H!
I am super excited to mention that my friends and I are moving towards creating ‘Solidarity Economy IT Systems’
In this proposed network, both the systems development and human networking will be fused and inseparable.
Infrastructure such as MayFirst’s will be a very important part of this! We are already experimenting with an XMPP bot service connected to @MayFirst.org
The current sketch (It’s really rough) of the idea is as follows:
By way of explaining the idea, I will use this example. In Japan, there are many Vera Napoli pizza restaurants. I have never been disappointed by any establishment with this certification. Bringing the same idea over to IT, what if we create ‘Solidarity Economy IT Network’? The participants will agree to certain values:
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We will end the model if Producer and Consumer - all participants will be co-developers and co-users
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All software in the network will be free software or open source. No black box service will be allowed
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Where desired software does exist, registering ideas or specifications of required software is encouraged
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Do not engage in “Premium” software model, where the concept of Free Software or Open Source is abused to manipulate users to adopt some technology and then later screw them with unfree licenses
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Recognize the harm of information asymmetry and offer education, documentation, etc., without charging money
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This network will facilitate development, cataloging and hosting of useful “in-house” software for all sorts of software to be used by participating organizations and individuals. Users are encouraged to make software public as much as possible
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Customers ordering software will need to understand and agree that a portion of the bill will be spent for the overall Solidarity Economy IT systems development, when a user-specific component of the system will be developed
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Software made public in the network will have visibility and continuous integration that runs against all such software. It will also be reviewed by the General Assembly of the network for overlapping features with other software so that projects can be urged to merge
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Open Protocols will be preferred over complicated and opaque software implementations
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Just like I like those Vera Napoli establishments, I hope participating software vendors, etc, will be preferred by the customers in the market