- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
This is a general view on the topic. I think open-source isn’t enough, we need also governance for the software we use, and create small pockets of freedom.
All feedback is welcome.
What if the people who use a piece of software, had ownership in the software. A simple (and possible example), instead of relying in a third party software for the organization of people in a given apartment hub, or group of houses. Have it’s own software build with free and open-source tools. And hosted in a community server.
So the people who use it, does have the governance over the software, and if needed to enhance, the same enhacement can be given back to the open-source community.
For me, the post does neither address the question, nor the answer. What is the problem? What is the solution?
What’s wrong with mastodon? Most people don’t want to be invested in anything with it. I use mastodon once every other month. I don’t want to spend 5 bucks per month or own it. I don’t want to participate. I’m fine with rochko doing whatever he wants. What’s wrong with it?
There is nothing wrong with Mastodon, on the opposite it’s a early display of what can be done right. But yet it’s a instance, owned by a few people.
Really? I would like to have a Piefed for my friends to share our meme for example, this is an smaller, yet common exemplo of governance.
I could suggest ya to read the links too, they provide extra info on the topic. Maybe this is the missing part you are feeling.
Ps.: About this,
Funny, that for me it’s a complete post, does have the question, insight for a type of solution and provides enough context to spark the discussion on the topic.
In practice, that would require buy-in from the apartment/house association board, since the average resident would be unlikely to care about whether or not the software was open source or owned by the association. Cost would likely be a more important metric for most members, and here a company that serviced multiple associations would likely have an edge, especially since they could also provide general support to the end-users.
If it did get approved by the associations members, then the board would then likely have to hire a third party do carry out the actual development. If you’re (very!) lucky, then one or more members might be willing to do it cheaper than a third party, but that would likely only last for however long they lived in one of the apartments or houses.
I would put this scenario down as possible in theory, but very unlikely to work out in practice. The vast majority of such associations would go with an existing (closed-source) SAS provider, since that would be a lot less work and since it would survive the constant turnover in such an association.
I honestly have an even harder time seeing how it would work out for OSS in general, since most software does not come with an existing organization, nor a community that is as directly invested as residents in an associations. For most projects, the work involved in setting up and managing such an association would greatly exceed the work involved in developing the software itself, which, similarly to the above, most of the users would not be able to contribute to
EDIT: A more plausible scenario for an house/apartment association, would be somebody setting up a company structured as a co-op and then recruiting multiple associations as co-owners/customers. Is that what you had in mind? Though that of course requires that somebody has both the funds and the interest to get it off the ground, which is unlikely to be an existing association
I was going to reply, but really the edit already have the content. But the example wasn’t the perfect solution, but a given idea. Something that I already did in the past, a homemade solution for the condominium of the building where I used to live. It works, a old desktop as a server, a port forwarding in the modem and you have yourself the project up.
This project solves a specific problem, we used a lot of opensource tools (from the Linux machine to the web server), and in the end it was there working, solving the issue, collecting the needed signatures for the changes in the building.
But this is my usecase, doesn’t mean it’s the perfect, neither the best.