Re: A Small Organisation Server as a Debian Pure Blend

[John Lines <john@paladyn.org>]

On Fri, 2020-11-20 at 14:37 +0000, Federico Ceratto wrote:
> As Joseph pointed out, the use-case for the Small Organisation Server
> is practically
> the same as FreedomBox, either installed from image or with "apt
> install freedombox".
> 
I think the key differences are:

1) Funding - This is important because paying the bills and control are
strongly related (or should be).
 Freedombox is generally going to be bought by an individual, and in
the way it is projected, one with a strong privacy interest.
 The Small Organisation Server is targeted at group of people with a
common interest, which is probably not technical, and who probably have
other interests as well. Thus it is not aiming to do everything that
each member might want.

2) Location -
 The FreedomBox expects to be on somebody's home network, hence has a
focus on dealing with being on a Dynamic IP address, being discoverable
on a local network, being able to be on a local wifi, and for people to
be able to plug a DOS formatted USB Stick into it.
 The Small Organisation Server expects to be somewhere on the Internet,
on a static address, discovered by DNS. It has no use for support for
hardware it does not have (such as USB ports or Wifi), and should not
be attempting to discover anything about its local network.



> I find the name "Small Organisation" a bit misleading. In my
> experience, often even
> massive companies and universities need small, easily deployed
> services that are
> maintained independently from the core infrastructure.
> Sometimes it is to serve remote offices with limited connectivity, or
> to test a new
> service quickly, or use it on vehicles with intermittent or expensive
> connectivity, or
> to keep very sensitive data isolated or ensure legal compliance and
> so on...
> 

Such small offices generally have recourse to a central IT
organisation. I have supported, as part of a corporate IT team, a
number of offices which have a small local server on the company WAN,
and an office administrator who changes the ink in the printer, might
change backup tapes and do a lot of the day to day work, but they had
access to more technical help if needed.

Best wishes

John