FreedomBox for Communities/About

What this book is

This book provides information on how to setup a community wireless network based on FreedomBox in villages, university campuses and other communities to provide Internet and locally-hosted digital services on a FreedomBox. This book is a manual written from the practical experience of volunteers in deploying community wireless networks in different parts of the world.

What this book is not

This book is not a detailed guide on how to setup community wireless networks in general. Some important topics might be covered, but wireless networks are not the emphasis of this book. For a detailed reading on this topic, refer to Wireless Networking in Developing World. It is a free eBook on building wireless networks in the developing world.  It contains a lot of information about networking, especially wireless networking. If you're rolling out a new community wireless network, you might want to start with that book first and come back to this one.

This book isn't the official FreedomBox wiki. The FreedomBox project itself is more concerned with use cases for individuals. Though FreedomBox itself is an integral part of this system, this WikiBook only covers the community use cases. The documentation for privacy-preserving services hosted on FreedomBox and the official guide to setting up a FreedomBox at home is available on the FreedomBox Wiki. It is recommend to browse through the FreedomBox Wiki as well, as readers might find some creative use of services meant for individuals when used in a community.

How this book is organized

We start by discussing about what FreedomBox is and what role it plays in empowering communities through community ownership and the use of free and open-source software.

The next section discusses basic network setup required to setup the wireless network. Some revelations gained by practical experience of volunteers will be discussed. Readers are expected to find detailed information in the book Wireless Networking in Developing World, though this WikiBook might expand in scope and coverage and might be comprehensive eventually.

After setting up the network, we discuss setting up FreedomBox and various free software servers on it that can be used by the community. Different communities need different kinds of software services. Hence, the use cases of a particular server software for various communities will also be discussed.

There's an additional section about creative uses of the services on the FreedomBox in combination.