[Freedombox-discuss] In-the-cloud infrastructure and business involvement (was: distributed DNS)

[clint@debian.org (Clint Adams)]

On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 03:27:11PM +0000, Bjarni R?nar Einarsson wrote:
> Can that be done at all?  Or should we assume that any infrastructure
> required by the FreedomBoxes will be managed and owned and run by the
> foundation?  Deciding whether the project as a whole is business hostile or
> not is a pretty fundamental question.

Personally, I think the only centralized infrastructure the
FreedomBoxes should need is the distribution of software security
updates, and that anything else should be regarded as a stopgap
measure as we move toward proper decentralization.

If we design for some kind of petname system, I can address
your FreedomBox as "Bjarni's FreedomBox" or "BRE's site"
or "That PageKite Guy's Dreamplug" and that name can
map to something.pagekite.net or
http://axqzzpkfwezf3kku.onion/ or tcp:ohvei9ab.fb2fb:8080
or something that uses nothing resembling DNS or IP.
As addressing schemes change, I want to be able to switch
between them easily, but still retain the exact same
human-readable addressing and the exact same FOAF-type
relations.

Should we not do that, and say "Here are three different
service providers you can choose from to sacrifice your
personal privacy to, but you are free because you have
choice," I think we are missing the point.