You haven’t read a single word in the blog right?

No. I think you lost the context. I would recommend to read also the links n this post.

What is your definition of “free live”?

Protocol solves this issue. And reason why takes so long for a protocol to establish.

Almost the point, I don’t want to fragment a system, I want to federate then. Make more people using the system, focus on the protocol and make the system better. For example, Piefed, I’m writing this on a alternative face of the system, but because this is a federated, I don’t need to use the official front. At the same time, I focus on the showing the system for more people around me, and expanding it’s userbase (and money, but I was focus on the human instead of the money).

I looked into it some time ago, it was part of my initial discovery. But (maybe because I didn’t went deep enought), felt too much like losing power, when I want to give power to people, if possible in my lifetime (which isn’t a lot)

I almost want to turn this into unpaid work, except that it is paid work. Let’s break it down, imagine we’re dealing with a condominium management system. So all the people living in the building participate, everyone needs to pay the building maintenance costs, and usually this work falls to the superintendent. And often, the superintendent’s voice carries more weight, which can cause problems. What I’m proposing is to use an open tool (whether it already exists or not) to help all the residents (whether it’s one vote per apartment, or a fractional vote per resident of an apartment) and the system can help organize not just the expenses, but also facilitate discussions and the like. And of course, all of this would be self-hosted directly in the building (even an old laptop can serve a small system for 100 users without a flinch). Do you realize that as a resident, even though there’s a cost to pay for this, you end up getting the money back in the end? And you know exactly where every single penny was spent? So this is paid labor.

Federation, on my view is part of the solution. But right now the federated apps are solving a limited amount of problems, mostly connected to the social media, and social networks. The moment this moves from these domains to other like an ERP, or maybe a medical backoffice for general clinics, this is the point where the real gain can be seen, but this is (right now), pure utopia and dreams from my own head.

I was unfair in the last reply, let me address you correctly this time. You are looking at software, software is already solved. You app, software, system is your, you can deploy whenever you want. I’m talking about the bigger community, when your software isn’t yet “yours” anymore.

[…] because the moment it gets popular, someone has to pay for it, and the only people willing to pay are the ones who want to own/mine it.[…]

This is the point where needs to be own, of have the right governance, where your (as a user) desire is accounted for the system.

Hopefully this explains better.

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.

What’s wrong with mastodon? […]

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.

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?

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,

For me, the post does neither address the question, nor the answer. What is the problem? What is the solution?

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.

Totally. I started reading on the topic few months ago and got hooked in. It is close to the self-host, I would say this is the “next step”…

I think that democratic processes should exist where this is power imbalance, exploitation and no safety release valve that lets the vulnerable people freely step away. E.g., we have democracy to prevent authoritarian rule, and because it’s hard to move country. We have workers co-ops and unions to prevent the power imbalance between bosses, customers and workers.

So, a co-op of taxi drivers makes sense to me, because all of those conditions exist: Uber is dominant, they own the two-sided market so it’s more difficult for customers or drivers leave, and the drivers are exploited because they have few alternatives.

That’s pretty much it. Not all products needs to be a coop. But most products would benefit from a coop. I can give you one example, imagine if all the coffee shops in your region decide to coop, they organize their prices, decide who gets which special beans, and create an app that allows the customer to not only know what kind of special coffee they have to offer. Or even provide a better engagement with it’s customer base.

(And remove the “coffee shop owner” which is usually the guy who never had brewed a cup of coffee in their life)

On the fediverse, we already have co-ops where each user gets a stake in the rules, moderation, etc. We also have instances that are run as more of a benevolent dictatorship, but where everyone is there freely. We have single-user instances too. To me, this is the best of all worlds, because everyone can choose the governance model that suits them, and we can all co-operate together.

That’s the point. Governance for the people who use the tool and the factories apps…

This is where my opinion depends on what you’re arguing for. Is your suggestion to tie the governance to the protocol itself, or to push for more co-operatively run instances and software? If the latter, I’m all for it :) but if it’s the former, to me that’s a step backward, because we’re placing a checkpoint on who can join the network that removes the safety release valves and pushes people into a democratic system that they might not agree with.

The later, more instances to be able to help each other. For example, why not the instances about art in your region and the theater be organized by both groups combined? And if this works, why not add the Anime folks. If there is trouble, split the parts that aren’t following the “bigger” side, and both can co-exist.

For me, this the essence of the argument. But I’m not quite sure what the keys are to: what power and influence do they unlock? Open source makes sense to me because the people doing the work have a say in what’s happening. I’m nervous to give power to users, who are not doing work, over volunteers, who are doing work. But then, when there is funding involved, I think that naturally leads to more users having more influence, because they can always take it away if their priorities are not met. See Snowdrift Co-op for instance. To me, the biggest solution is finding a way to fund open source projects directly from users.

Think the key as a “group of people with the same intention”.

A single instance of Mastodon alone won’t do a thing. But the whole group would be able to make a difference. Or Piefed, I want to have an instance at home for my friends to organize the D&D games for example. This instance alone won’t solve the D&D as a whole thing, but would allow for other groups to organize, maybe. (I’m stretching the point here)

Looks like I broke the RSS xD I’ll fix it this weekend. Wasn’t the first, wont be the last.

EDIT: This is a infair comment. There is a better one.

Maybe your own software doesn’t have a soul then.
And this is fine. Not all software needs to fit in this coop way.

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.

I’ll disagree with you. But I have no energy to engage in this specific topic. I recommend you to look outside and check how other people are solving this problem.

Why not solve the gun problem?

While the fine is just as “slap in the wrist”, nothing will change.

This is a very easy to miss use, but you should use yes | … for this type of action