[PLUG] Accountability OSS...

michael at robinson-west.com michael at robinson-west.com
Sun Jun 28 16:43:00 UTC 2020


I want to bring open source high quality accountability software to Linux and I want the software to be supported for an extended period of time, say 100 years.

I have an idea to intercept tcp/udp packets destined to port 53 and all web and ftp traffic. The goal here is to intercept, record, reinject as if nothing ever happened, and report at the end of the 24 hour period. This monitoring software MUST be open source so it can pass a security audit. I prefer to not charge a fee for use of this software. My target audience is home users who prefer Linux over Windows or Mac OS for which there is Covenant Eyes,

That's my idea for accountability software presently. At report time, all the data needs to be fed into Python or Perl scripts to create an email and then the email must be sent out to whomever the installer wants. The accountability partner is whomever you want. Could be your spouse or your best friend. I'm thinking a text message alert might be a nice stretch feature.

Problem is, say I set up a nonprofit to hire programmers to maintain this software, where does the revenue come from to pay those programmers? Does the nonprofit have to request donations? Maybe you pay a subscription fee to get updates only and when the subscription expires the code is open source and you can continue to use it... but, I want a model that does not restrict access to updates. Another thought is convince big companies to support my nonprofit.

An option perhaps is to start a for profit company developing other software for Linux and have the coders work on this accountability software that will not be a pay for product. To be well maintained software though, there has to be capital to pay programmers. There's the issue of advertising as well and collecting user feedback to find and fix problems with the accountability system.

 -- Michael C. Robinson



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