Project Title
Open Media Network (OMN): Portable Digital Commons for a Federated Europe
Summary
The Open Media Network (#OMN) is a real grassroots initiative to build sustainable, human-centred digital infrastructure aligned with the principles of the #openweb and the #4opens. To providing easy-to-use, hosted cloud services with service portability and freedom at their core – OMN focuses on creating living social ecosystems alongside technical infrastructure.
At a time when the European Union is investing in alternatives to dominant platform monopolies (#dotcons), The OMN addresses a critical gap: ensuring that open infrastructure remains socially grounded, decentralised in governance, and accessible to grassroots communities, not only institutional actors.
This project proposes to develop practical tools, governance models, and community infrastructure to support a resilient federated ecosystem built on open standards such as #ActivityPub.
Problem Statement
The digital public sphere is currently dominated by large corporate platforms that centralise power, restrict portability, and commodify user participation.
The EU’s growing investment in digital sovereignty and open infrastructure presents a historic opportunity. However, there is a structural risk of replacing Californian platform capitalism with European platform capitalism; building technical infrastructure without sustainable social ecosystems; funding professionalised, institutional actors while excluding needed grassroots innovation.
Healthy digital ecosystems require tension and balance between institutional stability and grassroots experimentation. Without this, “commons infrastructure” risks becoming technocratic infrastructure lacking community participation – leading to failure, abandonment, and wasted investment.
Project Vision
The Open Media Network aims to develop a federated, portable digital ecosystem where: individuals and communities retain control over their data and identity; services are interoperable and portable across providers; governance is participatory and transparent; grassroots actors can build and sustain independent infrastructure.
The goal is not only technological decentralisation but social decentralisation, ensuring that federation is lived practice rather than technical abstraction.
Objectives
- Portable Hosted Services. Develop and deploy easy-to-use hosted services based on open standards that prioritise: service portability between providers; user-controlled data ownership; interoperability via ActivityPub and related protocols.
- Grassroots Governance Models. Design and test governance frameworks rooted in #4opens principles, with open data where appropriate; open process and decision-making; open standards and open participation. These models will be documented as reusable frameworks for wider adoption.
- Experimental Commons Infrastructure. Create an experimental environment where: grassroots communities can launch federated services; low-resource groups can participate without heavy technical barriers; experimentation is encouraged alongside stability.
- Historical Memory and Knowledge Transfer. One of the recurring failures of digital movements is loss of institutional memory. OMN integrates documentation and archiving into the infrastructure itself, ensuring lessons learned are preserved and accessible.
Key Activities
- Develop and maintain ActivityPub-compatible hosted services.
- Build onboarding pathways for non-technical users and grassroots organisations.
- Establish pilot communities using OMN infrastructure (e.g. activist media, local networks, cooperative publishing).
- Produce documentation and toolkits for governance and sustainability.
- Engage with EU initiatives (e.g., NGI Commons) to bridge grassroots and institutional approaches.
Innovation
Unlike many decentralisation projects that focus primarily on technical architecture, OMN emphasises social infrastructure as core technology; governance experimentation alongside code; low-barrier participation for grassroots actors. This creates a resilient ecosystem where innovation emerges from diverse communities rather than centralised development teams.
Expected Impact
Increased adoption of federated technologies across grassroots communities to reduced dependency on proprietary platforms. Strengthened European digital commons aligned with democratic values by development of replicable governance models for decentralised ecosystems. Long-term sustainability through community ownership rather than platform lock-in.
Alignment with EU Priorities
This project supports digital sovereignty and European autonomy, open standards and interoperability, sustainable digital commons, privacy and data portability and innovation through diversity and experimentation.
Sustainability Strategy
OMN operates on a low-cost, distributed model, prioritising: community stewardship; cooperative hosting paths; modular infrastructure that can be replicated and adapted. Rather than scaling toward centralisation, sustainability emerges through federation and shared maintenance.
Consortium and Community
OMN builds upon decades of grassroots media and openweb experience, including work on Indymedia and federated social networks. The project actively collaborates with FOSS communities, federated platform developers, grassroots media networks and independent infrastructure providers.
Funding Request
We seek funding to support: development and seed infrastructure hosting, coordination and community facilitation, documentation and knowledge sharing leading to governance experimentation and research.
Closing Statement
Europe has a unique opportunity to build digital commons that avoid the failures of platform capitalism. The Open Media Network provides a grassroots pathway that complements institutional initiatives, ensuring that the future European internet remains participatory, portable, and human-centred.
Projects
https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=OMN++functions we need to add a README to the project page https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/Open-Media-Network
https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/MakingHistory
https://unite.openworlds.info/indymedia/indymedia-reboot
https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens
https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/openwebgovernancebody
Need to add this for context – How can we talk about the #NGO mess as hard blocking https://hamishcampbell.com/the-ngo-mess-is-hard-blocking-2/
@info do you have ideas on where to get the funding from?
The idea is sound to me. The question is how serious the EU is about a solution.
I've tried similar things in the past with CARICOM in the past with emergency communication. They were more interested in an off the shelf solution they still don't have 20 years later…
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@knowprose@mastodon.social based on the headings, this is an application for an NLNet grant.
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Yep,https://nlnet.nl/fediversity but getting past the #NGO #geekproblem “old boys” guard has proven impossible for most native projects like this, can see a long history of submitted applications on this site, it’s a real #blocking mess we do need to compost, maybe people can use this DRAFT application as a shovel…
@info It feels I have spent a good portion of my life dealing with exactly what you're talking about.
I can't tell you how to win, but I have a long list of ways to fail. 🙃
I think, I hope… the need for data sovereignty in the EU – and everywhere else – has a breakthrough somewhere. I'm ready to cheer whoever does it.
We have needed this. We need this. But we are chained by what people want not being what they need.
*sighs* moral responsibility seems to be a topic for me today.
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@info Constructive critique:
lacks concrete examples. Portable hosted services are not specified (which services, how many, what users actually get). It’s unclear whether this is new software, packaging existing stacks, or coordination work, which makes the proposal hard to evaluate.
The proposal doesn’t clearly state what it will make. Outputs are vague, making it difficult to assess success or failure. Without explicit outputs, the scope risks feeling aspirational rather than executable.
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Yep, the links at the end need wavering in. The project to be funded is the #OMN project which is the coding root for the other linked projects. Need to add section on this.
Outputs are vage in tech terms, not acturly sure haw to fix this for narrow coding terms, it’s a social problem we are mediating using tech, so the tech is just hammers and saws…
It’s tech we know works and social structure we know works – the project is about stitching them together, so low risk, but hard to explane this.
@info No execution timeline or milestones are stated. Without year-1 boundaries, it can read like "we want to do everything" which raises scope creep and delivery concerns.
Governance is described in principles, not practice. Missing are concrete examples: one real governance experiment, a defined decision-making process, and an explicit conflict-resolution mechanism.
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NOP, as you say this to the funders will be a hard block but its actually how everything works in grassroot alt tech we are building. Need help to fudge this.
Governance is actually a second project #OGB, but we do need socially to build the seed of this in the dev of the #OMN, so it needs to be in, even as social not code.
@info There’s no visible "failure loop". (what happens when governance or infrastructure fails, and how that changes design)
Heavy reliance on grassroots participation increases execution risk unless scope is tighter and early outputs are clearly bounded.
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For dev, it’s affinely group #FOSS we have working traditions for this. The wide governance for rollout is #OGB see the link.
See affinity group #FOSS from rollout stage https://unite.openworlds.info/