Tag: deathcult

#OMN Grounding (the roots as a story)

#techchurn is the endless cycle of adopting new platforms, tools, and technologies – not because they solve any real problems, but because novelty is mistaken for progress. It burns community trust, institutional memory, and activist energy, while leaving the underlying #nastyfew power structures untouched.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=techchurn

The #OMN uses #stupidindividualism to describe the culturally manufactured habit of prioritising personal gain and self-interest over collective well-being – a behaviour normalised by forty years of #neoliberalism, where people work against their own community and ecological survival while believing they are exercising “freedom”.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=stupidindividualism

In the #OMN hashtag story, #spiky is the confrontational, direct, and uncompromising tendency within radical movements – the willingness to push back against power, name uncomfortable truths, and refuse to sand down political edges for mainstream comfort.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=spiky

#RSS is the unglamorous but democratic backbone of the #openweb – a simple, open standard that allows content to flow without the gatekeeping, algorithmic manipulation, and the data hoarding of the #dotcons.

#reboot is the necessary reset of the #openweb – stepping away from the dead ends of #techshit and #dotcons to rebuild human-centred, trust infrastructure using tools like #activitypub and the #fediverse, guided by the #4opens.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=reboot

#postmodernism is the cultural current that dissolved shared truth into competing narratives, undermines the foundations needed for collective action – leaving people fragmented, cynical, and unable to build solidarity.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=postmodern

In the #OMN hashtag story, #Oxford is a grounded example of real-world contradiction – where elitist power (#mainstreaming, #NGO, #deathcult) coexists with genuine grassroots community, making it a test bed for grassroots #openweb organising and the #4opens path.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=Oxford

In the #OMN hashtag story, #PGA (Peoples’ Global Action) represents horizontal, grassroots, anti-capitalist organising – a prefiguration of the #openweb, built on direct action and solidarity rather than #NGO bureaucracy or #mainstreaming compromise.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=PGA

In the #OMN path, #p2p means people-to-people before peer-to-peer – real human relationships and trust as the foundation that decentralised tech should serve, not replace.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=p2p

In the #OMN view, #opensource is not just a licence – it’s a political commitment to transparency, shared ownership, and community control over code, data, and process.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=opensource

The #openweb is internet infrastructure built on open standards, open-source code, and community control – where users share power – as opposed to the #dotcons, with the #closedweb which enclose and monetise the commons.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=openweb

#openprocess means decisions and governance happen visibly and participatorily – not behind closed doors, so people can see, challenge, and shape outcomes.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=openprocess

#opendata means data that is freely accessible and shareable – controlled by communities rather than locked inside corporate silos.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=opendata

In the #OMN path, #open means building on the #4opens – open code, data, standards, and process as a foundation for technology that serves people, not profit.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=open

#OMN (Open Media Network) is a grassroots project to build human-centred, trust-based digital infrastructure on the #openweb, grounded in the #4opens and focused on community control over technology.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=OMN

The #OGB (Open Governance Body) is a framework for transparent, inclusive decision-making – replacing hidden power structures with accountable, federated, messy collective governance.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=OGB

In the #OMN story, #nothingnew reminds us that cycles of co-option and failure have all happened before – and ignoring this history is how we repeat mistakes.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=nothingnew

In the #OMN story, #NGO refers to professionalised activism that defuses radical politics – replacing grassroots power with managed, funder-friendly “dissent”.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=NGO

In the #OMN path, #neoliberalism is the dominant ideology of markets over people – normalising greed and eroding solidarity into the logic of the #deathcult.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=neoliberalism

#makinghistory is the practice of communities reclaiming storytelling – building open, living archives rather than leaving history to those in power.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=makeinghistory

In #OMN usage, #mainstreaming is how radical ideas get absorbed and neutralised – keeping the language while stripping out real challenge.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=mainstreaming

In the #OMN path, #KISS (“Keep It Simple, Stupid”) is a political stance against the #geekproblem – rejecting unnecessary complexity as a form of control.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=KISS

#indymediaback is a call to rebuild grassroots, community-controlled media as an alternative to both #dotcons and hollow #NGO media structures.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=indymediaback

In the #OMN path, a hashtag is not just a label – it’s a node in a shared political vocabulary, building a map of meaning and direction.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=hashtag

#grassroots means bottom-up organising rooted in real communities – accountable to collective need, not institutions.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=grassroots

The #geekproblem is the tendency to replace human trust with technical control – embedding narrow values into systems that shape everyone’s lives.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=geekproblem

In #OMN, #FOSS is a political commitment to collective ownership of technology – not just a licensing model.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=FOSS

In #OMN language, #fluffy describes feel-good politics that avoid conflict – prioritising comfort over any real change.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=fluffy

#feudalism describes the emerging digital structure where platform owners extract value like lords from dependent users.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=feudalism

#fascism is what happens when the #deathcult drops its mask – authoritarian control to defend failing systems.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=fascism

On the #OMN path, the #fediverse is practical #openweb infrastructure – decentralised, federated, and not owned by corporations.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=fediverse

#encryptionist describes the tendency to prioritise technical security over social trust – a core expression of the #geekproblem.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=Encryptionist

#dotcons are corporate platforms built on data extraction and control, presenting themselves as neutral while enclosing the commons.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=dotcon

In the #OMN story, #DIY means reclaiming the ability to build and organise outside institutional control – grounding politics in practice.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=DIY

The #deathcult is the self-destructive logic of #neoliberalism – sacrificing social and ecological survival for short-term fear drivern greed.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=deathcult

In the #OMN story, #compost means breaking down failure and mess into fuel for new growth.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=compost

In #OMN, #closedweb is controlled, extractive digital infrastructure where users have no power.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=closed

#climatechaos describes the accelerating breakdown driven by the #deathcult, beyond manageable “climate change.”
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=climate

#classwar is the ongoing conflict between the #nastyfew and the communities they exploit – often hidden by #mainstreaming narratives.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=classwar

#capitalism is the dominant system turning everything – relationships, nature, culture – into “profit”.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=capitalism

In #OMN, #block is the reflex to shut down challenge – preventing the messy work needed for real change.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=block

#blinded is being unable or unwilling to see beyond #mainstreaming and #dotcons logic.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=blinded

