Re: Help Iranian dissidents

[Andrew Lewman <andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 06/24/2009 01:41 PM, Bill McGonigle wrote:
> On 06/24/2009 11:44 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote:
>> Speaking about guerilla, http://www.google.com/search?q=sheevaplug
>> would seem like an ideal throwaway Tor appliance. With Bluetooth
>> or WLAN dongles even casting a small (or long-distance, with
>> suitable directional aerials) wireless cloud.
> 
> The Fonera 2 might be a candidate platform.  Half the price, 32MB RAM,
> built-in wifi, support for 3g modems.  IIRC, somebody already did a tor
> mod for the first version.

In general, we encourage people to work on these types of ports of Tor.
   We will work with you and help you turn this into a reality.
However, be aware that it takes work, research, and effort to get tor to
work correctly on these platforms.  I'm sure there are a list of
features "micro-environments" would need to have in Tor to make
everything work better.

We'd love to have the help and your experience in turning this into a
reality.  We have the beginnings of a certification program in place, so
an end-user/customer can tell if this is really tor, works with the
current tor network, is a solid design as good as Tor, or is complete
bunk and merely includes the Tor tarball to say "uses Tor!" for their
marketing purposes.

However, coming up with the idea, and then punting all of the next steps
to the Tor Project doesn't work too well.  I have a list of platforms
that people have stated, "If you can turn Tor into an appliance on
device X, we'll sell it for you and donate x% back to you quarterly."
These platforms include: fonera2, embedded linux variants, polar cloud's
tomato, sheevaplugs, bug lab's modules, openwrt, ddwrt, windows ce,
windows xp embedded, and the list goes on.

In conversations with the requesters, they want:

Step 1) Generate an idea.
Step 2) Wait for Tor Project to do the technical work.
Step 3) Profit!

If only it were that easy.

-- 
Andrew Lewman
The Tor Project
pgp 0x31B0974B

Website: https://torproject.org/
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