There was some hype around something called "Freedom Box" [1] a while ago, but it seemed to have gone quiet. Things like this pop up every now and then, and then tend to disappear.
What? The Freedom Box project seems to still be going strong. The associated, pluggable hardware has "disappeared" mostly because it doesn't seem to do much over what a plain old single-board computer (SBC) or mini-PC can do already.