#fashernista describes performative activism that prioritises appearance over substance.
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=fashionistas

#dotcons are the corporate platforms – Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, YouTube and their kin – whose business model is built on harvesting user data, manufacturing engagement, and converting human attention and community into profit, while presenting themselves as neutral public spaces.

https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=dotcon

In the #OMN hashtag story, #DIY means reclaiming the practical capacity to build, organise, and maintain tools and communities outside of corporate and state control – not as a lifestyle choice, but as a political act of grounding radical change in real skills, real trust, and real human relationships rather than outsourcing power to institutions that don’t serve you.

https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=DIY

The #deathcult is the #OMN metaphor for the self-destructive logic of forty years of #neoliberalism – an ideology so committed to short-term profit, individualism, and economic growth that it knowingly sacrifices the ecological and social foundations that human life depends on.

https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=deathcult

In the #OMN hashtag story, #compost means taking the failures, mistakes, and accumulated mess of past movements and tech projects – rather than discarding or ignoring them – and breaking them down into something that can feed new growth, treating dysfunction and #blocking dead ends as raw material for building better rather than as waste to be hidden.

https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=compost

In #OMN language, #closedweb refers to the controlled digital infrastructure – platforms like Facebook, Google, and Twitter – built on proprietary code, extractive business models, and centralised power, where people have no meaningful control over their data, their communities, or the rules that govern them.

https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=closed

The #deathcult of #neoliberalism has driven us past the point where “climate change” – with its implication of manageable, orderly shifts – remains any honest description of what we face now. What we actually have is #climatechaos: cascading, systemic breakdown of the ecosystems, weather patterns, and social structures that human civilisation depends on, accelerating faster than institutions built on forty years of market logic are capable of, or willing to, address.

https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=climate

#classwar is the ongoing and unacknowledged conflict between those who benefit from and actively reproduce the #deathcult of #neoliberalism – the #nastyfew, managing, and credentialed classes – and the communities, workers, and ecosystems they exploit. A conflict that #mainstreaming culture works to render invisible, reframing systemic dispossession as individual failure.

https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=classwar

#capitalism is the current common sense – the water we swim in – the economic system that systematically converts collective goods, human relationships, and the natural world into private profit, enforcing this logic through every institution and platform we touch, while presenting itself as the only possible reality.

https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=capitalism

In the #OMN hashtag story, #block refers to the reflexive, unconscious tendency of individuals and communities to shut down unfamiliar and challenging ideas, people, and processes – a defensive gesture rooted in #stupidindividualism and #postmodernism that prevents the trust-building and messy collective work needed for real #openweb organising.

https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=block

#blinded refers to being so captured by #mainstreaming tech orthodoxy and ideological “common sense” – particularly #neoliberalism and #dotcons culture – that you no longer see, or refuse to see, the harms those systems cause or any alternative paths that exist outside them.

https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=blinded

#fashernista describes a person in progressive or radical spaces who prioritises the appearance and aesthetic of activism – the right look, language, and social positioning – over the unglamorous, difficult work of actually building lasting structural change.

https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=fashionistas

If you want, the next step is to cluster these into a clean “chapter flow” (roots → mess → behaviours → solutions) so this stops being just a glossary and becomes a narrative tool.

These are the foundation tags – the ones everything else grows out of – the overall project: grassroots, trust-based, human-centred media infrastructure

#openweb – the political/technical terrain we’re trying to reclam

#4opens – the non-negotiable baseline (open code, data, standards, process)\openprocess – visible, participatory decision-making as default

#grassroots – bottom-up power, not institutional mediation

This cluster is about legitimacy, if it’s not grounded in these, it drifts into #NGO capture or #dotcons logic quickly. This is the “native soil” everything else either grows from or gets rejected by.

The Problem Space (what we’re composting), these tags describe the mess we’re in – the stuff we don’t ignore, but break down.

#deathcult (neoliberalism as destructive common sense)

#neoliberalism – 40 years of market logic shaping behaviour

#dotcons – corporate capture of digital space

#closedweb – controlled, extractive infrastructure

#mainstreaming – dilution and co-option of radical ideas

#NGO – managed dissent and professionalised politics

#classwar – underlying structural conflict

This is the compost heap, you don’t fix this directly, you don’t “win” against it head-on. You break it down, reuse what’s useful, and grow alternatives around and through it.

The #geekproblem Layer (tech distortions) is where things go wrong in implementation.

#geekproblem – replacing social trust with technical control

#techchurn – endless pointless rebuilding

#encryptionists – over-prioritising technical purity over social reality

#KISS – counterbalance: keep things simple and usable.

This cluster is why good ideas fail, not because the ideas are wrong, but because the tools and culture get shaped by people who don’t understand social process. This is where most #openweb projects die.

Cultural/Behavioural Patterns (how people act). The human layer – messy, unavoidable, and central.

#stupidindividualism – learned self-interest over collective good

#postmodernism – fragmentation of shared meaning

#fluffy – avoidance of conflict, feel-good paralysis

#spiky – necessary confrontation and edge

#block – reflex rejection of challenge

#blinded – inability to see outside dominant narratives

#fashernista – prioritising appearance over substance

This is the real battlefield, not tech, not policy – behaviour. If you don’t mediate this layer, everything collapses back into dysfunction, no matter how good your structure is.

The Alternative Infrastructure (what we build), are the actual tools and practices that make change possible.

#fediverse – decentralised network as a base layer

#activitypub – the protocol glue

#RSS – simple, open distribution backbone

#p2p – people-to-people first, tech second

#FOSS / #opensource – shared ownership of tools

#opendata – accessible, non-extractive information

These only work if rooted in the first cluster, otherwise they get captured and turned into another layer of the #closedweb.

Governance & Process (how we hold it together). Where most projects fail – or succeed.

#OGB – structured, open governance

#openprocess – again, because it’s that important

#DIY – practical ownership and responsibility

Without this, informal power takes over. You end up with hidden hierarchies, gatekeeping, and eventual burnout. With it, you get messy but functional collective control.

Practice & Direction (how we move).

