On 3/24/11 8:56 AM, James Vasile wrote:
Tremendously helpful writeup. Thanks, John.
"One thing well" should be our mantra. It's guidance I try to follow
in my own life. Even when the box grows more functions, it's good
advice-- when using it as a NAS, users shouldn't have to compromise
on interface or experience because the thing is also a tor node.
Something I think is interesting here, comparing on-the-shelf gadgets
with a Debian distribution:
Commercial gadgets are very good at hiding the guts, even when they
happen to be Linux-based. Occasionally, they tolerate some tinkering,
but only in rare celebrated cases (eg. the Linksys WRT54g)
In our case, we're working from the opposite direction. That is, we have
a pile of Debian-based ingredients from which to tinker and build a
FreedomBox, but we'll at some point need a unified umbrella of user
interface and convention to tie together disparate parts. That seems to
go against the grain a bit, I think, but needs to be addressed in some way.
At Mozilla, we have a UX design team: http://planet.firefox.com/ux/
Their decisions are sometimes controversial, but there are at least
people considering the issues overall and making the decisions.
Bulletproofing is important but can only take us so far. We have to
think hard about end-user support. The usual "Find us in IRC and
hope nobody insults you." isn't sufficient here.
+1
I'd love to hear ideas on how we support end users and prevent
early-adoption failure.
FWIW, we have this at Mozilla: http://support.mozilla.com/
That combines wiki pages, question/answer forums, and an occasionally
open live chat - mostly driven by volunteers. The software behind it
(named Kitsune) is all open source as a Django web app, though it's not
well-packaged by any means.
I'm not sure whether this particular software is appropriate for the
FreedomBox, but it's working pretty well for Firefox
--
[email protected]
http://decafbad.com
{web,mad,computer} scientist
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