> from the ground up with privacy and security built in
Couldn't agree more!
> I'm finding that other folks are thinking along similar lines
> (but taking different approaches)
Not sure if this is the right place for it but does anyone have a list of all these similar projects? I know of:
* ArkOS [https://arkos.io]
* FreedomBox [https://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/]
Seems to me that something like this can be built faster if resources were combined in some way. I guess the tough thing here is that people seem to have different visions as to what the end product would look like. Perhaps effort would be best expended by collaborating on a solid, secure "base" image which could then be forked as needed.
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My ideal system would:
* Be open source.
* Be built with a security mindset from the ground up.
* Have some sort of full system/drive encryption.
* Run on something like a Raspberry Pi with local storage attached.
* Have one identity per-person for social use (public/private blog, private chat, private audio/video calling, private email, private sharing of photos, videos, private VRM [1])
* Have the ability to spawn off anonymous identities that would not be traceable back to your IP/device for anonymous publishing/chat/email where required.
* Be easy enough that I can give one to my parents, create accounts for them, show them once how to use it and then forget about it.
* Have all of this backed up through some distributed, encrypted system like SpaceMonkey [2].
* A possible late addition for mass adoption - the software could "trick" users into doing things they shouldn't (in a controlled way) and then after they've done this, tell them that what could have happened would have been quite serious (such as giving some . This would lead to more careful behaviour in general by all that use the software, which could only be a good thing.
Anyone know of such a system in the works? I'd love to contribute.
[1] VRM - Vendor Relationship Management. Keeps track of who you've shared your personal details with, generates a unique email for each "connection" (where connections can be you telling someone to flick you an email or you signing up to a site) in order to cut off communication at your convenience, not theirs. Sharing of personal details (such as name, birthday etc.) for sites that require it would initially be done directly, eventually moving to a system where this software IS the proxy by which third parties communicate with you (physical mail, messages, phone calls etc.). No more spam!
[2] http://www.spacemonkey.com/