#reboot – reset and rebuild from working patterns

#indymediaback – learning from past grassroots media

#makinghistory – documenting and owning our narratives

#nothingnew – grounding in historical cycles

This cluster stops you repeating mistakes, without it, every new wave thinks it’s inventing something new and walks straight into the same traps.

Grounding Example Layer

#Oxford – real-world test bed of contradictions

#PGA – historical example of horizontal organising

Without grounding, this all drifts into theory, these are example tags anchoring it in lived practice, where things break, and where they can actually work.

The Meta Layer (how to use this)

#compost – break down failure into growth

This is the key to the whole thing – Don’t try to “fix” the mess. Don’t try to “win” cleanly, you compost:

bad behaviour → learning

failed projects → patterns

conflict → structure

Final point (this matters) is the mistake people make is trying to tidy this into a neat theory, reduce it to messaging, turn it into a fixed ideology. That kills it, this clustering is not about control – it’s about navigation.

The mess stays messy, but now people can walk through it without getting lost.If you don’t cluster this stuff, it turns into a wall of noise. The mess is useful.

The hashtag story is messy, that’s the Point

One of the constant pressures we face in #OMN and wider #openweb spaces is the urge to “tidy things up.” People arrive, see a messy landscape of hashtags – #geekproblem, #deathcult, #dotcons – and their first instinct is to fix it, define it, standardise it, make it neat and legible. That instinct feels sensible, but is also the #geekproblem.

The hashtag ecology we’ve been growing over the last decade is designed to be messy. Not as a failure, but as a feature. These tags are not rigid definitions; they’re handles – entry points into ongoing conversations. They hold space rather than close it down. Different people can use the same tag slightly differently, argue over it, stretch it, even misuse it. That friction is not a bug. It’s the composting process.

This is where the #geekproblem shows up hard. The default technical mindset is to treat language like code: define variables, eliminate ambiguity, enforce consistency. In living social systems, that approach kills more than it fixes. You don’t get clarity – you get dead structure. A taxonomy that excludes instead of invites.

But – and this matters – pure chaos doesn’t work either. If everything is noise, only insiders can hear anything. New people can’t find a way in, and the whole thing collapses into a closed loop. The compost stops producing anything useful. So the question isn’t “mess or order?” It’s how to grow balanced living structures.

Dead structure says: this is the correct meaning, this is the right way to use it, anything else is wrong. Were living structure says: here’s how this is being used, here are examples, come play and meaning emerges through use. That’s the difference between a locked-down platforms and the #openweb. One enforces clarity from above, the other grows understanding from below.

Think of it like ecology. Compost isn’t just random waste – it’s a process. Layers, breakdown, transformation over time. Healthy systems have patterns and flows, but they’re never fixed. Forests change. Rivers shift. Nothing is static, but nothing is completely formless either.

The same applies here we don’t need to “clean up” the hashtag mess. We need to use it better by repeating patterns, so people can follow threads, tell stories that embody the tags, let contradictions surface and be worked through and resist the urge to prematurely close meaning. This is basic #KISS, but it’s a hard lesson. Keep it simple doesn’t mean make it simplistic. it means don’t over-engineer what needs to stay alive.

So yes, the mess has value. It creates space for people to build differently, to step outside the rigid frames of the #dotcons and their algorithmic control. It’s how we hold open a commons instead of collapsing back into platforms.

But remember, if everything is compost, nothing grows. If everything is fixed, nothing lives. #OMN sits in that tension, not cleaning up the mess, not drowning in it – but composting it into something people can actually use to make change.

“Digital sovereignty” is more mess we need to compost

“Digital sovereignty” is more mess we need to compost

The servent of the #nastyfew wispering in the ear of the #deathcult ists liberals

From a #OMN perspective, the mess isn’t just the wording – it’s the ideology embedded in the wording, and how that shapes behaviour over time. “Digital sovereignty” sounds harmless, progressive in a liberal policy context. But if you run this through a #KISS ideological lens, its more mess rooted in control, borders, and authority – concepts historically tied to state power. That’s why it’s so easy for the #mainstreaming crew to reuse the language without friction. When they launch something like a “Sovereign Tech fund,” they’re not inventing a new narrative, they’re tapping into one that was already compatible with their narrow worldview.

That’s the problem we need to keep composting – #mainstreaming language carries “common sense” ideological defaults. So what how can we shovel this mess – Liberals adopt a term to make ideas legible to institutions and funding. But obviously the term carries right-leaning assumptions (control, territory, hierarchy) – assumptions that quietly reshape the thinking and direction of projects. Then right-wing actors step in and feel completely at home using the same language.

At that point, it’s already too much mess, you’re not just “using” the language, you’ve internalised the worldview – “Sovereignty” is about defensive, fear-based framing (“protecting against others”) that clashes directly with #openweb values of networks over borders, trust over control and interoperability over enclosure. Our native world view is commons over ownership, so even if the intent is good, the term pulls thinking in the wrong direction. Its #KISS we need to shift focus from states → to people and communities, from control → to capability, from fear → to empowerment.

But here, #OMN pushes much harder – if you need mainstream policy language to explain what you’re doing, you’re already halfway into the #closedweb logic. The #openweb path doesn’t start from sovereignty, autonomy, or even agency. It starts from something simpler – shared standards, visible processes and trust networks (#4opens). That’s why the #OMN path matters, the more abstract the language gets, the easier it is to smuggle in ideology without noticing.

So what do we do with this mess? Yes, “digital sovereignty” is a dead-end term for open, trust-based politics. Yes, alternatives like “autonomy” are an improvement, but the real work is stepping outside that whole framing, instead of arguing over better words, focus on building systems that demonstrate openness, using language grounded in practice, not policy fashion.

Bluntly, this is mess we need to compost, it’s the normal mess of “blinded” liberals laying the groundwork – unintentionally – by adopting language that was never native to the #openweb. That’s the messy pattern – #OMN keeps pointing at, if you build with messy concepts, you will get messy outcomes. So yes – compost it. And next time, start from cleaner soil please.

The recurring theme is digital & social decay – A “trust collapse” resulting from bad faith and disempowerment online. The Goal is #KISS moving beyond individualistic #stupidindividualism, ” common sense to create a balanced collective, community-controlled alternatives.

