Eben Moglen

One sixth of the human race lives under the control of a regime that intends to use the Net to extinguish the very idea of freedom. Pettier despots of every description use computer networks to perfect civil unfreedom on a platform of unfree technology. Illiberal movements are sweeping towards political power in advanced democratic societies, which are also the hubs of surveillance capitalism. The rush to cashless society is replacing the anonymity of the free market with the tracked and monitored control points of a new totalitarian economy. The most powerful man in the world has no respect for freedom of speech or the rule of law. The free software movement came into existence fighting to prevent a future which is now our present. Ready or not, we have entered a new phase. Training is over. Here's the plan.

The free software movement has never seen a time like this before. We are at a turning point in the struggle over patenting software. Edward Snowden has shown the world why unfree technology imperils political liberty, but we are challenged by the need to cure the Internet of the harm done by the

FreedomBox is a personal server running a free software operating system and free applications, designed to create and preserve personal privacy by providing a secure platform upon which federated social networks can be constructed. Software for FreedomBox is being assembled by volunteer programmers around the world who believe in Free Software and Free Society, with Bdale coordinating development of a reference implementation on behalf of the non-profit FreedomBox Foundation.

Eben Moglen articulated the need for FreedomBox in his 2011 FOSDEM opening keynote, then Bdale Garbee provided a progress update in his 2012 FOSDEM closing keynote. This year, Eben and Bdale will jointly present the development status of freedom-respecting hardware and a software stack that together represent the first FreedomBox release for end users.