There is an unspoken negative effect of traditional foundation funding agendas on grassroots #openweb projects. These grassroots projects have different priorities and goals than traditional organizations, and the formal processes used by existing #NGO projects, such as decidim.org and loomio.org, may not be well-suited for them.
#The#OMN team is on a mission to address this by focusing on empowering communities through decentralized decision-making processes. Their experience and track record make them well-suited to carry out this mission.
If successful, the #OGB project can have a significant impact on the way communities make decisions in the future. By empowering grassroots movements and organizations, it helps to ensure that their voices are heard and that their needs are addressed.
Requesting funding for the Open Governance Body (#OGB) project. Which is being developed by the Open Media Network (#OMN). The OMN is a collective that builds and hosts #4opens standards-based socio-political software. Our mission is to provide communities with the tools they need to organize, communicate, and make decisions.
The #OGB project is a grassroots initiative that seeks to empower communities by giving them a stronger voice in decision-making. We believe that traditional social coding projects that are based on a top-down approach to power are not effective. Our approach is different. We are developing a bottom-up solution that is based on the principles of sharing power and collective decision-making.
Our team has years of experience in grassroots social tech projects. We have been directly involved with #UnderCurrents, #indymedia, #VisionOnTV, #LondonBoating, among others, and have a firm grasp of what does and does not work within organizing both social and technological communities. We have also worked on UN and World Bank projects in West Africa and have decided to manage them through community/scrum, rather than formal methods.
We are seeking funding in the amount of $50,000. This funding will be used to pay four people to work on the project at a fixed rate of ten thousand euros for 9-12 months of work. The bulk of the work will be programming and implementation details. The remaining ten thousand will be used for servers, expenses, outreach work, extensive testing, and basic project upkeep.
A Look at Existing Projects
It is important to note that foundation funding agendas can have a negative effect on the agendas of #openweb projects. A brief look at some existing projects highlights this issue. For example, decidim.org, which is an NGO process similar to loomio.org, Formal processes can be a bad tool for “herding cats” in social challenge or activist groups. And has been imposed numerous times in activism but has always failed.
After reviewing loomio.org, it is clear that the same ideas and workflows were pushed onto #climatecamp, #indymedia, and #occupy. In the first two cases, it ossified the projects, and in the last case, it was a mess. The #processgeeks behind these projects have not changed, and their projects are a bad fit for life and a terrible fit for the fediverse and activism. However, they may work for some NGOs and more formal cooperative organizing.
It is important to note the differences between formal and informal governance structures. Both use “consensus,” but the Open Governance Body is more like a do-ocracy than a formal governance structure.
The #hashtags embody a story and world-view that are rooted in a progressive and critical perspective on technology and society. They highlight the negative impact of neoliberalism (#deathcult) and consumer capitalism (#fashionista) on society, and promote the original ideals of the World Wide Web and internet culture (#openweb). The #closedweb hashtag critiques the for-profit internet and its social consequences, while the #4opens promote the principles of transparency, collaboration, and sharing in open-source development.
The #geekproblem hashtag draws attention to the cultural movement of geeks, who can become blinded by their own technical knowledge and fail to consider the broader social implications of their work (#techshit). The #encryptionists hashtag critiques the dominant belief among some geeks that all solutions need more encryption, which can lead to a desire for total control and artificial scarcity.
Overall, these hashtags are interlocking to tell a wide-ranging story and world-view that advocates for a more humane, collaborative, and transparent path in technology and society. The #nothingnew hashtag raises whether new technological projects are needed, or whether we should focus on improving existing ones. The #techchurn hashtag refers to the technological outcome of the #geekproblem, which can lead to a constant cycle of new projects that do not address underlying social issues. Finally, the #OMN and #indymediaback hashtags promote the idea of an open media network and the rebooting of the altmedia project that was once the size of traditional media on the #openweb. The #OGB hashtag represents the need for open governance and the power of the community to make decisions collectively.
It’s simple #KISS, so please try not to react like a prat about this, thanks.
One of the recurring problems in alternative organising is that people often destroy the things they love – not out of hatred, but out of possession. Projects become extensions of identity, territory, career, or personal ideology rather than living commons that others can build on. This is one of the hidden traps of the #fashionista path.
