The tech manifesto of the OMN

In technology development, there are many possible paths. Some of these lead to far more fertile ground for cultivating the open internet and open society approach that the #OMN is built on.

What We Reject

We clearly reject:

• Pure client–server relationships
• Closed security cultures
• Geek-only design aesthetics and insular “vanilla” tech culture
• Data ownership models and closed licensing

What We Support

We actively support:

• Peer-to-peer relationships, alongside hybrid federated client–server infrastructure
• An open security culture, with carefully limited use of closed peer-to-peer security where appropriate
• A balance between technical usability and simple outreach – with the ability to switch between these modes within the same application
• Geek culture that embraces and mixes with other cultures, rather than isolating itself
• Open data formats and Creative Commons licensing

Approach

The #OMN is open to any project that aligns with open-source, open-data, and open-licensing principles. There are several existing tools and platforms that point in useful directions:

• Liferay — Built on a strong standards-based approach, but constrained by being owned by a profit-driven company with controlling interests
• RetroShare — An open-source peer-to-peer client that already covers many needs for personal security and communication

Opportunities for Integration

A key question is whether we can meaningfully combine these approaches into a more open, global platform:

• Could we bridge a standards-based system (like Liferay) with a peer-to-peer network (like RetroShare) to create a federated, secure, hybrid infrastructure?
• Could we build a cross-platform system that combines APIs, federation, and peer-to-peer trust networks?

There are also interesting experiments to consider:

• Popcorn Time-style distribution – Using torrent-based streaming models
• Could this be combined with open archives (e.g. Archive.org APIs) to support distributed video hosting and seeding?

OMN Stack Direction

Within this ecosystem, #OMN can be understood as:

• A network built on RSS style flows
• A federation layer for content sharing and discovery
• A bridge between distributed storage, streaming, and publishing tools

Front-End Possibilities

Finally, the growing power of HTML5 web apps – especially on smartphones – provides a flexible and accessible interface layer. This allows us to build user-friendly tools on top of complex distributed infrastructure without locking users into closed platforms.

The goal is not to build everything from scratch, but to stitch together existing open tools into a coherent, trust-based ecosystem.

UPDATE: both Liferay and Retroshare failed in this dev path, the first is the normal blocking of open core as a #FOSS path and the second simply failed due to complexity and #UX. Popcorn time we never found a crew to build the coding. Then web apps were silently blocked by the #dotcons app stores focus. What can we learn from this now?