I'm curious if people would pay for a set of services that had:
1. clearly defined privacy policies
2. based on free software
3. developed and maintained by a trusted party (and possibly endorsed by
respectable individuals and/or projects like the EFF, FSF, RMS, etc)
There are some companies out there that I have wanted to like although found
out that they were using proprietary systems and/or didn't have clear privacy
policies defined, etc.
The types of services I'm envisioning would include:
you could spin up 100% free software friendly trisquel / parabola VPSs
email services /w secure web, imap, pop/smtp (managed by the entity for ease
of use, although possibly with the ability to connect domains to it)
calendaring (integration with evolution/thunderbird/android/etc)
personal wiki (save your notes- no need to setup your own wiki)
file sharing (upload files for sharing with others)
android/replicant notes application (sync your notes with a server and access
notes through web interface too)
storage space for backup and other uses (possibly with syncing options, etc.
and maybe similar to drop box, making public folders, etc)
secure xmpp (https ; would need )
easy to use and free software friendly remote desktop solutions (a solution
as easy to use as teamviewer w free software replacement)
remote desktop environments for testing (possibly with some sort of Network
Booting (PXE) )
virtual private servers
voip (purchase voip phones or voip ata adapters for connecting traditional
phones)
Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) server (including binary)
.onion services like email server (possibly with no-cost option to ensure
anonymity)
many these services available through .onion
vpn services
accept anonymous bitcoin payments
search engine services (privacy / anonymity / maybe working with others
already doing it)
possibly entertainment & news facilities (to facilitate ease of locating
drm-free content; search engine that avoided sites that were DRM'ing content;
probably based on user crowd-sourced data)
and other similar services... for a monthly fee of maybe $20-$30 USD / month.
Obviously there would have to be limitations on things like disk space,
bandwidth caps, etc although these would be in a clearly defined. Possibly
done in an upgradable way. So $10 might get you a cap of 10gb bandwidth for
instance that could be used with any of these services. $20 might get you
100gb bandwidth, etc.
I'm sure this type of thing would have to be rolled out slowly. The idea
though behind it is both privacy, freedom, and the rolling of services into
one in such a way that ensured prices could be made reasonable.
Think of it as being the first "internet" ISP. Think AOL for the technical
user except with services that matter.
