Business Analysis

FreedomBox and the Importance of Momentum

FreedomBox is another “easy” self-hosting solution that has been around since 2010. The surface-level goals of FreedomBox are similar to that of HexOS, which we investigated in our last post; they seek to provide a path to autonomy for users so they can separate themselves from the corruption of surveillance capitalism. However, FreedomBox went about it in a different way.

First off, FreedomBox was developed by the FreedomBox Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing users a way out of the modern internet by helping them own part of the internet infrastructure. Additionally, FreedomBox is fully open-source and built on top of Debian, a Linux distribution. This means that unlike HexOS, FreedomBox is and always will be free to download and use. Since 2019, they have also had an agreement with Olimex to sell a preconfigured server (made from a single-board computer), enabling users to get a mostly-working FreedomBox out of the box. I say “mostly working” because FreedomBox, like HexOS, has made strides but has not fully addressed the networking issues that users face when hosting their own services.

The first product we will review is HexOS, a project developed by Eshtek Inc. and built on TrueNAS SCALE, which is developed by iXsystems. HexOS promises to simplify network-attached storage (NAS) management while expanding the capability to host various applications locally (on your local network).

Eshtek used the “innovator’s gift” to develop HexOS. The innovator’s gift is a concept popularized by Ash Maurya in Running Lean. It describes the idea that every new solution creates new problems. If a solution is good, solving the problems it introduces will have a ready market—this is the gift. When you find problems with good solutions, the market for those existing solutions will also create desire for your product. This is exactly what we see with HexOS. iXsystems built their business around Network Attached Storage, but since their solution is geared towards businesses, it assumes a level of IT support beyond the capacity of most home users. This gap creates a market for people who want a self-hosted storage solution without the complexity and demands of an enterprise system.

When Eli and I started Gleipnir earlier this year, we knew one thing for certain: we wanted to address the growing frustrations with today’s tech landscape. People are increasingly dissatisfied with platforms that prioritize monetization over meaningful innovation, locking users into ecosystems that offer convenience at the cost of control, privacy, and trust.

As we began designing Tealok, we faced an important question: What’s already out there, and how can we do better?