the remotestorage stick

[Michiel de Jong]

Hi!

Last weekend i was in Vienna, working with Markus on remotestorage
support for the freedombox. Let me try to do a write-up, Markus please
fill in the gaps where needed! :)

We came up with the idea of using an external usb drive for the user
data (in the shape of the remotestorage logo), because that way it's
easy to see and understand where your data is, and it's easy to make
and restore backups.

We already discussed that in order to be able to support
remotestorage, the freedombox would need to come with a domain name
registration (DNR) from a 'normal' TLD (one that's recognized by the
DNS root servers), function primarily via IPv4 (not rely on IPv6 yet),
and use TLS with an SSL cert from a CA that's recognized by all five
big browsers.

Apart from that, since people generally don't have a static IPv4
address in their house, it should come with a pagekite account.

The DNR, SSL cert, and pagekite account, are services that need to be
renewed. For this, the remotestorage stick (the logo-shaped usb drive
that will hold your data) can contain provisioning tokens. That way,
you can buy a generic (still unconfigured) physical object in a shop,
and configure it on first use.

The first use flow would be as follows:

Plug the remotestorage stick into the device (this can have e.g. a
Raspberry Pi with an additional wifi stick inside), and connect the
network cable from the device to (one of) the free ethernet ports on
your existing home router.

A 'freedombox' wifi network will come up. The password for this is on
the *front* of the box.

If you connect to this and browse to http://freedombox/ you see an
admin panel (called Plinth). The admin password for this is on the
*back* of the box, as well as in the instructions/packaging (so that
you don't have to unplug it at this point, but you know it's there for
future reference, should you discard the packaging).

It asks you to choose a domain name, which it would register using the
DNR token that's on your remotestorage stick. It would also ask you
for an admin email address, and once you confirm this, it will
register a domain name for you, set up an ssl cert, a DNS zone, and a
pagekite frontend for it, and start a remotestorage server on the
device that stores its data on the stick. The device does not have any
relation to the dnr, ssl and frontend providers, but the tokens that
comes on the stick, do.

When you visit http://yourdomain.com/ or http://www.yourdomain.com/
you're redirected to https://yourdomain.com/ where it would show a
placeholder empty website, served from the public web directory on
your remotestorage. it would need to cache in memory to not hit the
usb drive too hard, but that's feasible.

then, if you visit https://apps.yourdomain.com/ you would get your
apps portal (see http://lanyrd.com/2012/unhosted/sygwp/ for a demo).

a next step would be to also add app dev flattering tokens on the
remotestorage stick when you sell it. That way, the remotestorage
stick would, in the shop, say "20 euros worth of unhosted web apps
included", and you could then pay for apps in the app store.

and there would be no 30% of that money going to Apple. :)

offering this on a dreamplug would probably cost 230 euros + labour,
whereas offering it on a raspberry pi would probably be possible for
100 euros + labour. One of the unhosted web apps would allow you to
publish and edit your website.

On the back of the remotestorage stick there would be room for a tag,
like a key ring label, on which you can write the domain name that is
served from that remotestorage stick, in case you have multiple ones
so you don't mix them up, and also to make the user understand that
this is your own website and blog, hosted entirely in your house and
under your control, yet available at the domain name you picked on
first run, and that becomes your Indie Web identity. Once we have a
few of the basic unhosted web apps that people are already working on,
I think a freedombox plus a remotestorage stick would make a brilliant
Christmas present for non-technical people who want freedom from
web2.0's platform monopolies. :)


Cheers,
Michiel.

[☮ elf Pavlik ☮]

Excerpts from Michiel de Jong's message of 2012-09-29 14:32:59 +0000:

sounds exciting!

still since we talk about freedom from monopolies let's try to make sure we don't create such ourself :D

i find it interesting approach for all services pagekite, domain registar etc. to have them all from day one with at least 3 autonomous providers on different domains, then person can CHOOSE one and have link to directory with even more options and link to instructions "if you want, you can roll your own this way..." making sure we have functioning stack of free software for it!

[Michiel de Jong]

sure, the fact that we would provide "role your own this way" links
goes without saying! That's why we thought it out this way, with
self-configuring tokens on a usb drive.

In the end, the stick is just a usb drive with provisioning tokens on
there. it's like the prepay cards you buy at the news stand, that are
just a piece of paper with a code to top up your phone.

the configured result would be three plain-text files:

domainname.txt
pagekite.rc,
ssl.crt,
ssl.key

at any point, you can edit those files to point somewhere else, or to
put in your own domain name and ssl cert which you got from somewhere
else. Also, you (the email address you provide) would become both the
contact to alert you when your domain name, ssl cert and frontend
subscription are almost up for renewal, and also the admin contact for
the DNR, so using the registrar system you can initiate a domain name
transfer and complete it without requiring the intervention of who you
bought the remotestorage stick from. you only have to trust ICANN. :)

we would publish exactly what an entrepreneur would have to do to
start offering the same product, but we cannot force them to of
course. there will likely at first be only one provider. but once more
people start asking their ISPs and electronics shops for freedomboxes
and remotestorage sticks, more vendors will automatically arrive to
the scene. :)

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[☮ elf Pavlik ☮]

Excerpts from Michiel de Jong's message of 2012-09-29 15:02:17 +0000:

cool!

do you know how many pagekite services alternative to pagekite.net people run?

