| [[I don't have a static IP address. Can I still install this system?]] |
| [[Why Freedombone and not FreedomBox?]] |
| [[Why not support building images for Raspberry Pi?]] |
| [[Why use Tor? I've heard it's used by bad people]] |
| [[Why use Github?]] |
| [[Keys and emails should not be stored on servers. Why do you do that?]] |
| [[./mirrors.html][I have a question about mirrors or upstream repositories]] |
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@@ -97,6 +98,14 @@ When the project began in late 2013 the FreedomBox project seemed to be going no
The FreedomBox project supports Raspberry Pi builds, and the image build system for Freedombone is based on the same system. However, although the Raspberry Pi can run a version of Debian it requires a closed proprietary blob in order to boot the hardware. Who knows what that blob might contain or what exploits it could facilitate. From an adversarial point of view if you were trying to deliver "bulk equipment interference" then it doesn't get any better than piggybacking on something which has control of the boot process, and hence all subsequently run processes.
So although the Raspberry Pi is cheap and hugely popular it's not supported by the Freedombone project. Perhaps future versions of the Pi won't have the proprietary blob requirement, or maybe the blob will be open sourced at some stage.
* Why use Tor? I've heard it's used by bad people
Before you run screaming for the hills based upon whatever scare story you may have just read in the mainstream media there are a few things worthy of consideration. Tor is installed by default on Freedombone, /but not as a relay or exit node/. It's only used to provide onion addresses so that this gives you or the viewers of your sites some choice about how they access the information. It also allows you to subscribe to and read RSS feeds privately.
Onion routing - which is what Tor provides - gives you some level of protection against bulk surveillance of metadata. These days governments and other organisations are in the business of collecting and analysing your metadata. They want to have comprehensive lists of which sites you visited, or who visited your sites. Tor may at least partially help to thwart their totalitarian ambitions to know everything about everyone all of the time.
Tor is not a perfect system and is not fully decentralised. Like all software it has bugs, but it can be considered to probably be an effective tactic against some of the most egregious surveillance fanatics out there.
The media may also have sold you torrid tales about individual Tor project developers. While the conduct of individuals does matter, what matters far more is whether the technical system works and is practical for the average user. Don't allow your opinions of the technical system to be deflected by transient sex scandals or oppressive moralising, and /don't hold anyone to standards higher than you would apply to yourself/.
* Why use Github?
Github is paradoxically a centralized, closed and proprietary system which happens to mostly host free and open source projects. Up until now it has been relatively benign, but at some point in the name of "growth" it will likely start becoming more evil, or just become like SourceForge - which was also once much loved by FOSS developers, but turned into a den of malvertizing.
