this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2026

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Open Source isn't enought, we need governance (jeferson.me)

submitted 3 weeks ago by Shin@piefed.social to c/technology@lemmy.world

25 comments fedilink hide all child comments

This is a general view on the topic. I think open-source isn't enough, we need also governance for the software we use, and create small pockets of freedom.

All feedback is welcome.

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[–] benjirenji@slrpnk.net 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Open source is fine, but if we depend on badly funded one man projects with a maintainer about to burn out, we've created an extremely fragile system.

The argument is of course that anyone can just pick up a project, fork it and make it better, but we have to remain realistic how often a tech stack can survive a fragmentation of an important project. Compatibility and interoperability is vital.

This can and maybe even should happen once in a while, but if it happens too often it'll do damage to the userbase.

[–] Shin@piefed.social 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Almost the point, I don't want to fragment a system, I want to federate then. Make more people using the system, focus on the protocol and make the system better. For example, Piefed, I'm writing this on a alternative face of the system, but because this is a federated, I don't need to use the official front. At the same time, I focus on the showing the system for more people around me, and expanding it's userbase (and money, but I was focus on the human instead of the money).

[–] benjirenji@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

And hopefully these protocols are backward compatible so I can still use a limited feature set running an older version. I think this would be a big step towards avoiding any fragmentation.

I hate when software supports up to an arbitrary version number and if you just fake the version string in your client or framework it just works fine. Why set up arbitrary hurdles?

[–] Shin@piefed.social 1 points 3 weeks ago

Protocol solves this issue. And reason why takes so long for a protocol to establish.

[–] EliteCloneMike@lemmy.zip 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I am very interested in this topic and have not heard of cooperativism until today applied to digital entities. I am very much for this idea to take hold or other ideas that can allow for shared earnings and things like data protection. Not sure if this would also potentially include data privacy or not. I think these things are great, but laws also need to be established to protect workers rights in the information age and same goes for data protection and data privacy.

[–] Shin@piefed.social 4 points 3 weeks ago

Totally. I started reading on the topic few months ago and got hooked in. It is close to the self-host, I would say this is the “next step”…

[–] yakko@feddit.uk 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

There's no reason there couldn't be a national endowment for open source, the way there is (or was) for the arts. A non partisan governing body would direct and oversee funds towards projects for the creation, dissemination, promotion, and maintenance of open source software for the whole world. Funding could come from a big tech wealth tax, and governance could be drawn and elected by top maintainers as a bylaw. Just off the top of my head.

Obviously "reshape society completely" is a preferable option, I'm just daydreaming

[–] Shin@piefed.social 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

This is yet another solution for the money problem, but my focus isn't on the money, but on the "who actually have a say" on the direction, and focus.

For sure, I would prefer national money over venture capital every day of the week, and twice on Sunday, but the problem is on the governance and not on the economics.

[–] yakko@feddit.uk 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That was the part of my answer I wasn't as happy with, admittedly. The way things are in the states make it really hard to see how you'd set up a politically independent, impartial yet informed, and corruption-resistant governing body for any kind of pot of public money. Especially a pot of money that would be clawed away from tyrannical billionaires who would have every reason to want to ratfuck the thing or get their money back.

[–] Shin@piefed.social 2 points 2 weeks ago

I couldnt have said this better.

[–] darksecret@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

You can look more into anarcho syndicalism or platformism

[–] Shin@piefed.social 1 points 3 weeks ago

I looked into it some time ago, it was part of my initial discovery. But (maybe because I didn't went deep enought), felt too much like losing power, when I want to give power to people, if possible in my lifetime (which isn't a lot)

[–] fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Oddly infra wise one the best bets I've come up with is a crypto DAO running on GCP (they accept crypto). Totally p2p is clearly better than this for public data processing and distribution though, but when you need a to process anything securely,/confidentially it's pretty lacking. Federation helps cover some gaps too.

[–] Shin@piefed.social 2 points 3 weeks ago

Federation, on my view is part of the solution. But right now the federated apps are solving a limited amount of problems, mostly connected to the social media, and social networks. The moment this moves from these domains to other like an ERP, or maybe a medical backoffice for general clinics, this is the point where the real gain can be seen, but this is (right now), pure utopia and dreams from my own head.