The #OMN hashtag story is a shovel to “compost mess” to turn toxic digital decay into valuable, new growth rather than pretending the stinking mess doesn’t exist, the second step is acknowledging that disagreements are not to be avoided but used constructively to build stronger, more empathetic, and more transparent communities.

Do you notice a recurring theme and issue here? Read and use the hashtag story to help compost this.

The hashtag story is messy, that’s the Point

People, Process, and the Myth of Difficulty

What we are doing at #Oxfordboaters is simple, that’s the uncomfortable truth for people who see this as to complex. The core idea – people coming together around shared concerns, communicating openly, and acting collectively – is about as old as human society. There’s nothing technically complex about it, nothing conceptually obscure. Yet in practice, it feels almost impossible.

So where does this friction come from? It’s not the goal, it’s not even the surface the process, most of the time, it’s the people – and, more importantly, the tools and cultures we bring with us. The path we need is simplicity underneath – #Oxfordboaters is doing three things:

  • Sharing information about what’s happening
  • Building a shared understanding of that information
  • Acting together based on that understanding

That’s it, strip away the noise, and that’s the whole system. It’s classic #actavisam: publish, discuss, act. You don’t need layers of management theory or complex governance frameworks to make that work. You need #KISS trust, visibility, and participation.

But we rarely get to operate at this level of clarity, the difficulty creeps in as people bring baggage – Everyone arrives with habits shaped by the #mainstreaming worshipping of the #deathcult that leads to the imposing of unthinking expectation of hierarchy (“who’s in charge?”) and fear of speaking openly (“will this be used against me?”) leading to the desire for control (“we need to manage the message”) this “common sense” mess leads to focus on avoidance of conflict (“let’s keep it positive and not rock the boat”).

    These aren’t individual personal failings, they’re social learned behaviours, that distort simple processes into complicated ones. This mess is amplified by a second “common sense” problem, that the tools we use shape behaviour, the #dotcons platforms we “use” default push us in particular mess making directions:

      • Chat tools fragment conversations into noise
      • Social media rewards reaction over reflection

      Instead of supporting collective clarity, these default tools amplify confusion, they make it harder to see what’s actually going on, and thus easier for misunderstandings to spiral. One tool we have is process but is it a tool or weapon? Process can either help people work together, or it can be used to block this work. Some processes are designed to:

      • Encourage participation
      • Make decisions visible
      • Build shared ownership

      Others – often unintentionally – end up:

      • Slowing everything down
      • Creating gatekeepers
      • Hiding power behind “procedure”

      You can see this easily when something urgent comes up – healthy process helps people respond quickly and collectively, were a broken one turns into endless discussion, deferral, and inaction. Same situation, same people – different outcome depending on the process.

      At #Oxfordboaters, the work itself is straightforward: There’s an issue affecting the river community – People gather information about it – That information is shared – A response is organised. But what makes it hard? People are different – Disagreements about tone (fluffy vs spiky), uncertainty about who should act and fragmented communication across platforms leading to #blocking of action.

      None of these are about the actual goal, they’re all about how people relate to each other and the structures they’re working within. The illusion of complexity is one of the biggest traps – mistaking this friction for complexity. When something feels hard, we assume the solution is to add more structure, more meetings, more rules, more #dotcons tools. But this “common sense” push to often adds another layer of blockage, it treats the symptoms, not the cause.

      The reality is harsher the system is simple, but we as a community are messy. So how can we work better in this mess? The answer isn’t to eliminate the mess – that’s impossible. It’s to design processes that work with it instead of work against it. That means accepting disagreement as normal, making conflict visible rather than suppressing it. Keeping structures lightweight and adaptable, in the end it’s about prioritising clarity over control. In #OMN terms, this is where the #4opens come in:

      Open data → everyone can see what’s happening

      Open process → decisions aren’t hidden

      Open source → tools can be adapted

      Open standards → systems interconnect

      These don’t remove human complexity, but they can mediate it from becoming opaque and blocking. So what do we mean by blocking vs enabling. You can tell the health of a project by a simple test – Does the process help people act, or stop them from acting? If people feel empowered to contribute → the process is working. Hesitant, confused, or sidelined → the process is blocking.

      At #Oxfordboaters, like many grassroots efforts, both dynamics exist at the same time. That’s normal. The work is to shift the balance toward enabling. So the hard truth is this the challenge isn’t building the perfect system, it’s growing the relationships that allow the #4opens path to function. That’s slower, messier, and far less comfortable than designing a neat process diagram, but it’s the only thing that actually works.

      Keep it simple (#KISS) – when things get messy, the instinct is to add complexity. The better move is usually the opposite by striping things back to focus on what actually needs to happen. Make it easier for people to take part, because underneath all the noise, the work is still simple. People, talking to each other, deciding to act. Everything else is either helping that – or getting in the way.

      We keep making mess, then wondering why everything smells

      A big part of this is the language we use, when we unthinkingly spread #mainstreaming terms, we push the worldview that comes with them, and that worldview is usually rooted in fear, control, and market logic.

      Take “digital sovereignty.” it sounds solid, sensible, progressive. But, it’s a made-up term trying to frame the internet in nation-state and market terms – ownership, borders, competition. It’s a liberal answer to a fear-based economy: “how do we control this thing so it doesn’t threaten us?” That framing is the problem, because the #openweb was never built on control. It was built on trust, shared standards, and open process – the #4opens:

      • open data
      • open source
      • open standards
      • open process

      That’s the native soil, when we blindly shift to language like “sovereignty,” we drag in assumptions that don’t belong. We start thinking in terms of ownership instead of participation, control instead of collaboration. And that creates mess – conceptual, political, and technical Then we spend years trying to “fix” that mess, composting it.

      But it’s much better if we don’t make that mess in the first place #KISS, by staying grounded in #openweb values. We don’t need to retrofit control structures onto something that was designed to work without them. We don’t need layers of governance theatre to simulate trust, we can build trust directly through open processes.

      This is why clarity, clear language matters, if we keep pushing borrowed language from the #deathcult, we’ll keep rebuilding its logic, no matter how good our intentions are. So yes, we need to talk more clearly about stopping importing broken concepts, stop framing open systems in closed terms and stop making more mess we then have to compost.