It’s worth looking at a few examples to critique how good intentions repeatedly fall short because of a lack of connectivity, grounded process, and social maturity.
The project at anagora.org/distributed-cooperative-organisation is an example of this tendency. It presents itself as a distributed cooperative organisation model and contains some useful ideas around commons-oriented, cooperative, and feminist economic forms. But it suffers from a familiar problem – it does not truly LINK. The concepts float in isolation, disconnected from wider movements, histories, infrastructures, and practical organising paths.
This is the #fashionista view of the now 20-year-old #OMN path. Full of energy, aesthetics, and radical vocabulary, but with a distinctly teenage focus on novelty and identity rather than long-term grounded federation and commons building. Without deep linking between projects, communities, histories, and practices, ideas tend to fragment, scatter, lose continuity, and dissipate into noise.
Flight and scatter to the wind – more compost. The same pattern appears in the #DisCO (Distributed Cooperative Organisations) manifesto at disco.coop. Again, there are worthwhile insights and language around care, commons, and distributed organising. But the project still largely exists as a self-contained branding exercise rather than part of a deeply interconnected ecosystem. The issue is not bad intentions, the issue is isolation.
Projects that do not effectively link socially, technically, historically, and organisationally. On this #fashionista we cycle, struggle to accumulate real collective power, repeatedly restart from near-zero while presenting themselves as innovation.
The COMPOST digital magazine at two.compost.digital follows a similar #NGO and #fashionista path. It produces discourse and aesthetics around collapse, care, and alternatives, but again lacks the hard connective tissue needed for durable commons building. There is very little federation of process. Very little shared infrastructure. Very little accumulation of collective memory. Very little practical continuity.
This is what the hashtag #blocking is trying to point toward, these projects unintentionally block healthier growth by occupying cultural and organisational space while failing to create pathways others can build through. Energy flows into maintaining identity, branding, and internal discourse instead of constructing durable public commons. This is where possessiveness becomes destructive, and slowly the commons closes.
This is not unique to these examples. It is a widespread problem across activist, cooperative, and #openweb spaces. Our “common sense” instincts are shaped by the wider culture of #stupidindividualism and #neoliberal competition, even inside projects supposedly trying to escape those systems.
This path naturally leads toward informal hierarchy, gatekeeping, branding over openness, resistance to criticism, control of information, and fear of genuine federation. Over time this undermines the collaborative nature of commons projects. As leadership roles become possessive, transparency weakens, collective goals become secondary to personal or organisational survival, criticism becomes threatening rather than useful and conflict becomes personalised instead of productive. Eventually the project spends more energy protecting itself than building shared infrastructure.
This is one reason, so many alternative projects repeatedly fragment despite good intentions. The tragedy is that many of these people genuinely care, but care without openness still become enclosure. That is why the 20 year old #OMN path keeps returning to linking, federation, and the #4opens, not as abstract ideology, but as practical anti-possessive tools.
The goal is not purity, not ownership, not building another isolated brand ecosystem. The goal is to create living commons that other people can actually connect to, extend, challenge, reuse, and build beyond. Without this, projects become temporary performances orbiting personalities and trends. With it, they have at least some chance of growing into real social infrastructure.
The hopeful part is that even failed projects contribute compost, ideas break down, fragments spread, lessons survive and people move on carrying experience. Compost matters, but we should still try to build gardens rather than endlessly producing piles of unfinished compost.
How protocols die… #SSB was a protocol that they all reallyed round, a “commons”, we now have 3 “commons” on the table. The rabble one which has hidden #VC money behind it, then this individualist one https://www.manyver.se/blog/2023-04-05 which will maybe rally the grassroots, and the original #SSB which might or might not carry on.
We don’t have a cross culture “common” any more. A clean separation of the #mainstreaming and the #grassroots. To make this relevant, the same is likely going to happen to #ActivertyPub when the #W3C “formal consensuses” is captured by the #dotcons
The enclosure of commons is always a bad path. And yes not saying #SSB was a good protocol it was not, it came from the encryptionsists, but it was a rare “commons”.
