Ton wrote a post about his usage of the Post Kinds plugin for WordPress and used the word “lock in”.

I understand what he is trying to reference by using the phrase “lock in” but I think it’s problematic. It’s open source software (as is WordPress itself) — you are not locked in, you just have to decide where to invest resources of time, money, and energy.

A user has (at least) two options that work with the plugin:

1) Fork it

Find likeminded users and support a fork that does what you want.

Maintain it over time, either as a full fork or cherry picking updates from upstream.

2) Add features to the current plugin

Suggest the feature. Find like minded users. Find a developer to make a PR or compensate David to do it.

And of course for plugins like this, compatibility with the “host” system means keeping up with major architectural changes over time, too.

I don’t mean to suggest that Ton should do either of these two things, just that lock in is not the right phrase at all.

His plan is to store the Post Kinds data directly in the “main” WordPress content:

Over time I can replace the existing Post Kinds dependent postings (about 900 in this blog) in the same way, clearing the way for switching it off entirely. This should increase the autonomy of keeping this blog, and decrease dependencies.

And so the dependency is just on (open source) WordPress, which has a very large user and developer base and is likely to be maintained for a long time.

Also via Ton is a good read on Permacomputing, which has themes I’m thinking about with respect to user agency and maintenance of software over time.

Currently, I think we are entering into a post-open-source world. Large corporates are behind a vast majority of maintained software that happens to be licensed as open source. Software is built dependent on proprietary cloud platforms in such a way that being open source doesn’t make it portable.

I am interested in non-commercial open licensing as a new default I want to encourage for software developers, such as the Prosperity Public License or IndieCC.

And on the user agency side, I want to encourage collectivism: pool your time, energy, and resources to #BuildSoftwareTogether. Not as a “user”, but as an owner or member that wants to see a piece of software thrive.

For this collectivism, new tools like Open Collective exist. I have a handful of projects there running to bootstrap a few pieces of collective software myself.

Anyway, thanks Ton for the writing prompt. Don’t feel locked in!

Dries, founder of the Drupal project, posted his thoughts and wishes from 20 years.

He included 3 birthday wishes.

The first one, never stop evolving¹, includes this passage:

First and foremost, we’ve been focused on a problem that existed 20 years ago, exists today, and will exist 20 years from now: people and organizations need to manage content. Working on a long-lasting problem certainly helps you stay relevant.

So, roughly, the short phrase for this is “content management”. It was very interesting to read this, because it’s not at all the reason I contributed to the Drupal project.

I got involved using it personally, joined the mailing list, and starting contributing. It was my first open source project and community and I learned so much and have so much to be thankful for to the project, to Dries, and to all the wonderful people I got to meet.

My first contributions were around CSS class names and the recipe module.

Anyway: I got involved and built a company around Drupal because I wanted to enable personal publishing. Not the content management part, but rather giving individuals and groups agency over their content: using open source software to publish their own words online. Without having to go through mass media of a newspaper or other publisher, which is all there was at the time.²

I’m still on that same mission, in part because of Drupal being built as a full stack LAMP application: much too hard to host and maintain by individuals. This reduces user agency: you’re relying on someone else to have the knowledge and expertise and trust to run and maintain a server stack, and hopefully back up your content.

I’m pleased that people are in part solving this by banding together as co-ops and collectives.³. Some of the first worker cooperatives that I was exposed to were building on Drupal, like Agaric, or Vancouver’s CanTrust Hosting Co-op.

My goal: a user with a smartphone as their only computing device should be able to create and publish directly, and participate in the web.

Alongside of this is an understanding that humans make software and can be supported directly, which wish #3 is about.

Wish #2 is continued focus on ease of use, with a specific mention of out-of-the-box experience.

