Wikipedia
FreedomBox is a community project to develop, design and promote personal servers running free software for distributed social networking, email and audio/video communications. The project was announced by Eben Moglen at the New York ISOC meeting on February 2, 2010.
On February 4, 2011, Moglen formed the FreedomBox Foundation to become the organizational headquarters of the project, and on February 18, 2011, the foundation started a campaign to raise $60,000 in 30 days on the crowdfunding service, Kickstarter. The goal was met on February 22, and on March 19, 2011, the campaign ended after collecting $86,724 from 1,007 backers.
The project currently describes a FreedomBox as The developers aim to create and preserve personal privacy by providing a secure platform for building federated social networks. This shall be done by creating a software stack that can run on plug computers that can easily be located in individual residences or offices. The software stack is currently at version 0.6.
The hardware currently put forward for use with the FreedomBox software is explained on the Hardware page. OSHW designs are preferred, like the Olimex A20 OLinuXino Lime 2 or the BeagleBone Black,. Closed-source boards like the DreamPlug., Cubietruck and the Raspberry Pi are possible options, while more are on the way. Starting with the 0.6 release there is also a VirtualBox image, and as always, you can install FreedomBox on any clean, installed Debian box.
By promoting a decentralized deployment of hardware, the project hopes that FreedomBoxes will "provide privacy in normal life, and safe communications for people seeking to preserve their freedom in oppressive regimes."