#AP is a good/bad protocol, we don’t need to do the same path. Thus, the message to #socialhub, 95% chance they will ignore it or more likely see it as weakness and attack harder, cats…
“The is currently an undeclared battle going on between the rebooted #WC3 and the grassroots (#fashernista dominated) #socialhub for power. If the libertarian cats can’t herd themselves to do something useful, like we managed with the #EU outreach – currently they cannot do this, have a feeling socialhub will lose.
Not a big problem, but a dangerous outcome for #ActivityPub as #WC3 is formal consensus which is easy to capture and control for the #dotcons – where socialhub libertarian cats have failed messy consensuses so less open to capture.
But from my view the libertarian cats are being prats as cats are… so WC3 is stepping back in to CONTROL… how to herd cats – should I try? Or keep focus on #OMN codeing is a question am asking my self?
@xxx @xxx@xxx, have tried building bridges, but no foundation stones laid on this building work. Honest question are we helping or hindering in this grassroots space?”
There is a small chance they act, we did herd cats on #socialhub for the #EU outreach. This is why I bring it up, though, think people can only see the power politics and not what am saying when doing this. Agen 5% chance of a good outcome…
Maybe this helps to make the “mess” metaphor clearer. For the #geekproblem they likely have no idea about the damage they do. Because in their terms they are mostly right. Step back to look at the wider picture, and it’s obviously adding to the mess to be composed.
The Open Governance Body (#OGB) describes a permissionless process/structure that is open and allows the group that forms using the tools to decide who is a part of the group or not. This process can divide into a web of connecting instances of governance as a natural human process of group formation. The #OGB emphasizes that there is no exclusion and always diversity, making it a natural fit for the #fediverse.
The #OGB also shows that if people are stupid and focused on individualism, each governance instance will have one member and no power. To gain power, people have to work together, which is built into the code. The #OGB emphasizes that hoarding power is limited, and it flows through the community, energizing and solidifying the community and building horizontal power to challenge/change vertical power.
The #OGB focus is on the importance of keeping things simple (#KISS) and that some people will try to push for existing power structures before democracy. However, as the process is permissionless, it is not possible to stop them from doing this. The #OGB emphasizes the need to do better, and that being native to the #fediverse is a big help in this regard.
The #OGB emphasizes the importance of recognizing where power comes from in the context of the #fediverse. The fediverse operates differently from corporations, governments, courts, and police, and it is important to think and build with this difference rather than trying to drag the fediverse back to the #mainstreaming path.
The #OGB builds from the #fediverse works because it is different, and it is easy to forget this important thing when #mainstreaming agendas grab and hold. The #OGB suggests that the missing question in almost all conversations is “who are we empowering,” and emphasizes the need to do better in alt-tech.
The #OGB notes that there are problems in alt-tech and suggests that starting with the #4opens would remove 90% of the mess, revealing the real potential for good outcomes. The #OGB highlights that doing better in alt-tech would involve using shovels to make compost and planting seeds of the world we want to see.
The #OGB describes the process scaffolding for the governance body as a default effect, where the decisions on how things work will be up to the members of the body. The power of the governance body is only the power of default, and the #OGB is about removing all hard default choices and building in a small number of KISS tools, then letting the body members work out themselves how to use them.
The #OGB uses the example of #Couchsurfing, where the website redesign removed the #DIY tools active Couchsurfers had used to self-organize, leading to disappointment among members. The #OGB argues that letting members make their own process, open vs. closed, is necessary to overcome the #geekproblem and have hope for alt-tech.
The #OGB builds governance with the way, rules, norms, and actions are structured, sustained, regulated, and held accountable. this is to mediate that the #Fediverse currently has a “herding cats” governance, denoting a futile attempt to control or organize a class of entities that are inherently uncontrollable.
The #OGB codebase is not just a tool for the #Fediverse, but it can be used to democratically run any structures that have stakeholders.
The #OGB provides an example of how the codebase can be used to run a local street market, with each stallholder as a stakeholder, people who shop at the market as users, and the local council, events company, and shop owner’s association as affiliate groups. The #OGB approach and codebase will scale sideways, with street markets governed city-wide, and each of the markets becoming a stakeholder, users as users, and city-wide orgs and groups as affiliate groups.