      Start from the roots, grow from there, please.

      The #dotcons, #mainstreaming, and Build to Walk Away

      Three years ago I was trying to explain something simple in language liberals might actually hear. They talk about “platform capitalism.” Fine. But I’ve been calling it the #dotcons for 20 years – because that’s what it is – a con.

      The last 30 years of tech hasn’t just drifted into this mess. It’s been shaped, step by step, enclosure by enclosure, into systems designed to extract value from us. What we now call the internet is, in large part, a machine built to manipulate, capture, and profit.

      The old #openweb got fenced in, and most people, especially polite liberal society, went along with it. So we need to talk about the return and the problem. Now we have a shift of the #mainstreaming is flowing back toward the #openweb, that should be a good thing. But there is a problem: people don’t leave the #dotcons behind when they move, they bring the culture with them.

      What we’re seeing is a flood of the same patterns – extractive behaviour, ego performance, status games. Not from one “side,” but from everywhere. The habits built inside the #dotcons don’t magically disappear just because the platform changes.

      So the real issue isn’t technical, it’s cultural. If we don’t actively mediate this influx, we won’t rebuild the #openweb – we’ll just recreate the same broken systems in slightly different code.

      So why do I talk so much about compost, and mess not being the problem. Mess is necessary, but only if it composts – if it breaks down into something fertile. Right now, we’re mostly just piling it higher.

      This is where projects like #indymediaback and #OGB matter. They’re not perfect, but they are native to the #openweb path: grounded in trust, process, and the #4opens rather than control, branding, and capture.

      The question isn’t whether #mainstreaming is good or bad. The question is: how do we hold the cultural line so that what grows is something genuinely different? Because if we don’t, the #dotcons don’t need to defeat us. We’ll blindly rebuild them ourselves.

      So why do I argue we can’t just leave the #dotcons? This is where people get it wrong, every time the #dotcons tighten control – censoring, tweaking algorithms, shifting rules – the reaction is the same: leave, build the #openweb.

      Yes, build the #openweb, but the idea that we should stop organizing inside the #dotcons right now? That’s a trap, because billions of people are still there. The conversations, the communities, the movements, they haven’t magically migrated. Walking away doesn’t free those people, it abandons them, leaving the space to be shaped entirely by the #deathcult and the forces already in control.

      This is #nothingnew. The #dotcons are #closedweb infrastructure. They serve power because they were built to serve power. Expecting anything else is misunderstanding the system. The real question has never been: are these platforms good? It’s: what do we do, given that this is where people are?

      The #geekproblem and the exodus fantasy, is a persistent fantasy – a classic #geekproblem – that if we just build better tools, people will come. They won’t, not on their own. A clean exodus to the #fediverse or any #openweb space doesn’t happen because we post about it. Movement-building has never worked like that, people move through relationships, trust, and shared struggle – not technical superiority.

      So if you abandon the spaces where people already are, you cut those pathways. The #OMN approach has always been simple to use the #dotcons as a bridge, not a home, seed organizing where people already are while focusing energy on building the #openweb in parallel to clearly keep your foundations in the #4opens.

      This isn’t about purity, it’s about effectiveness, don’t fall into #stupidindividualism, the idea that personal withdrawal is more important than collective reach. This is about infrastructure and grounding, if the #dotcons can switch you off at any moment, they cannot be your foundation.

      That’s why we need:

      • indymediaback as publishing roots
      • activitypub and the #fediverse as distributed infrastructure
      • OMN as a bridge between cultures and spaces

      This is the practical expression of the #4opens: not just open code, but open process and open trust. Don’t build your house on someone else’s land, but don’t stop talking to the people still living there either. Stay in the fight, when the #dotcons clamp down, it’s not a surprise, it’s a signal of what they are, and what they’ve always been.

      The answer isn’t to run away, it’s to root ourselves somewhere that can’t be shut down, while continuing to show up where the people are.

      Build the #openweb, stay in the fight, keep it simple #KISS

      Gates vs Bridges: the obscure politics of the #geekproblem

      In the #geekproblem mindset, crossing a protocol flow is a gateway were in #openweb terms, it’s a bridge. That difference is not technical – it’s social – the difference between CONTROL and TRUST. A gate is something you lock, permission, authentication, enforcement were a bridge is something you cross, connection, flow, relationship. In the physical world, we don’t put gates on bridges as a default, but in software, we keep rebuilding them, and then wondering why things fragment.

      • RSS is a bridge.
      • Closed APIs are gates.

      This should be obvious, but it keeps getting lost inside coding culture.

      This isn’t just a #mainstreaming problem, if this critique only applied to Big Tech (#dotcons), it would be easy, but it doesn’t. From 30 years of building in alt-tech spaces – hundreds of projects, no bosses, no corporate control – the same pattern keeps reappearing. Control creeps in, what’s striking is that this cuts across both mainstreaming “professional” engineering culture and radical, horizontal, “alternative” tech spaces. That’s why it’s an overarching #geekproblem, the shared cultural bias toward CONTROL in both code and community design.

      The deeper issue is social blindness, at the root of this is something uncomfortable – A lack of joined-up social thinking – when a relatively small technical minority designs systems based on limited social experience, abstract models of human behaviour and little grounding in historical or grassroots movements.

      When these systems scale globally, the result is tools fail to support humane, collective use, and undermine trust instead of building it, they reproduce the same power dynamics they claim to escape. This feeds the wider #dotcons worldview – even when the intent is “alternative”. It’s not just “the spirit of the age” it’s a worldview of a narrow culture that has become infrastructural. We’re all, to some extent, still operating inside this #deathcult logic, even when we think we’re critiquing it.

      So a good first step is looking at who is funding the problem, this is where foundations and FOSS funding bodies need to look closely. A lot of funding unintentionally reinforces gate-based architectures, complexity that centralises control and abstract innovation over lived social practice. We keep funding new gates, then asking why the #openweb doesn’t grow. It #KISS that if people cannot mentally model a system, they cannot govern it, if they cannot govern it, power centralises every time.

