to social-network-like
things, you _need_ a large market for network effects to kick in.

~~~
belorn
The initial idea was a device similar to a answering machine in size, price
and interface. That is, a $10-$20 price range and a simple configure-once-and-
forget interface.

Pioneer Edition FreedomBox Home Server Kit is clearly not there yet, but I
would hazard a guess that their target demographic is currently on developers
and tech savvy privacy advocates who can afford a bit steeper price for a
"server kit".

~~~
kelnos
But still, who would buy that $10-$20 device? If it doesn't replicate their
Facebook/Instagram/whatever experience, and they don't know how to get their
friends on it (the majority of whom probably aren't too privacy-conscious),
it's just a paperweight

------
ausjke
the stable release was in 2017.06 so almost two years, how often are they
updating the code(e.g. security fixes)

is this supposed to be standalone home server, or something like a node of a
large self-organized network(private social network,etc)?

~~~
jvalleroy
The stable release is Debian stable (Stretch) which still gets security fixes
from Debian.

------
montroser
I love the vision, but there are some pretty sizable hurdles not so easy to
clear. Dynamic IPs, ports blocked by over zealous ISPs, bandwidth throttling,
power redundancy, etc, etc...

------
aabbcc1241
Just by joining the zeronet[1], you get most of the functions you can get the
clearnet in decentralized form: Forum, Blog, Social Network, Search Engine,
Wiki, Mailing, Chats, e.t.c.

[1] [https://zeronet.io](https://zeronet.io)

------
xvector
What does this do that a Raspberry Pi or NAS does not?

It just seems like an always-on computer, nothing revolutionary or new.