The #OGB pushes that the bulk of the voice comes from those who run the #Fediverse, the people who run/support the instances. The people who build the tools also get a say, as do support orgs and events, and the users who will be spread widely get a say, but their power is diluted by the much larger numbers involved.
The #OGB project is grounded in lived experience, and it’s a way out of this mess. We cannot keep using traditional institutions. We have to stop the #techcurn if we are going to use #openweb tech for social/ecological change/challenge, and we need to think about this now.
The #OGB project is about developing better ways of having “trust” based conversations and “trust” based “governance” in the #openweb. The project is built from hundreds of years of on the ground organizing that has shaped every “freedom” we enjoy and is done in a #KISS approach. The #OGB is a #fedivers native way of working, NOT a #mainstreaming way, and it comes from directly working, setting up, and solving recurring problems at hundreds of direct action protest camps.
The #OGB focus on what we know works, as at the moment, almost nothing works for social good. The #OGB project is what is needed, a voluntary cooperative and collaborative alliance that is native to the #fediverse.
The thinking is that we need to put a stop to the #techchurn as we have piles of #techshit already to compost, that #nothingnew is a hashtag for this.
It’s not the goal of the #OGB project to create an organization that tells everyone what protocols and standards to use in the #fediverse. The #OGB project is about developing better ways of having good “trust” based conversations and “trust” based “governance” in the #openweb
To sum up, the current working models of “governance” in open-source projects are monarchy, aristocracy and oligarchy. This is the rock star developer, the coders and the funders. It should be obverse to anyone that 99.99% of people are missing from this feudalistic ideal of “governance”.
Democracy is the basic foundation of our shared modernity.
A. I have no illusion that the normal shitty behaver of fucking people over and being a prat will happen, but the codebase is designed to mediate this crap behaver for better outcomes 🙂
#OGB “permissionless” is an important word that needs some thought. The body is made up of three different, balanced groups: stakeholders, users, and affiliate stakeholders. Anybody can become a stakeholder by setting up and running an active instance, and users are self-explanatory. That affiliate stakeholders are a little more complex and are treated differently, and it’s up to the body itself to decide if they play an active and useful role.
That nothing in this is top-down, elitist, discriminatory, or undemocratic, and it’s #KISS and looks safe to the “normal world” while being native to the #fediverse and its roots. All the coding is #4opens, based on #activertypub.
With #OGB, it’s important not to get lost in the #processgeeks and their dogmatic love of #formalconsensus, as that’s a dead end and has been for the 30 years of activism and coding tech. It’s important to keep the #OGB both #KISS and human, understandable. The #OGB is native “governance” and federates in the same way as the projects it “governs”. That this approach is counterintuitive to mainstream ideas and “common sense,” but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
This approach has worked to some extent, as seen in the “#Fediverse” as a living example, working to scale small to bigger. There will be lots of “smoke,” and help is needed to keep the project clear of this mess. We have to overcome our #stupidindividualism to have a hope of a better world.
#OGB To remind you that the need for “governance” came out of a practical problem where the #activitypub community is made up of “cats” who were doing seminars outreach to powerful #EU Eurocrats on why they should be interested in #activertypub. #OGB is designed to be messy and not tidy, and it’s a “governance” of a disorganization, not a traditional power structure. “governance” can cooperate with more formal models of governance like traditional cooperatives.
#NGIzero#NGI#EU It’s important to remember in #openweb tech that most funding is poured directly down the drain, all value comes from #DIY culture which is always underfunded. Would be a good idea to try to rebalance this mess. And yes, we are not talking about the #dotcons mess, that’s another subject 😉
The value we are all talking about, the #openweb#fediverse based on #activertypub is a very good example of this issue. The group that pushed through the speck only goes through the formal consensuses process because the #dotcons were not interested in owning the outcome as it had no “value” to them. The speck was done as unpaid, unfunded #DIY labour, this is where almost all value actually comes from when you lift the lid on the current mess.
