Fonosfera
> Dear all
>
> We are very happy to introduce the new fon development community
> program: the fonosfera.
>
> You all have demonstrated that the foneras are able to do much more than
> what they currently do. You, the development communities, have fixed
> many bugs, added features and improved the functioning of the fonera and
> so, we would like to give you the opportunity to keep doing this great
> work. This is why we have decided to launch our latest product, the
> fonera 2.0, under the umbrella of a new development framework, the
> fonosfera.
>
> The idea behind the fonosfera is to open a channel so all the
> development work the communities have been doing and will do in the
> future, can reach any fon user in a simple way. We want the communities
> to keep their autonomy and don’t want to merge them all into one. We
> know you already have your own members, your rules and your methodology:
> we don’t want to change that. Doing so, we expect you will be encouraged
> to work happier and more motivated in new developments. We will try to
> make things easy for you and give you all the credit for your work.
>
> As so, the fonosfera will be not much more than a space for gathering
> and sharing with other developers and offeri
ng your work to end users
> all around the world. It will be a framework where you will find
> development and community tools such as svn, trac, forums, mailing list,
> wiki etc. This is something we would like to define with you all. In
> order to do so, you have selected 1 member of each of your communities
> to act as a contact point. These people will have direct contact with
> the fon team in charge of the fonosfera project. They will receive our
> notifications and will be in charge of giving us the impressions,
> decisions, comments and feedback of their corresponding communities.
>
> Currently, we are setting up the source code of the fonera 2.0 which
> basically consist on the source of the fonera+ (so you can already work
> with it) plus some additional parts that are very interesting:
>
> * NTFS-3g driver: this driver was available long ago for but it
> didn’t work for big endian mips devices (as the fonera is). We
> sponsored the porting and testing of it. It
is already available
> to download at the official page, but we will also include it in
> the source tree we will provide you.
> * Some controls for hard drives in the web interface. We have done a
> reduced web tool to manage the hard drive from webif.
> * HSDPA connectivity scripts (still under development)
> * New wifi driver binary: it’s still under testing but seems to be
> much better.
> * And more
>
> Our goal is to make this new device a success. Because this will mean
> that many more foneras will be available for connection around the
> world. We want the fonera to be a useful device at home so they are
> online 24h a day. This will improve the quality and size of the fon network.
>
> To achieve this, we have set
up a development flowchart. It basically
> defines how things should be done to get the most efficient, secure and
> flexible development framework. There are some limitations that fon as a
> company has and sometimes you will have to understand that, but we don’t
> think they will have much impact on the project.
>
> The summary for this development rules is basically:
>
> * you will have 100% freedom to develop what you want to
> * all packages/development eligible to be *official* fonosfera
> packages, will have to be tested in a trustful way by the community
> * fon will try to make all packages official, as long as they don’t
> go against our interests or potentially harm the users (owners or
> visitors) or have legal issues
> * the packages should be organ
ized so that there are no conflicts
> between them and even less with fon’s minimal functionalities
>
> This is just a list summarizing the conditio
ns, but you can see they are
> more than reasonable. For more detail, please wait until we have
> contacted with your representatives. They will explain all the project
> to you and will of course accept your suggestions and hand them to us.
>
> You will soon receive your corresponding fonera 2.0 if you didn’t yet.
> We hope you will enjoy using it and working on it. You have full access
> to it and of course, we are eager to help you.
>
> The devices you received do not have the latest firmware, because they
> were produced about 6 months ago. So you will probably need to reflash
> them with the latest firmware or one of your own.
The source code we
> will provide you will be newer, but soon, we expect to merge with the
> latest OpenWrt trunk, and this will be the base for the future fonera
> 2.0, when it reaches the market.
>
> So, this is it. We are so happy that we finally took the step forward
> and we expect you will like this new fon-era. You will hear from us very
> soon again.
>
> Best,
>
> The firmware team and the fonosfera team at FON
>
>
> P.D.: find attached the logo of the fonosfera, both for black and white
> backgrounds (either can be used on coloured backgrounds)