Ditching GAFAM
Oli SB
Public
Seen by 190
What would it take for us to get away from the 'death star platforms' of GAFAM and grow a cooperative commons infrastructure...?
John Waters Sun 27 Jun 2021 1:46PM
I hate being forced to use Google tools.
Guy James Sun 27 Jun 2021 1:46PM
I already use the NextCloud instance at disroot.org and have my own self-hosted instance as well
Simon Grant Sun 27 Jun 2021 5:53PM
not sure this makes a lot of sense to me to ask it this way
Simon Grant Sun 27 Jun 2021 6:01PM
Hi Oli
What strikes me here is that the different options are different in kind.
Maybe you could recast the question as a multiple choice on each option
- Essential: would not consider if this wasn't there
- Highly desirable – might not sign up if not there
- preferable – would help persuade me
- less important – happy to work around that not being provided
- don't care
Cheers
Simon
Bronwen Sun 27 Jun 2021 1:41PM
| 10 - Allow you to cancel, and export your data, at any time | ||
| 11 - Be governed as a co-operative | ||
| 12 - Be easy to set up on your phone and computer | ||
| 13 - Never sell your data to anyone else | ||
| 14 - Use any profit to help grow the commons | ||
| 15 - Be powered by renewable energy | ||
| 16 - Never expose you to advertising | ||
| 17 - Be powered by open source software | ||
| 18 - Be as, or more secure than the “free” options | ||
| 19 - Be available on all devices | ||
| 20 - Have great product support | ||
| 21 - Be expandable - so you can upgrade your storage | ||
| 22 - Provide a suite comprising calendar plus office tools | ||
| 23 - Provide Single Sign On (SSO) access to file storage and other collaborative tools |
Apart from ease of use, many of my current concerns about privacy and commodification and resource would I believe be much better served than current options offer, via a collective commitment to cooperative governance where profit sharing supports the commons - thus those criteria stand higher even though I strongly care about not selling data or advertising or using renewable energy or open-source etc.
Graham Sun 27 Jun 2021 1:46PM
Critical that development does not create yet another island of collaboration. Multiple similar initiatives exist - the real job is to build the mesh that brings them together.
John Grant Sun 27 Jun 2021 1:46PM
Next gen platforms and services need to be hackable. Hackable not in the sense of being insecure and vulnerable to cybercrime, but instead lend themselves to tinkering, creative problem solving, modification and adaptation. Many of the tools listed above are available as commodity services in some form or another. Flexible protocols that enable the emergence of new forms of distributed governance and asynchronous 'topic hacking' are the missing parts needed most right now imho
Bob Haugen Mon 28 Jun 2021 11:03AM
I'm following this very interesting conversation but am not interested in a new email account as of now. We just set up our own email server at a friendly local hosting company and are transitioning into it. (Takes time, lots of connections, kids, other relatives, etc., so don't want to do it again soon...)
David Gómez @Dvdgmz · Sun 27 Jun 2021 4:17PM
We have already done that.
See CommonsCloud.coop
Office, Mail, Forms, Forums, ERP, and Meet.coop for Video Conferencing with one single LDAP account.
With free software and based on a users + workers cooperative.
There are other cooperatives doing the same: WebArchitects, Collective Tools ...
Perhaps what we should do is coordinate, and perhaps federate, these initiatives.