The importance of #DIY culture and the underfunding of #openweb technologies. It is true that much of the value in openweb technologies comes from the grassroots efforts of individuals and communities who are passionate about creating and maintaining these tools. This can be seen in the case of the #fediverse, which was developed by a group of volunteers who were committed to creating a decentralized and open social networking platform.
At the same time, it is also important to recognize the role that funding can play in supporting the development of openweb technologies. While it is true that much of the value comes from DIY culture, funding can help to support and sustain this culture, providing resources and support to help communities. One initiative that is working to address this issue is #NGIZero, which is a program funded by the European Commission to support the development of #openweb technologies. Through this program, funding is provided to support projects that are focused on creating often #NGO focused decentralized and #geekproblem projects.
Overall, it is important to recognize the importance of DIY culture and grassroots efforts in the development of openweb culture and technologies. At the same time, we should also work to support these efforts through funding and other forms of support, in order to help ensure that these grassroots cultures and the technologies they build continue to thrive and evolve in the years to come.
hummm the video is different version to the lyrics order, but you get the idea
click the link to play in the background then come back to look at the lyrics hummm the video ending is different version to the lyric , but you get the idea
You noble coders all stand up now, stand up now You noble coders all stand up now The openweb to maintain sing dotcons by name Your codeing does maintain and persons all defame Stand up now, stand up now
With activertpub and html and CSS stand up now, stand up now With activertypub and html and CSS , stand up now Your freedom to uphold sing dotcons are bold To sack you if they could and rights from you to hold Stand up now coders all
The lawyers they conjoin stand up now stand up now The lawyers they conjoin stand up now To arrest they advise, such fury they devise, the devil in them lies And hath blinded both their eyes Stand up now, stand up now
The media they come in stand up now, stand up now The media they come in stand up now The media they come in and say it is a sin That we should now begin our freedom for to win Stand up now coders all
The venture capitalists are all round stand up now, stand up now The venture capitalists are all round stand up now The venture capitalists are all round on each side the are found Their wisdom so profound to cheat us of our internet Stand up now stand up now
Your website they pull down stand up now, stand up now Your website they pull down, stand up now Your website they pull down to fright your users online But the venture capitalist must come down, and the people shall host the code Stand up now coders all
‘Gainst lawyers and ‘gainst media stand up now stand up now ‘Gainst lawyers and ‘gainst media stand up now For tyrants they are both, even flat against their oath To grant us they are loathe free networks and standards and FOSS Stand up now coders all
On the song, feel free to treat it as a first draft, we are taking a long history of “commons” and bridging this time to today’s #openweb reboot with the #fedivers which is also a nativist “commons”.
We have a band that I can try to record the update lyrics for the song, to make this worthwhile we need some #4opens process to decide if this will be used.
Q. One of the problems we face is people creating bad feelings on this is that they think we are talking about values, that is challenging their feelings. For us this is obviously blinded, crap nonsense, for them, it’s their “truth”.
A. Indeed, Made worse by the affirmation that people can have their own self-validated “truths” that anyone must simply respect
Q. The problem is they are wrong in the basics, we are not talking about feelings, we are talking about history, we are talking about what used to exist and what obviously needs to exist anew. That is what is actually true, not what ignorant people “feel”. So to get anywhere, we need to bridge this mess.
A. How we phrase things is key, at least when trying to get some percentage of the masses on board. I’ve noticed that if the language even hints at “moving backward” they throw up their arms in disgust; “so we should just go back to the Stone Age!?”
Q. Yes, most things we say are true, people will reject and the more we push obvious history the more people push back. Challenging feelings is actually not allowed any more for the very intolerant minority, who help to keep this created social mess in place.
A. It’s properly fucked up nonsense
Q. Our mission is to trile and error a way of bridging this mess at the fediforum event, in the sense of what is the #openweb. This is a very off-topic subject for just about everyone at the event, so the #openweb is affectively #BLOCKED if we can’t find this path?
We need an effective way of communicating that all value on the #fedivers is cultural, the tech itself is a product of this #openweb culture. The #activertypub speck is an accident of this culture not being swamped become the #mainstreaming was not interested at the time
We have an increasing number of funders pouring money down the drain in #fedivers tech, when the source of the value #openweb culture that created this new “commons” is swamped by the #mainstreaming agenda.
