# The year of the FreedomBox

[[!meta date="2011-03-08"]]
[[!tag debian blog editorial]]

I am involved in developing something coined as the [FreedomBox][].

Explaining it to my [mum][] the other day, she wisely asks if, albeit
clearly an exciting challenge we've picked, it really is doable?
Agreed the World has gone sour, but is drastic change even possible?

Annoying question! And clever :-)

For some years, tech media has tried predict when Linux have reached
momentum for ordinary users.  That current or next year was to become
[the Year of the Linux Desktop][].
Funny thing, seen in restrospect, is how "the year" kept being postponed,
and when finally [OLPC][] paved the way for the boom of Netbooks and arguably we got
there, the World had moved on: Now Free Sofware is as common and as
usable on desktops as commercially driven systems. Is taken for granted,
not praised, and we look forward for the
Next Big Challenge (as geeks) or Next Big Excitement (as users).

Perhaps a similar fate is to be expected for FreedomBox:
[Initially][] when sparking our interest, and [repeatedly][] [since][] while
we still have nothing concrete to demonstrate at all - heck, even
[before][] we started haccking on it or knew the name of our dreams
- our [Prophet][] declared the Year of the FreedomBox.
Not explicitly, but cleverly abstracted as "right now".

I am excited and proud to be working on FreedomBox, and foolishly hope
it will be ready for worldwide consumption in a very recent "right now"
- well aware that most likely it won't happen like that.  Thing is,
I don't care _how_ it happens, just that it does.  The trick is
our way of working: Hacking might be expressed as larger projects,
but really is juggling piles of smaller pieces of the puzzle,
constantly ensuring that each piece is usable in more than one way
and across more than one project.
I do not _only_ work on [FreedomBox][], just as I did not _only_ work on
[Sugar][] before that, or _only_ with [Debian][] as my platform:

I work on Freedom-enabling technologies
and ways to frame them for the World at large to move itself.

I sure hope you take the results for granted.  That's true success!

[FreedomBox]: http://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox
[mum]: http://ingersblog-inger.blogspot.com/
  "Inger Smedegaard"
[the Year of the Linux Desktop]: http://lwn.net/Articles/258874/
[OLPC]: http://one.laptop.org/
  "One Laptop Per Child"
[Prophet]: http://www.softwarefreedom.org/about/team/#eben
  "Eben Moglen"
[before]: http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Interview-Eben-Moglen-Freedom-vs-the-Cloud-Log-955421.html
[initially]: http://penta.debconf.org/dc10_schedule/events/641.en.html
[repeatedly]: http://www.softwarefreedom.org/events/2011/fosdem/moglen-fosdem-keynote-highlights.html
[since]: http://mediasd.cbsnews.com/media/2011/03/06/eve_sieberg_306_1100.m4v
[Sugar]: http://sugarlabs.org/
  "Sugarlabs - powerful software invented for OLPC"
[Debian]: http://www.debian.org/
  "Debian - the Universal Operating System"