Hi everyone,
This is my first post to this group. I've been using GNU/Linux for
about 15 years but attending LibrePlanet last month brought me to
understand the full implications of Free Software. I was expecting more
technical talks, but was pleasantly surprised that the humane
implications of Free Software were prominently visible. I was
particularly struck by the session on Gnu Health and two regarding
libraries (Alison Macrina's and Jennie Rose Halperin's, the latter in
the context of cultural heritage organizations, libraries being the most
common).
As a side note, the library presentations made clear that librarians
live at the intersection of information and freedom every day. Our
values overlap substantially, and they could be valuable allies, even
though individual librarians may or may not be computationally
sophisticated. Befriend your local librarian today!
But I have a specific question. I'd love to use Friendica and other
Free social-network software, and invite my friends and relatives to
join, but I feel I should set up my own server to support this. I know
there are nodes available, but I'd like to take responsibility if I'm
inviting others to join me. Furthermore, if we imagine a world where
Free social networking predominates, it's a world in which lots of
people are running their own servers. But servers need to be on all the
time. So I'm imagining lots of people running low-wattage small
servers, such as Raspberry Pi's (or other systems-on-a-chip) to support
Free social networking.
However, I'm not an experienced system admin, and this world I envision
involves people who are also not experienced sys-admins running
servers. Hence a few questions:
1. Am I correct in thinking that running a server for this purpose
requires a static IP address?
2. Lots of inexperienced people running servers sounds like a
large-scale security disaster waiting to happen. Is there any way
this could be managed?
Thanks in advance,
Jim Garrett