I hacked together SQL queries and config files to invent install profiles for Drupal, with many more capable people doing an actual good job of this afterwards ;)

Mostly, the Drupal community hasn’t internalized what it wants to be out of the box. Modules rather than products. It has gotten better, but there is a lot more to do here.⁴

And, the immense gravitational force of Dries’ commercial company Acquia being focused on (enterprise) content management pulls things in that direction. This is also at odds with my personal interest in individuals and groups, who have very different needs

This is not really this category, but I have been reflecting on it so will include it here:

At the time (in the early 2000s) I had little to no awareness of the concept of equality and inclusion. Around me I saw mostly white, young, and primarily male faces. I was - and am! - so privileged to be able to spend time participating in OSS communities.

This, too, is usability and ease of use.

Wish #3 resonated most strongly with me and I think Dries and I are very aligned on this goal: Economic systems to sustain and scale Open Source.

He links to a shop local analogy: think about the software you use, and understand that choosing software with an open source license pays dividends for you and the people around you.

Related to privilege, I am thinking a lot about “open source as a job”. I have long tried to get open source devs paid in different ways. Now, I think it’s time to have apps as a small business. Can we enable devs from around the globe to earn a living from building and maintaining apps? Yes, we can, and we must — and move past just North America and Western Europe as the focus for this.

All of the things I’ve mentioned are a core part of Fission, my current company:

1. User owned content and personalization of apps
2. Out of the box components for users and developers to build apps
3. A model for users to participate with and support developers directly, so devs can have “open source as a job”

I am so glad to have met Dries and have him as a friend, so we can continue to work together, debate, and argue over priorities over how our missions overlap ;)

Dries is one of the very few people on the planet with 20 years of history of guiding a large open source project, and the changes and awareness of issues related to this that has happened over that time.

Congrats to him, to the entire Drupal community. Here’s to another 20.

“Imagine if every company using open source were to provide tangible sponsorship, on an ongoing basis, directly to the developers of the open source libraries and tools they use and rely upon.” – Cognitect, Sponsoring Open Source Developers

So many great quotes in this article. I disagree with some of it, eg:

Open source licenses effectively preclude developers from charging for their work.

But the whole thing is laying out facts that have been obvious to some for a long time. It helps build the awareness and movement of the evolution of the concept of open source and how businesses should treat it.

With Fission, we’re just taking the first steps on this path. We’re going to blend “traditional” open source with non commercial, with users banding together to fund features, and more.

I’m really glad to have publicly posted our beliefs.

The hashtag #MozillaLifeboat is highlighting the ~250 people laid off by Mozilla.

Here’s Mitchell Baker’s official announcement.

Daring Fireball has further links and commentary, including that the layoff number is “about on-third of its workforce”:

Firefox was very popular, and Google paid Mozilla a small fortune to make Google search the default in Firefox because it was so popular. But then came Chrome. Why should Google fund Mozilla when Chrome is about 10 times more popular than Firefox, other than out of the goodness of their heart?

It is a very good thing for the world and the web that a truly independent browser exists from a privacy-minded company, but there’s not much of a business model for it unless it’s popular enough to get the dominant search engine to pay for placement.

The Open Web, open source, Web3, global Internet commons infrastructure. Security. Privacy. Data ownership. We’ve got a lot on our plate that is looking pretty concerning.

I pretty much felt the same in the early 2000s, facing down FUD from Microsoft vs. open source. And we … won? Sort of? Except now it’s time to reboot again, because the ad supported web and big tech owned open source is an awkward place to have ended up.

I don’t know Chris Riley who just got laid off and tweeted this, but I’ll bold the key part here:

It’s been a heck of a ride at @mozilla for the past 7 years. But this is where I get off the train too. I’m sad; I’m going to miss the people, a lot. For me, my calling to make the internet better will continue. I just need to find the right next venture for it. #MozillaLifeboat – @MChrisRiley

We’re all in the same lifeboat. Grab an oar and get involved.

Craigstarter on Github

A free to use / edit / extend crowdfunding tool for Shopify with multiple goals and variants as campaign tiers.

