@organizingInFedi
Interesting article discussing lockin and Amazon "cloud" by somebody who works on it:
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2022/01/30/Cloud-Lock-In
Could be create something for cooperatives using Fedi instead of a huge cloud and any co-op could federate with and coordinate their activities with other fedi co-ops?
No lockin, pick from several ActivityPub apps or roll your own.
Why not?
@bhaugen @organizingInFedi It would be interesting to know what the IT challenges are for coops. But so far, all I see is hosting coops who try to use existing bloatware. They pay commercial datacenters instead working with broadband coops. Perhaps I'm missing something, but there do not seem to be dev coops, because if there were any, they would be the place to coordindate this. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
@gert
Several dev co-ops exist, at least a few have Fedi accounts. I hesitate to name any for fear of missing somebody, but if they notice this, maybe they will raise their hand?
But yes, those would be good places to coordinate, or a new dev co-op, maybe a multi-stakeholder incljuding the devs and the user co-ops and the individual users and maybe some of the existing dev co-ops.
@bhaugen @organizingInFedi I'd still like to know, because then the question would be if dev coops would be willing to develop *for coops* ?
@gert
> the question would be if dev coops would be willing to develop *for coops* ?
It would certainly be in keeping with co-op principles. I was investigating how to catalyse this a few years back. The usual problem of funding is solved if co-ops are willing to pay (and ideally share) development costs for software they want. The challenge seems to be one of coordination. Getting clarification of needs, funds, and dev capacity, to all line up.
@strypey @bhaugen @organizingInFedi @mike_hales Excellent, thx
@gert One relevant case study, although they're not co-ops as such, is community currencies. In theory, LET'S and timebank groups around the world could share the cost of developing a software platform. This could be combined with a hosting service, or a cluster of them. @matslats 's work on communityforge.net is an example.
@gert Also somewhat relevant is this search by @clacke for a mailing list host run as a platform co-op:
https://libranet.de/display/0b6b25a8-4861-f8b0-4d50-2c5459562707
@strypey @clacke @matslats @bhaugen @organizingInFedi @mike_hales There really are a lot of people who would like to help, especially in this time of crisis. But they are mostly being ignored. Speaking of ethics and crisis..
@gert
Do you have a specific situation in mind?
@bhaugen @strypey @clacke @matslats @organizingInFedi @mike_hales IMO this case also shows how a distributed datacenter of our own could work together to make something like this possible. The task of sending e-mail can easily be split up in subtasks and distributed to workers anywhere.
OTOH, we should also think about the fact that most of e-mail is sitting in corporate clouds, which is kind of suboptimal. See also this request for comments http://se.citiwise.eu/index.html?j-mail/draft-1.md
@gert
> this case also shows how a distributed datacenter of our own could work together to make something like this possible
Have you looked into Holochain as a potential infrastructure layer for doing this?
@strypey isn't #Holochain patented? @gert @bhaugen @clacke @matslats@social.coop @organizingInFedi @mike_hales
@tetrislife
I asked about patent and will report back when I get the answer. But in the meantime, here is the license for the code:
https://github.com/holochain/holochain/blob/develop/LICENSE
@strypey @gert @clacke @matslats @organizingInFedi @mike_hales
@bhaugen thanks for the pointer, I hadn't read their blog on the topic. So, unless they themselves become patent trolls, using their code seems OK. Re-implementors of the protocol aren't there yet, that seems to require trust in them.
@strypey @gert @clacke @matslats@social.coop @organizingInFedi @mike_hales
@tetrislife
We and several other people are building on their code and will raise an unholy stink if they go back on the promises in their license and many public statements.
> Re-implementors of the protocol aren't there yet, that seems to require trust in them.
Most of the code we are developing will work with either Holochain or ActivityPub or some similar protocol to come.
@strypey @gert @clacke @matslats @organizingInFedi @mike_hales