[Melvin Carvalho]

I had an idea of bringing down the cost of FBX

Or even offering them for zero much like mobile phones can be free sometimes

This involves some creative economic hacking

The idea is that once you have a freedombox you can offer valuable services to the community.  e.g. backups, integrity, verification, storage, crypto -- there's lots

As you create value you can generate economic value with your box.  And using something like web credits, this flows into the community and also to the person that gave you the box

It might sound unrealistic, but if you consider that the bitcoin network is just a bunch of connected boxes and they have created 100 million dollars+ where there was zero before, you can start to imagine things like free (as in beer) hardware for those that cant afford a box.

Of course the prepay option will always be there.  But if it's possible to build a value economy where people share help and create value, it might be possible to mass produce devices for the general public ...
 

On the back of the remotestorage stick there would be room for a tag,
like a key ring label, on which you can write the domain name that is
served from that remotestorage stick, in case you have multiple ones
so you don't mix them up, and also to make the user understand that
this is your own website and blog, hosted entirely in your house and
under your control, yet available at the domain name you picked on
first run, and that becomes your Indie Web identity. Once we have a
few of the basic unhosted web apps that people are already working on,
I think a freedombox plus a remotestorage stick would make a brilliant
Christmas present for non-technical people who want freedom from
web2.0's platform monopolies. :)


Cheers,
Michiel.

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[Michiel de Jong]

On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 5:15 PM, ☮ elf Pavlik ☮
<perpetua...@wwelves.org> wrote:
> do you know how many pagekite services alternative to pagekite.net people run?

there are a couple of alternatives, Jed will be presenting a new one
at rejectjs in fact. The main problem is they're mostly all
incompatible with each other between frontend and backend. So that's
why in fact there's now a really cool effort, started by Bjarni, to
create a common standard among them, see:
http://mailman.klaki.net/pipermail/revprotun/

in any case, the important detail is that 1) you have your own proper
Indie Web domain name as your identity (not a subdomain or a vanity
url on some -cough-facebook-cough- platform), and 2) you have
end-to-end encryption, which greatly reduces the trust level required
between you and your RevProTun provider.

it's still an area of active development but the outlook is (mainly
thanks to Bjarni's efforts) looking sunny.

[Jan-Christoph Borchardt]

At the ownCloud developer meeting last weekend in Berlin, a similar
idea came up again, to have »ownCloud in a box«. In general the »put
web software on a box to have at home« seems to be a meme with all the
Freedombox stuff going on.

I thought more about this and can’t convince myself that this is a
good idea, let alone for consumers.

The very benefit of having data »in the cloud« is not needing to
maintain all the infrastructure. Even if it’s just a Raspberry Pi or
whatever – if something goes wrong I have a problem. It is an extra
device I need to care about.
For the vendor, it’s going into the hardware, distribution and tech
support business. That’s not fun, and there are a bunch of companies
already doing it (LaCie with their NAS boxes, phone companies with
routers, etc.). It’s a pain.

The thought of having something personal to run your apps and save
your documents is not confined to »have a box at home«, nor do I think
that this is the right solution. We already have a box which is small,
in our possession and always connected to the internet – our
smartphone. As Bjarni always says: Everyone of us has a computer in
their pocket.

We don’t want to distribute hardware – we want to empower people and
enable them to be in control of their services and data. Running them
on your phone through Pagekite solves that problem pretty elegantly
and without any extra hardware people need to buy or we would need to
distribute.

Then your phone would be one peer, and your laptop would be the other.
No »dead« backup devices like USB sticks, external hard drives or
boxes in your home – both are devices you have anyway and can just be
connected and cross-sync everything. It’s iCloud without the cloud –
ownCloud+remotestorage served through Pagekite, from your phone.


Thoughts? (cc’d Frank and Tom from ownCloud because they were involved
in the discussion)

[Nick Jennings]

I agree with your points about having another device to worry about,
especially one that has all your data on it.

However I don't think a phone is a practical solution for most of the
world. Data rates are not so liberal in most places around the world,
battery life is still a major issue, and most smartphones are under
powered. Sure there are the i-phones and high-end android phones, but
in reality this accounts for a minority of connected people.

My android phone gets the job done, it's no work horse. The reason I
got it is because it's under powered and therefore the battery life is
pretty good. I can go 2-3 days of light use without a recharge.
Putting remoteStorage on my phone would drain the battery and use up
all my data on my plan.

If all I'm storing are a few documents, then it doesn't really matter
one way or another, however once I start having collections of images,
maybe even videos, music, etc. then it starts to become an issue and I
worry about this stuff getting synced to my phone.

Dropbox mobile is pretty useful, but they do not sync to your phone
automatically. They provide listings, and only the documents you
request are downloaded to your phone. I think we need to be respectful
of peoples bandwidth, we can't go assume people are going to watch to
sync tons of data to their phone for redundancy. Some people may want
to do that, it could be an option, but I think most people will not
see the point.

In the end, a phone has a purpose. We need it to be available when we
want to send an sms, check an address, make a call, or settle a
bar-room bet. We don't want our phone to be dead, or our data charges
to skyrocket, because it's also serving as a backup device. Then it
stops becoming useful for what we need it for. Then I may as well have
two phones, one to actually /use/ and the other for remoteStorage
backups. Then, I may as well get a freedombox and leave it at home.

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[Melvin Carvalho]

One of the key drivers of freedombox is privacy

If you want convenience you can use any one of a 100 services such as icloud or dropbox

But only when you use your own machine do you get privacy (at least pretty good privacy)

It's a compromise between convenience, privacy and control.  Then there's the added problem of marketing which will promise you all of the above and most users will not be able to know the difference.
 

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