This #fediforum thing is going to be a hardcore invisible clash of cultures, all the #fashernista who stood back from the #ActivertyPub push for the last 5 years are now flooding in, as are refugees from the encryptions mess. The language might be #fedvers BUT most of the people will not be. Let’s try and create focus, small steps.
#Mozfest Is on if you want to see posers, #fashernista and general #NGO pointless. I did sign up but when the time came to log in I could not be bothered. I do use the browser, though.
We do need to express contempt for what a lot of the assumptions and agenda (often unspoken) our #NGO and #fashernista crew push. Yes, it’s crap and pointless, so please say this, in most cases the “emperor’s” are not wearing any clothes. Express yourself, it’s needed.
The is going to be an increasing mix of #mainstreming people moving back to the #openweb we need much better tools and process to deal with the mess they bring with them as well as our own mess we have here. The is going to be a lot of prat’ish behaviour from both inside our #openweb movement and outside from the #dotcons we need a way to mediate this… as it’s obviously damage dressed up in #NGO clothing.
The problem with this negative circle is that it is self reinforcing, the prats, don’t like being pointed at as prats, and in reaction they dig deeper into prat’ish behaver. This damage is not helpful, we need fresh thinking, what do we do when “our” people act as prats. Ideas please?
#SocialHub is a community-driven space that seeks to promote #activertypub, working with new models of governance and organization that empower communities. It is part of the larger #fediverse, which is a network of decentralized social media platforms that do not conform to traditional hierarchies and power structures.
The #OGB project, which is come from #SocialHub, aims to develop a more decentralized and autonomous model of governance by leveraging open-source technologies and building on existing fediverse infrastructure. The project seeks to find a balance between structure and flexibility, with a focus on involving community members in decision-making and empowering them to “natively” shape their digital spaces.
The project is guided by the principles of the #4opens, which emphasize openness, transparency, and inclusivity. However, there is a need to resist the urge to impose traditional liberal solutions and instead embrace original thinking that is native to the #fediverse and #openweb.
The project is still in development and seeks coding input to build this community best practice grassroots producer governance model to help focus on sustainable, inclusive, and equitable. Lets keep project focus on separating off-topic threads, discussions from mainstream dogmas and “common sense” to prevent trolling and maintain focus.
There are hundreds (over the last 20 years likely thousands) of news, aggregation sites. It’s a common #dotcons model to enclose the “commons” people see free content and think I can capture that. The problem is news content looks like it’s free, but that’s because it’s “free” to spread, but it’s VERY expensive in human (and thus money) to produce the content. This side is never addressed in these failed tech projects.
We currently have #traditionalmedia all round the world pushing to be paid for aggregation and even search of their “product”. At #OMN and #indymediaback, we get round these issues as we add “value” by the #DIY labour of the meany people involved in the shared “commons” space. We are producing rather than “stealing” in the #mainstreaming view.
It’s normal that the top-down news aggregators are seen as parasites, and the bootem up aggregators as adding value. For a few years of #indymedia growth, #traditionalmedia was using #indymedia as a “news” source, this shaped the #mainstreaming agenda, adding value to both paths.
When the #openweb we were building was ripped apart by internal and external pressers and agenders, the #DIY value was captured by the #dotcons such as #Facebook and later #Twitter (when it left it’s open’ish path).
The first step away from the current mess is to recreate the “commons” to bring the value back from the #dotcons capture, this should be more possible now as we are building from the #Fediverse where this has already happened. What we do with this recreated “commons” is up to meany different groups/people, but let’s hold the #4opens and #PGA strongly in place to stop “common sense” enclosing attempts, which are constant pointless damage we need to work around.
To sum up, a key part of the #OMN is to recreate the data “commons” then it’s up to meany other groups to find useful things to do with this free to use non-commercial value. And yes lots of people will see the stupid path of enclosing this to capture the value for themselves, this is damage.
In capitalism, any non-owned value is seen as an opportunity to capture, enclosed and profit from. This is why we have copyleft licences in code, which is visibly failing and why we extend this to the #4opens to fail less 😉
This all comes down to the question of what we value. And for meany people, this is a blindness.
