On this page information on Cloud Computing services is collected. The focus is on decentralized Free Software services that will respect users freedom.
Contents
Information Material
Texts
Autonomo.us Group Franklin Street Statement on Freedom and Network Services
Open Software Service Definition (OSSD) misses open standards for communication protocol and data export at any time
Freedom in the "cloud"? by Georg Greve
Four Criteria for Free Network Services by Blaise Alleyne
Video
Torsten Grote at FSCONS 2010 about Centralized Internet Services and Problems of Power (WebM) also in HD as a torrent download
Karsten Gerloff Power and Freedom
Jonas Smedegaard Freedombox with Dr Jones, European Parliament
Audio
Torsten Grote beim Deutschlandradio Wissen zu Cloud Computing und Freie Software (German introductory interview). (Audio).
Frank Karlitschek and Torsten Grote Diskussion rund um Cloud Computing + ownCloud (German interview)
Presentations
Sam Tuke's presentation entitled "Freedom Boxes: Communication Emancipation"
Initiatives
A list of "cloud" services and their free alternatives is available from the FreedomBox Project and Libre Projects
Social Networks
decentralised social networking platform, based on XMPP, and developed by the Vodafone R&D group
- a location based, mobile social community
- uses XMPP and OStatus
- XMPP based distributed social network that can be used with existing jabber accounts
- another decentralised social network
- defines the social network and some basic content types like media, links, micropublishing and text
OStatus-based software that works with WordPress and BuddyPress to create a decentralized federated social networking platform
- social networking engine that was initially aimed at educational and learning groups, but has now entered general use
- not decentralized
- social network primarily used by political activists, based on elgg
- a initiative to build a distributed social network architecture using microformats, OpenID, OAuth and other building blocks
- decentralised, social platform as a web application framework allowing others to create social apps on top of it
- high privacy social P2P framework based on psyc and gnunet
Protocols
- uniquely identifies a person, company, organization, or other agent using a URI
- one direct use of this concept is foaf+ssl/tls
- uses browser certificate and can be combined with OpenID
The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project
Foafpress PHP web application using FOAF
- A simple, open, server-to-server web-hook-based pubsub (publish/subscribe) protocol as an extension to Atom and RSS.
Easy to understand video introduction in non-free format from youtube
- A secure way to access address books and friends lists
uses existing standards wherever possible, including vCard, OpenSocial, XRDS-Simple, OAuth, etc.
- a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards
Wiki to collect results of Federated Social Web Summit including Social Web Acid Test
Collaboration
- allows to create multiple collaborative group, webspace, community or social networking websites
- people can connect to a group to contribute using OpenID
Graphics
distributed replacement for Flickr, DeviantArt, Picasa etc.
- might be extended from images to video, music etc. later on
- Python, OStatus
Document editing
Sound
GNU FM (powering e.g.: LibreFM)
- distributed replacement for Last.FM
- for social aspects, it will depend on GNU Social (or other compatible solution)
- Fripost is a democratic organisation providing free and reliable email service to its members. It was founded by Fellows in Göteborg.
- French community mail provider local to Grenoble
Voice and Video over IP
- decentralized SIP extension with planned GUI configuration
- supports standard secure SIP clients
Microblogging
Web Storage
- replacement for Dropbox/Wuala/Box.net/etc. based on distributed version control systems
- nearly instantaneous mutual updates/syncronization
- can be used with any DVCS hosting option including a completely separate server
It allows users to backup and share certain folders of their workstations using any kind of storage, e.g. FTP, Amazon S3 or Google Storage. (Drobox, SparkleShare alternative)
Freedom Boxes
Please note that the following initiatives include commercial hardware vendors and might include non-free software.
- a Debian based platform for distributed applications
- designed to be hosted on a small-size server
- will install mail, jabber and web servers
- easily create a blog, or a social network, in a decentralized and interconnected way
FeeAgent Dockstar (ships with non-free software)
Not a Box, but helpful here: PageKite
- A reverse-proxy/tunneling protocol to expose localhost HTTP/HTTPS/SSH/... servers to the public Internet, working around problems caused by NAT and firewalls.
Different Approaches
- an unhosted website is only source code running in browser
- dynamic data is encrypted and decentralised to per-user storage nodes
- website uses protocol to securely retrieve information from storage node
see also the Fellowship Interview
- manages accounts and profiles that users have on the Internet
- provides and stores unified user account or profile under the user’s control
- A Locker is a container for personal data, which gives the owner the ability to control how it's protected and shared. It retrieves and consolidates data from multiple sources, to create a single collection of the things you see and do online: the photos you take, the places you visit, the links you share, contact details for the people you communicate with, and much more. It also provides flexible APIs for developers to build rich applications with access to all of this information.
- RDF based storage engine, on your own home computer. Web services work by accessing the data on your own server, once you have given the service permission. No running code yet.