[–] nychtelios@lemmy.sinistraverso.org 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Honestly, I don't want "small pockets of freedom". We have to stop accepting everything and think it's okay because we have our small pockets of freedom. People deserve free lives.

[–] Shin@piefed.social 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

What is your definition of “free live”?

[–] nychtelios@lemmy.sinistraverso.org 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Stopping to depend on companies' profit schemas, for example. We have to work at least 8h/day to afford subscriptions to have access to things we don't even own. Our devices are designed to be fragile, to force us to buy them periodically. That's not freedom, that's a jail (and not a golden one)

[–] Shin@piefed.social 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Sadly the post isn't about this.
I do discuss the work-life balance, the egregious ways that big tech and major companies robs people from their lives. My focus is to provide a bigger area for the "federated way", even knowing that using this term is already wrong...

But I mostly agree with you, just can't see how coop will solve the deeper structural problems, will solve some of the problems, not all of the problems.

[–] nychtelios@lemmy.sinistraverso.org 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I think the post is about this too, honestly. What the post is saying is that "open source is not enough, we need governance" and I really do not agree. What I am saying is that governance and small pockets of freedom will not solve our problems, just give us the illusion that we are good.

What I am saying is that we don't need small pockets of freedom, but we need to live in total freedom, and technology and software are a big part of that. This society model is destroying everything, from our wellness to the ecosystem, and "small pockets of freedom" won't solve anything.

[–] Shin@piefed.social 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

This is the point we disagree.

Small pockets of freedom can help, this won't solve the global crisis, but will provide for the communities[^1] the needed force. Also, this can help groups to better organize and waste the least amount of money, effort and mind these.

Doing nothing right now will not change anything, and doing anything, even the small actions is the starting point for the next thing.

I'll use myself as example, even knowing that this isn't the perfect one, I started with the homelab because Amazon stole something from me, and I decided the that was enough. Now I can see that the hardware is cheap[^2], software is pretty much everywhere, federated or open-sourced (even better if it's AGPL) and the next point is increase the range, for the smaller groups of people around the house, expanding for the neighbors to embark in this.

[^1]: communities in the physical sense. Group of people, talking in the garden of a common building. Not a digital community. [^2]: most of people that are in my cirle of friends have a old desktop, or laptop around that can be reused for a simple homelab for a tiny group (around ~10 users) for basic usage, so most of people don't need a Google Photos, Docs and such.

[–] nychtelios@lemmy.sinistraverso.org 2 points 2 weeks ago

I don't think you are wrong or that we disagree, I try to do everything in my power to build pockets of freedom, I also develop FOSS, I own an homelab, used to host services for a solarpunk movement here in Italy too.

But we cannot be satisfied by small pockets of freedom, they are just a way of surviving in a world full of shit. Corporates are extremely happy with this tendency we have of boycotting and building something good only for our bubble, we stopped being a treat for their profit and instead we are enabling more and more their policies: our pockets of freedom somehow make their dystopian policies more acceptable and instead of coordinating to actually change something, we stay in our bubbles.

[–] qwerty@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Isn't this just a public company with extra steps?

[–] Shin@piefed.social 1 points 3 weeks ago

No. I think you lost the context. I would recommend to read also the links n this post.

[–] mildseason@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I'd be interested in your take on NymVPN. Governence is still a bit opaque but they do provide a novel way to incentivise operators to join the network.

Perhaps in the future we could see a ride share app powered in this way. Operators and drivers paid by an algorithm based on work done. Funded by users paying with a specific coin. With the interchangeability of cryptocoin it wouldn't matter if there are competing projects. The governance question still remains though.

[–] Shin@piefed.social 2 points 2 weeks ago

I have never heard of NymVPN... and I'm impressed (I'm using a similar type of VPN), it's interesting to see that more and more people are moving to the decentralized networks.

The crypto acceptance if a wierd point, since crypto for me is always a scam until it's not. So the moment I saw the crypto thing I was like: "ohhh nice, another scam....", but it's closer to the freedom of nation option instead of the scam attempt.

But this is still a centralized thing, what I want is the Onion routing, but people invested in this should have a better degree of control, instead of pure anonymous users. But this is the tug of war in this (privacy vs control), the more private it is, the less control you have over it, and, to be honest I don't know which point would be the best in this scale.