I started contributing to the FreedomBox project in 2012, and became a co-maintainer in 2015. For me, FreedomBox provides an opportunity for people to regain some control over their digital lives, rather than relying on cloud services that may spy on them or get shut down.
In 2017, I became a Debian Maintainer and started managing the bi-weekly releases of FreedomBox. I have also worked on packaging web applications for Debian, and contributed to Python and PHP modules.
I live in the metro Detroit area of Michigan, USA, and work in the automotive industry as a software architect.
Accepted Talks:
FreedomBox: The Home Server Appliance
FreedomBox, the pure blend to bring Debian to home servers, has had a productive year. In collaboration with Olimex, an OSHW manufacturer, we have launched FreedomBox home server kits that users can buy and set up at home. This move saw a significant increase in user participation in the project.
We have made a lot of progress so far in FreedomBox - simplified user experience, easy to acquire hardware, automatic configuration, well-managed security and a sizeable number of apps to wean us off of the proprietary surveillance-based cloud services we have come to depend on.
We have quite a few plans for the coming year. We want to improve our hardware offering by working with Olimex and also reach out to potential new partners. We will try to add some features such as Audio/Video conferencing, crucial missing apps and even prepare FreedomBox for NAS use cases at home while getting ready for a solid Bullseye release.
This talk discusses the progress of the project over the last year, what has been achieved as part of the bigger picture, our plans for the coming year and how the larger Debian community can contribute to the effort.