Announcing Pioneer FreedomBox Kits

March 26th, 2019

On Sunday, March 24th at the Free Software Foundation's annual LibrePlanet conference, the FreedomBox Foundation announced that it has partnered with Olimex to sell Pioneer FreedomBox Home Server Kits. 

We've been building the FreedomBox software since 2011—that's eight years.  And our supporters have been asking for purchasable kits for about as many years.  We've heard your voices, and we’re doing this for you. 

We're very proud to partner with Olimex, a company that makes open source hardware.  Olimex is well respected in the world of free and open source software, and we're pleased to be entering the hardware space with Olimex as our partner. 

Our deepest thanks go to FreedomBox's core developers, designers, volunteers, users, and donors who all made this possible.  Years of work, largely from volunteers, brought FreedomBox to a point where it was so good that a company wanted to build a product around it.  Please join us in congratulating everyone who had a part in building FreedomBox. 

We chose the Free Software Foundation's conference in Boston, Massachusetts as the launching pad of the first-ever FreedomBox kits intentionally: we wanted to take this step forward in the birthplace of the free software movement.  Sincere thanks go to the Free Software Foundation for giving us the privilege of announcing these kits at LibrePlanet. 

Special thanks also go to Olimex for being such a good partner throughout this process. 

In the coming weeks, we'll be putting the final touches on the kits before Olimex officially launches sales.  What we really need before the official launch of sales is to spread the word.  Please tell your friends and family on social media, email, or any other communications channel you use!  Point people to the order page for the kits and to the FreedomBox Foundation's mailing list.  Write posts about it on social media using #FreedomBox and #BeAPioneer.  Together, we can make this product a success and spread freedom one FreedomBox at a time. 

We chose to use the word "Pioneer" in the name of these kits because we want to emphasize the leadership required to run a FreedomBox in 2019.  Users will be pioneers both because they have the courage to explore this new frontier and because we'll rely on their feedback to make our software better.  Running a home server is not mainstream, and it takes leadership to do it.  But if you do it, you'll be a pioneer of what we hope will be a revolution in computing. 

Sales launch soon.  Be a pioneer. 

Order details: https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/Home-Server/Pioneer-FreedomBox-HSK/.

Members of the press can contact press@freedomboxfoundation.org.