      A different path is bridges and flows. Projects like #OMN and #indymediaback take this different approach of start with flows, not platforms, building bridges, not gateways. The focus is on keeping systems simple enough to understand (#KISS) to grow trust as social and visible, not hidden in code. Using the #4opens as grounding, not branding, we understand none of this is new, that’s the value of #nothingnew. As I keep pointing out it’s how RSS worked, early Indymedia worked and large parts of the existing Fediverse still work (when not over-engineered).

      On #blocking and conflict – Yes, it’s sometimes necessary, but often it’s a symptom of deeper failure of rigid, internalised worldviews, lack of shared mediation tools and systems designed for exclusion rather than negotiation. It’s easy to block, it’s much harder to build bridges, so the real question is how do we design systems that reduce pointless conflict without exhausting the people inside them? Food for thought (and compost).

      We’re all carrying some of this mess, it’s fine – it’s compost. But if we don’t consciously shift from gates to bridges, we’ll keep rebuilding the same broken systems, just with nicer branding. As bridges scale trust – Gates scale control, to mediate this mess, the hard question we need to ask the #mainstreaming is which one are they funding?

      #openweb #4opens #OMN

      The value of the #Fediverse comes from its cultural roots in the #openweb

      YOU can’t do social change or challenge without annoying people If you think you can, you’re probably play-acting – and part of the problem – does that annoy you? If it does… maybe sit with that. 🙂 Food for thought, #4opens is a shovel for composting.

      The value of the #Fediverse comes from its cultural roots in the #openweb. The tech – like ActivityPub – grew out of that culture. It wasn’t built by #mainstreaming interests.

      Now money is flowing in, and with it comes risk of dilution of culture, capture of direction and loss of the commons. As more #mainstreaming users return to the #openweb, we need better tools and processes to handle the mess this brings.

      And yes – sometimes the problem is us – when people inside our own spaces act badly, we need ways to respond, mediate, and move forward – without falling into cycles of negativity. That’s part of the work, part of #OMN.

      The #Fediverse is native to #openweb thinking, it works. It will likely destroy billions of dollars of #CONTROL, and create billions in actual human value in return. But like the early #openweb, it can also be captured and pulled back into the same old control systems, this is the balance.

      So the question is, are you on the side of CONTROL or TRUST?

      Our obsession with control is doing real damage, it’s fed by dead-end ideology (#postmodernism), and amplified by #fashernistas pushing surface over substance.
      Yes – it’s messy. Yes – it’s complex, but ignoring that just makes it worse.

      #stupidindividualism and the #deathcult are building an inhuman world, we can do better – but only if we’re willing to do the uncomfortable work.

      Individual fears

      What We Can Learn from Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders

      In #mainstreaming and alt political cultures there’s a constant call in messy times for “strong leaders” to cut through the chaos, but this is the wrong path. What Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders actually show is something more uncomfortable and more useful that real change doesn’t come from strong individuals – it comes from movements we don’t fully control. They were signals, not saviours.

      Both figures emerged on the left because something deeper was already shifting with widespread discontent, a break from #mainstreaming politics and a hunger for alternatives to 40 years of #deathcult worshipping. They didn’t create these conditions – they channelled them. “Weakness” is often misnamed, Corbyn in particular was constantly framed as weak, but what was actually happening? When people treat them as failed “leaders,” they miss the point, at best they were interfaces to movements, rather than top-down commanders. They:

      • Hold together fragile, diverse coalition
      • Refusal to impose top-down control
      • Emphasis on process, participation, and consensus

      In a stable system, this might look slow, in a fragile system, it’s often the only thing preventing collapse. In the open vs closed battle, it’s not as simple as it looks – especially in the mess we’re in.

      CLOSED → conservative / fear / control
      OPEN → progressive / hope / trust

      We need to keep looking at the underlying path when deciding which way to push the balance.

      Where the demand for “strength” usually means more control, less democracy. That path tends to deepen the mess, not fix it, as personality politics is a dead end. When media and institutions focus on personalities where movements are about issues and structures. This mismatch is fatal if your politics depends on a person you are attacked through that person – we all collapse when they falter. You never build lasting power, it is the trap both campaigns fell into, despite trying to avoid it.

      Movements without structure (hard or soft) stall, is the harder truth – Horizontal energy alone isn’t enough – Electoral politics alone isn’t enough. Both Corbyn and Sanders mobilised huge grassroots energy, but institutions resisted, internal fragmentation grew – the energy wasn’t fully translated into durable paths, and they fell through the gap.

      From a #OMN perspective, the takeaway is clear – Don’t look for better leaders – Don’t rely on existing institutions – Build commons-based infrastructure that movements can stand on. This means: Media we control (#indymedia paths), Governance we participate in (#OGB) and tech that reflects trust, not control (#openweb, #Fediverse)

      So in messy times, don’t reach for “Strong Leaders” as this comes from fear, frustration and the desire for simple solutions, history – from left and right – shows where that road leads. In poisoned times, the work is slower, to build trust, to stay grounded in shared issues.

      Corbyn and Sanders didn’t fail because they were too weak, they struggled because we don’t yet have the social, technical, and institutional commons needed to carry the kind of change they pointed toward. That’s the work, and it’s not about finding the right leader –
      it’s about becoming the movement that doesn’t need one.

      #OMN

      A Note on “Security” for the #FOSS Crew

      We need to have a clearer, more grounded conversation about “security” and what it actually means in the context of the #openweb. There is a long history of thinking in #FOSS spaces that security is something we can solve purely technically: better encryption, better protocols, better architectures. But in everyday life and practice, people need to work from a much simpler starting point – We do not trust client–server security. We only meaningfully trust what can be verified through the #4opens. And even with #p2p, we keep our trust closed limited.

      Why? Because the underlying systems people actually use are insecure by design: old phones, opaque operating systems, proprietary blobs built and controlled by #dotcons. You can build the most secure system in the world, but if the people you are communicating with are using compromised devices, then your security collapses to their level.

      That’s the bit people who fixate on closed don’t like to face. So a #KISS approach helps cut through the illusion – At normal use, there is very little real security. At paranoid levels, security breaks down socially, because you still need to interact with people operating at the normal level. That doesn’t mean security doesn’t matter. It means we need to stop pretending it technically works in isolation from social reality.

