Proposal: that the Platform 6 Development Fund supports the first stage in the development of interactive online tools for co-operative development

Can I ask @Austen Cordasco roughly what percentage of licensed users of CAN tools he thinks have ever actively engaged with providing useful feedback etc?

I'd guess no more than 10%, but perhaps it's more given the niche market?

We don't keep a record of which users provide feedback but it probably is no more that 10%. The fact is that we never hear from most users again once they have been given a tool and a license to use it because at that point we loose control of it. Unless they report back to us we have no way of knowing if they use it and collect data, if they copy it to other people or if they change or corrupt it. Moving to online registration and online use only would instantly solve that problem and move that number from <10% to 100%. We would see all the data that users collect and if they wanted to modify the tool they would not be able to do so by themselves.

Thanks @Austen Cordasco , I actually guessed figure would be in the "no more than 10%" range because that is a perfectly normal pattern.

I'm struggling to see what disadvantages there would be to simply letting anyone download/ access the software, but distributed with a "by, share-alike" type license that you don't have to jump through administrative hoops to get a hold off. The licence is simply distributed with the software.

You'd very likely still only get 1-10% of people contributing/ providing feedback, but from a potentially much large pool of users (e.g. @Nathan Brown (Co-op Culture) and @Mark Simmonds (Co-op Culture & Platform 6) would've already got all the barefoot alumni using them)

Also, letting people modify the tool for their needs by themselves is a good thing to keep imho.

As I mentioned previously, a pretty standard open source business model is to sell a hosted service (which users cannot modify) but to also provide free access to a self-hostable version that people are free to modify (so long as they contribute those modifications back) to their own needs.

No issues, I think it's a great and timely idea.

Here is an updated version of the proposal. It has two sections appended, Data Protection and IP Rights, otherwise nothing has changed. There are one or two loose ends here but you should now have enough information to decided if you like it or not.

I really like the idea that this can help generate both benchmarking and trend data (although but curious about the role of apples in relation to CAN's confidentiality policy towards the end?)

v11 with "apples" corrected to "applies". Well spotted @adrian ashton.

This is looking good. Just asking some clarification questions from a P6 perspective, without judgement:

1. Is there a licence for P6 to host this in perpetuity or could hosting be revoked by CAN if it chose? It appears that as CAN is the owner of the IP it would have that power without a specific licence for usage. I know this creates problems as we'd want the tool out of date but as this seems to be a joint venture it needs to be considered.

2. I can see that CAN own the aggregated data. CAN also "aggregates that data and gleans intelligence from it" . Does P6 get anything from that data? I see that "Aggregation of data, analysis, report writing (annually)" is costed in the budget but I couldn't see who gets that report and whether it is open data or a PDF report? Maybe I missed that?

3. Succession/risk. In the event that CAN ceased tradng, could P6 (or a Member of?) pick up the role (i.e. can we make sure the thing P6 creates can exist if CAN does not?).

I think some of these issues might need to be addressed if P6 was to apply for funding to cover costs.

We are working on updating the document to address @Mark Simmonds (Co-op Culture & Platform 6) 's concerns and @Nathan Brown (Co-op Culture) 's comments. Thank you for your patience.