Another option may be Mailpile which is a modern webmail with built in PGP that can connect to any IMAP server.

I like this idea. I don't have a lot of knowledge about the FLOSS world lately, I'd welcome the opportunity to try out new apps & services.

FYI there's a interesting conversation about collaborative doc editors happening here: https://social.coop/web/statuses/1948774

Including this from @horatiotrobinson:

Jetpad is a better looking and less powerful clone of Etherpad.
Sharelatex and Hackmd are more powerful but also more specialised, less general-purpose.
Sharelatex is LaTeX document oriented. Hackmd is code-oriented

All 4 make their source code available, except Sharelatex shares only a basic version, a more powerful server is available commercially.

All 4 are nodejs-based, but Etherpad-Lite comes with an API that allows for Ruby integration

Again, can I ask that we focus on user needs? The language we're using here is pretty exclusionary for less technical members of social.coop. We're all here because we're interested in co-operativism, not discussing developer-focused technologies. There's plenty of places to discuss the pros and cons of various stacks and languages... ;)

Languages are important and non-exclusionary when it comes to analysing the costs. Costs are facts of life that programmers can't avoid. I'm doing my best to explain that costs exist and you can't make good decisions ignoring costs. That's not exclusionary, that's "inclusionary", in any case.

I'm aware that there are plenty of other places. Thanks for the suggestion.

Newbie here. Excellent idea with lots of potential!
I've been working with a few friends in the IndieWeb community to come up with http://indietech.rocks/ -- a "list of products that doesn't screw us" and which should have large overlap with what would be acceptable here.
Also, I'm the primary developer of UBOS (http://ubos.net/ ) a Linux distro specifically created for self-hosting web apps. It would be really easy to host and in particular maintain installations of apps such as Nextcloud if anybody here has any interest. Happy to help out.

Hi all! This discussion is shaping up nicely, and for that I thank you all. Before we get lost in technical details, though, how about we run a dot vote so all the members can prioiritize what's important for them? Does it make sense to you?

Yes, it's exciting to see all this shared enthusiasm about the possible solutions and how they could be tied together into the social.coop ecosystem! :) And I apologise to @dougbelshaw and any other member who felt excluded from this conversation. I'll try to write down my thoughts in layman’s terms:

We're in a pretty unique position here in that we already have a community of users who I think have gathered based on shared values (e.g. “I want my social media to be more decentralised/co-operative/user-centric/non-oligarchic/democratic/free-software-based/etc”), rather than shared needs (e.g. “I need a social media app”).

The way I see it, we're in a very different position from a startup founder (“oh! here's a [semi-]new idea, let's see if we can persuade people they need it”) or a free/libre software (FLOSS) developer (“oh! what a cool technical challenge!”). None of the services we'll be offering are unique (the needed functionality can already be found elsewhere), but what is unique is the values that will underpin them, which besides the co-operative way in which we will operate them, I think also includes how good a UX they offer, the values and dedication of their developers, if/how they can federate, how they're licensed, what technologies they're built with, and their hackability (to what extent and with how much effort we'll be able to customise/adapt them to our needs).

We have the chance here to bridge the gap between FLOSS developers and users, who often simply need an accessible and convenient way to, for example, share their availability and book appointments without Google mining their data, and without their correspondent being required to also use the same service provider.

Anyway, I was hoping to get some discussion going around points 2 (consensus on the criteria, which I hope the above will help trigger) and 3 (financial sustainability) before moving ahead with point 4 (choosing what services to start with). But if you prefer, like @michelekipiel suggested, I can start an open poll (so everyone can add options) for members to indicate what types of services they'd most want to see on social.coop (eg. Shared calendar app, Secure group chat) as a first step (leaving the choice of what software/solutions to try first for each type of service for later).

Has anyone tried Patchwork / SSB? It might be cool to explore hosting a social.coop SSB pub https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/faq/basics/pub.html

I've tried it. It's a bit rough. But yeah, it's very much aligned with what we're doing. I'm just nervous about competing with Mastodon, which itself doesn't feel like a critical mass yet.