      Why closed paths, spaces and projects fail socially, is a harder point. Closed systems are often justified in the name of security, privacy, or control, but socially, they create a very different dynamic in that they remove visibility. And without visibility, you cannot form shared judgment, without shared judgment, you cannot have social truth. In closed environments, bad actors – call them “monsters” if you like – can manipulate, divide, coordinate in the dark to avoid accountability, because there is no wider context to test what is happening.

      In open systems, the same actors exist, but they are much easier to see, challenge, and trip up, because conversations are visible, processes are transparent and history is accessible. Closed breeds monsters, open pushes them out of the light and into the shadows. This is why, for the #openweb, “closed” should be deliberately limited and clearly bounded, not expanded as a default.

      There is a very real social problem on this with #Encryptionism, as a social project as it is where meany parts of the #FOSS world go wrong. There is a strong tendency – what we call the #encryptionists – to treat encryption as a kind of universal solution, were in reality, this to often becomes: a focus on abstract technical purity, a dismissal of messy social reality to retreat into systems that don’t scale socially. And too often, aligns – ironically – with the same #deathcult logic it claims to resist: control, fear, and abstraction over lived practice. Encryption is a tool, not a culture.

      This brings up the #Geekproblem – put simply – The people building the tools often cannot see the social problems those tools create. Even when those problems are pointed out repeatedly, over years, with real-world examples, the response is often negative and #blocking – to retreat into technical framing, to rephrase the issue in jargon, to build another “better” tool that misses the point.

      A useful way to explain this to the #FOSS crew is yes, jargon can be messy, but this is not just about language. The deeper issue is cultural blindness, lets look at a concrete example that might help in bridging: #Indymedia was a ten-year working global experiment in open publishing and #4opens practice. And, yes, it ran into exactly these tensions, in the UK, the project fractured along three lines:

      • #Encryptionists – blocking aggregation due to abstract security concerns
      • #Fashernistas – pushing shiny but incompatible “better” solutions
      • #Openweb practitioners – arguing for simple, interoperable approaches (like #RSS)

      Instead of adopting existing standards like RSS, parts of the project built new, incompatible formats, “better” on paper, but useless in practice. The result? Fragmentation, internal conflict, loss of interoperability, eventual collapse. All three sides lost. This pattern should feel familiar, you can still see it today in parts of the Fediverse.

      The practical path forward, starts with taking this history seriously, then a few things become clear, that closed should be minimal and purposeful, not the default. Open processes (#4opens) are the only scalable form of trust, interoperability beats cleverness, social reality matters more than technical purity. And most importantly we need to design for the world as it is, not the world we only wish existed.

      One Foot In, One Foot Out. Right now, most people are still inside the #dotcons. So the path forward isn’t purity, it’s transition. The approach we are taking with #OMN, it is simple, install and configure usable #openweb tools, make them accessible, let people use them alongside existing platforms to support a gradual #walkaway culture. One foot in. One foot out. If enough people take that step, the balance shifts.

      But to take this step we need to compost the closed, we don’t need to destroy everything that exists, we need to compost it. Take what works, turn over what doesn’t, to grow something better from the remains. That means being honest about the limits of security, about the dangers of closed systems and about the cultural blind spots in #FOSS. If we can do that, we have a chance to build an #openweb that actually works.

      If we can’t, we will keep repeating the same failures – just with better code.

      The Tech “Empiricism” Problem

      A recent essay on deadSimpleTech makes a point the #openweb community should hear: the biggest problem in technology is not only the tools, it’s also the culture behind them. For years the tech world has operated under a form of narrow “tech empiricism”: the belief that if something produces results quickly, then it must be working well. In this mindset, success is measured by novelty, speed of production, and the ability to create something new. The heroes of this culture are disruptors and iconoclasts who ship fast and build shiny things that capture #fashionista attention.

      But this basic #geekproblem ignores a simple #KISS truth: technology only has meaning inside the culture that builds and maintains it. And this is where the real problem begins. In the dominant tech worldview, the culture rewards novelty, disruption, rapid production, and personal prestige. Inside this environment of #deathcult worship, producing new code becomes a way to gain status among peers. Shipping quickly matters more than maintaining systems or improving what already exists.

      But there is another culture that exists alongside this, the culture of engineering and maintenance. In fields like civil engineering or infrastructure design, the heroes are not disruptors. They are the people who quietly maintain systems, improve reliability, and prevent failures. The emphasis is on responsibility, long-term stability, and care for systems people depend on. This difference in culture matters enormously. Because what counts as something working “well” depends entirely on what the culture values.

      From the perspective of blinded tech culture, a tool that generates lots of new code and features appears incredibly successful. But from the perspective of infrastructure and engineering culture, that same tool may look deeply flawed – even dangerous. Real systems require debugging, maintenance, testing, and institutional memory. Most importantly, they require people who accept responsibility when things fail.

      In mature systems, the first prototype is only the beginning. The real work comes later: years of maintenance, improvement, and adaptation. Yet this long-term work is largely invisible in tech culture and funding systems, which celebrate the person who creates something new but rarely honour the people who keep it running. This cultural blindness leads to fragile systems and recurring cycles of hype and #techshit to compost.

      The same problem is in the #OpenWeb. Unfortunately, this problem is not limited to Silicon Valley, it also appears inside the #openweb, #NGO, and #FOSS ecosystems. Many conversations focus almost entirely on: code, protocols, scaling, features and UX. All of these are important, but without balance they are not enough to sustain a functioning ecosystem.

      Without the native social culture that originally shaped the open web, open technology slowly drifts toward the dominant norms of the wider #dotcons tech industry of status competition, short-term innovation cycles, neglect of maintenance and eventual capture by institutions or corporations. This is one reason so many promising #openweb projects stagnate or collapse.

      The technology works, but the social infrastructure fails. It’s in part why the #OMN exists as a project. This is the gap we need to address, not primarily as technical project. Most of the protocols and software already exist. What is missing is the social infrastructure that allows them to function as a public commons. Instead of focusing only on building new non-native platforms, the #OMN focuses on growing the wider ecosystem around what all ready works.

      This means recognising that the real value of a network comes from the people who maintain it, moderate it and build communities around it – not just from the code itself.

