It sounds as if you're suggesting turning my unpaid hobby into an unpaid job where I don't have autonomy about how I do my hobby.
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Are you the original author? If so, thanks, I enjoyed the post! It made me think. I've subscribed to the RSS feed but it returns 404 for me FYI.
My main questions is, what does platform cooperative provide that is not already provided by open standards, and do you think that governance should be tied to the protocol, or exist below it at the instance and/or software implementation level?
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.
But, don't open source and open standards provide safety release valves that prevent such exploitation? At every layer of the stack, you can choose to swap out a part, be it client, server, instance, etc. You can choose to engage in the standards process, or you can build your own software that doesn't completely follow the rules if you want, and still take part in the network. Who is being exploited in this environment, when there are ways to jump ship from any of these?
Of course, open standards are vulnerable to capture by big players, since the user count determines your influence over the network. But, is that really a big problem? You still get the tools to build your own pocket of the network with like-minded people, like what we're doing on the fediverse now. You can still convince people to leave through argument, persuasion, freedom of association and making it easier for them to jump ship without losing everything.
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.
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.
Open source is about who can see the code. Federation is about who owns the network. Cooperativism is about who holds the keys.
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.
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I'll read it later but can it be summed up into one or two sentences?
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No, you absolutely don't. Governance is what destroys open-source projects. For instance, GNOME was destroyed and encrappified because of their board, for instance (a bad governance structure). Look at how IBM does governance to Wayland. That should show you that it doesn't work.
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My server is a single point of freedom. A co-op is a distributed one. It’s self-hosting, but with friends. It’s open source, but with a soul
I still don't understand what it's all about. It cannot be related to my own software, but for what kind of application is it meant?
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I am confused. I read your blog three times and I went to the wikipedia entry for platform cooperativism and there are a lot of complex topics behind words that I am struggling with.
I also am struggling with the example of the residence management system.
You say you self-host for control. But then you lose control once you start collaborating with other people, right?
Tons of people hate their HOAs and apartment managers. Because they lose control over their own living space.
Also, I don't really see how a living space management system maps to something ephemeral like software. I think that example translates to like who owns your IP address, bandwidth limits, or VPS hardware. They are the ones that get to say what you do with your "home". If they don't like you hosting something, they can cut you off.
Also, most users just want what they use to work with little friction and fuss. Making everyone into voting members of everything they use is a burden I don't think most people would want. Even people that are motivated for something will easily become burnt out when collaborating. Anyone that has played table top RPGs knows that getting a group together is hard.
If anything was a better example maybe it would be religions? If someone has other ideas they can split off and seek similarly minded followers. But even so, the person that has the physical space to meet or the person that can do the sermons, or whoever has the connections and money is going to be controlling it. And even if it is run by democratic vote, you still have the problem of the tyranny of the majority, and your option is to leave and start your own church if you disagree. But few have the ability and resources to do so.
Actually, that sounds a lot like linux distros! Which open source already facilitates, yes? And most users just want to use it, not work on it.
I really feel like there are problems to be solved like Microsoft owns the biggest, most reliable platform that hosts open source projects, and that seems dangerous. So I am always interested when someone has ideas about making open source projects more robustly free.
Sorry, I am all over the place. Maybe this is too much for me and I should let others sort it out.
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Like what lf does for the projects they host? Please say more
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I'm not sure the Fediverse examples are instances of "co-op governance"?
Lemmy is a protocol where you can make suggestions and join discussions, but ultimately, it's a project under the project governance. People then create their instances, and make their own rules with who they connect with and which they don't. This is cooperation, but not governance of the network as a whole. You can scope and draw some lines and say "this collective/collection is governed by cooperating people", but in my eyes, that's not the "coop" and "workers/users own the project" kind of thing.
It's more of a dynamic, cooperative, collaborative system of localized governance and spanning cooperation. There is some governance on protocols etc, and you can fork it and give your opinion, but you don't own it.
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