We are excited to announce that FreedomBox, the open source personal server with a focus on privacy, is joining the Localization Lab community!
To welcome FreedomBox into the fold and properly introduce the project, we will be hosting an Ask Me Anything with the FreedomBox team on Saturday, September 30th at 14:00 UTC in the Localization Lab Mattermost channel! Mark your calendars and come ready with any questions and feedback that you might have. This event will be open to all, regardless of your familiarity with FreedomBox.
To join, sign up for Mattermost here and then join the conversation in our community channel.
Without further ado, we'll let the FreedomBox team tell you more about the tool, its target users and how you can assist with localization!
What is FreedomBox?
FreedomBox: a simple private server, wireless internet router, and multi-purpose tool designed to create internet freedom with only free software and inexpensive hardware. Just install our free system onto a single-board computer like Raspberry Pi and plug it in. FreedomBox is a Debian-based system designed to protect against data-mining, surveillance, and censorship. It empowers users to leave the cloud and take control of their data by hosting services on a private server. We've integrated several apps and services into our software system to replace cloud services, including calendaring, a blog platform, an email client, file transfer, IRC chat, VoIP voice calls, and document sharing. Beyond that, FreedomBox also comes with built-in with apps and services that protect your online activity against surveillance and data-mining, such as Tor, a free VPN, an ad-blocking proxy, and encrypted messaging. To top it all off, FreedomBox also functions as a private and secure wireless router.
No matter your lifestyle, background, or goals, FreedomBox can be customized for your use case. We’re developing a simple user interface designed for everyone. But at the same time, we haven't invented any new privacy technology. FreedomBox just makes existing privacy software easier to access, easier to use, and easier to share with your friends.
How can you contribute to localization efforts?
Our translation priority right now is the user interface on FreedomBox, called Plinth. In the coming months, we also hope to translate our website's new content as well.
FreedomBox is designed to help people living in various political and economic circumstances, from Chinese users cracking the Great Firewall to Indian users who don't have reliable wireless routing. Currently, we are trying to increase language support for our large user base in India. FreedomBox has already been deployed as the primary source of wireless routing in several villages of rural India, such as Gangadevipalli, Telangana. In order to reach even more users in India, we want to translate our system's main interface (Plinth) into the following languages: Hindi, Gujurati, Tamil, and Bengali. We currently have no support for those languages. In addition, we would like to complete the translations for the following languages which have incomplete support: Chinese (simplified), Persian, Indonesian, and Telegu. Beyond that, we welcome any translation into the languages already listed on our Weblate page.
Because FreedomBox is a free and open source project, we host all of our translation efforts on Weblate, which can be found here: https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/freedombox/
How can you get in touch?
To get in touch with our developer and user communtiy, please feel free to join our active IRC channel or email discussion list here: https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Support
Get in touch with the FreedomBox Foundation directly here: https://freedomboxfoundation.org/contact/
Learn more about the FreedomBox project at our community's website here: https://freedomboxfoundation.org/
Download FreedomBox from our community's website here: http://freedombox.org/