      From tech “empiricism” to social infrastructure, if we want the #openweb reboot to succeed, we need to move beyond the narrow mindset that treats technology as purely technical. The lesson from history is simple, code builds systems, culture makes them work. Without a healthy culture, even the best open technologies will eventually fail or be captured by more powerful institutions.

      A deeper mess is “The End of Theory”, tech empiricism problem is really the #geekproblem amplified by ideas like this, the claim that massive data sets make traditional scientific thinking unnecessary. This idea, popularised by Chris Anderson, suggests that with enough data we no longer need theories, models, or human understanding. But this is a dangerously narrow view as large data models are epistemologically weaker than scientific theories. They can recognise patterns, but they do not understand them.

      This becomes even more problematic in the age of opaque and unexplainable #AI systems. Deep learning models can be efficient at pattern recognition, but they lack human comprehension and produce opaque but believable outputs. At the same time, the increasing “datafication” of society means that communication and public life on the #dotcons platforms are moderated by these same algorithms. These systems prioritise engagement and behavioural prediction over needed values like: accuracy, truth, democratic deliberation. The result is a social environment driven by metrics rather than meaning.

      It is past time to compost the mess as it is becoming easier and easier to see. But seeing the problem is only the first step. The next step is to compost it – to take the failures of the current system and use them as nutrients for something better. The future of the #openweb will not be decided by better code alone. It will be decided by whether we build the social infrastructure to support it. That is the work the #OMN is trying to grow.

      If this work matters to you, help support it.

      A Note to #FOSS Maintainers and Funders: The Problem With #Mainstreaming

      There is a point that often gets misunderstood in conversations about the future of the #openweb and #FOSS that #mainstreaming itself is not inherently good or bad. What matters is who is influencing whom. We can think of it in two very different directions.

      • Good #mainstreaming is when the values of the #openweb move outward into the wider world: Transparency, decentralization, cooperation, shared infrastructure and community governance. In this case, mainstream society learns from the cultures that grew around free software and open networks. But there is another direction.
      • Bad #mainstreaming happens when the mainstream flows inward and reshapes the open ecosystem in its own image. The values that arrive tend to look like this: corporate control, surveillance capitalism, hierarchical governance, branding over substance leading to growth and extraction over community. In this case, the #openweb is not influencing the mainstream, the mainstream is absorbing and reshaping the openweb. And historically, that absorption rarely ends well.

      This second bad option of co-option Is the default, in the current context, mainstreaming tends to dilute radical alternatives into market-friendly compromises. This is not accidental, the system many of us are working inside – what I often call the #deathcult of neoliberalism – does not absorb things in good faith, it absorbs them in order to neutralize them.

      We have seen this pattern repeatedly when open communities become venture-backed platforms, cooperative tools become monetized services, grassroots networks become brands. What begins as a commons to often ends as a product. For people building or funding #FOSS infrastructure, this pattern should be familiar.

      Because of this messy dynamic, we need active mediation when interacting with mainstream institutions. Not blanket rejection, but not naïve acceptance either. The question is always contextual: Is the mainstream being influenced by open values or are open communities being reshaped to fit mainstream power structures? Right now, the balance is heavily tilted toward the latter, which means the priority is not endless integration. The priority is protecting and strengthening the roots of the #openweb.

      Thinking about this kinda mess making helps to highlight the problem of the #NGO Path, where the NGO layer becomes problematic. The people involved are sometimes well-meaning, many think they are genuinely trying to help. But the institutional incentives they operate under reshape projects in subtle but powerful ways.

      Our #FOSS funding structures push toward professionalization, opaque centralized governance, brand management, risk avoidance that is compatibility with existing power structures. Over time, this acts like a kind of social poison inside grassroots ecosystems. That might sound harsh, but it is simply a reality of social dynamics and institutional gravity. People working within those systems carry those assumptions with them, often without realizing it.

      For the health of the ecosystem, we need to mediate our intake of that poison. This is not about demonizing individuals, it is about recognizing structural effects. There is no contradiction in saying both things at once: They may be good people – Their institutional logic still damages grassroots culture. So a useful rule of thumb is simple is don’t drink too deeply from the #mainstreaming.

      Visibility Matters – Another issue for #FOSS projects is much more practical – Grassroots infrastructure often stays invisible. If people don’t know a project exists, they cannot adopt it. And when that happens, the public will naturally drift toward the next “ethical” platform marketed by the very companies reproducing the #dotcons model. The difference is that those companies have huge PR budgets. If open projects do not communicate what they are building and why it matters, the narrative will be written elsewhere and it will not favour the commons.

      The real value of the #OpenWeb at its simplest, the #openweb path does something very straightforward in that it empowers horizontal, DIY culture and dis-empowers vertical, closed systems. That shift alone has enormous value.

      • It changes who gets to publish.
      • It changes who controls infrastructure.
      • It changes who participates in shaping the network.

      Yet one of the strangest things in the current moment is how many people actively reject or ignore this possibility. Part of that blindness comes from habit, part from career incentives, part from the cultural gravity of the mainstream. But the result is the same: the tools that could strengthen public digital space are sidelined in favour of systems designed primarily for profit.

      So what can maintainers and funders do? If you maintain or fund #FOSS infrastructure, there are a few practical steps that can help strengthen the ecosystem:

      1. Fund the commons, not just products. Support infrastructure that serves communities, even if it does not generate revenue.
      2. Protect open governance. Funding models should strengthen community decision-making rather than centralizing power.
      3. Support grassroots visibility. Help projects communicate what they are building and why it matters.
      4. Resist quite capture. Watch for subtle shifts where open projects become shaped by market logic or branding priorities.
      5. Invest in horizontal ecosystems. The long-term health of the web depends on many small interconnected projects, not a few dominant platforms.

      The choice in front of us is the future of the #openweb will not be decided by technology alone. It will be decided by culture, governance, and resource flows. If the current trend continues, open infrastructure will increasingly be absorbed into corporate platforms, #NGO programs, and venture ecosystems.

      But there is another path, slower one, messier, more grassroots one. One that keeps the web as a commons rather than a marketplace. Whether that path survives depends heavily on the choices made by #FOSS maintainers and the people who fund the work.