Shopify is an absolute massive ecosystem. Blending crowdfunding with straight up sales is a really powerful way to more directly own your platform for the long term, whereas one-off Kickstarters you immediately need to plan for off-platform websites, sales, communications, etc.:

Kickstarter is an excellent way to run a crowdfunding campaign. But if you already have a community built up, and have communication channels in place (via a newsletter, for example), and already run an online shop, then Kickstarter can be unnecessarily cumbersome. Kickstarter’s 10% fee is also quite hefty. By leaning on Shopify’s flexible Liquid templating system and reasonable CC processing fees, an independent publisher running a campaign can save some ~$7,000 for every $100,000 of sales by using Craigstarter instead of Kickstarter. That’s materially meaningful, especially in the world of books.

This is particularly relevant because I’m in the midst of learning more about how to run and setup Shopify stores, both for work, and ideally for some side projects. Gathering interest from a group of people so we can collectively fund / buy things is exactly the kind of thing I want to do.

Via @pat

Responding to @Tobie’s thread on examining open source as a commons.

In the context of digital abundance, the open source code itself can be infinitely copied.

1) open source code = public good

2) support, maintenance, etc. = common good

3) paying customers = common good (assuming multiple consultants or hosting services etc.)

From my understanding of @Dries’ Makers and Takers post, the distinction between a public good which can’t be depleted and a common good which can be, and must be protected, is key.

The activity around open source code is a common good. It is provided by the maintainers and other contributors. @tobie mentions maintenance, but also documentation, marketing, communication, responding to issues, and so on.

The “consumers” of these activities may evolve into new contributors, so in one model providing this activity will grow the commons. And even the add to the public good of the code if the new contributors eventually provide code, too.

But taking time for these activities is a scarce resource, as Tobie points out. Sponsorship and similar types of funding can potentially “buy” more of a maintainer’s time, so they can provide more support for (2) – but isn’t really a business model or a commons management strategy on its own.

Finally, my third point from above. Dries made this point quite clearly: if you have multiple businesses built around an open source code base, the (paying) customers are a common good: they can (mostly) only be the customer of one business.

Approaches that restrict aspects of a project to paying users run the risk of making this no longer a common or public good, and yet Ostrom mostly proved that “good fences make good neighbours”. This is the challenge we face that @tobie highlights, and the ongoing experimental phase that I see open source at large moving into.

For a sustainable commons that goes beyond code, we need more makers than takers.

Kyle Mitchell writes The Truth is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free as commentary to Nathan J. Robinson’s editor’s note in Current Affairs of the same name. “Quality” journalism is paywalled and the rest is free?

This point by Robinson on membership models seems key:

a podcaster who sells their product on Patreon rather than giving it away but filling it with mattress and “box-of-shit-a-month” ads has an important kind of freedom: they only have to please the audience, not the sponsors.

“Open Source”, funding, and digital works available at no cost have many parallels in industries beyond software, including journalism.

Kyle points out that not all creators should expect to be compensated just because they are creators:

I deserve…no compensation whatever for the bad musical improvizations, repetitive doodles, or unfunny or dead-end software libraries I churn out from time to time. Everyone, including me, should be fine with this.

Also, that in areas of creative work, especially those available digitally, “giving away” work may be the best strategy:

I happen to believe that in most areas of creative work, and in most adjacent industries, giving more away for $0 online would improve outcomes for most players, overall. Our business instincts and well-worn patterns haven’t quite kept up with the times, and never do.

I’m thinking a lot about digital abundance lately in this same context.

Read the whole thing. You can also sign up on Kyle’s Artless Devices forum if you want to discuss this further.

The Sunlit 3 beta is available, and now open source.

Is an open source “Instagram” possible?

I had a long discussion with an artist about moving off Instagram and Facebook. I told him he was putting photos up inside a mall, and he didn’t disagree. Because he can sell inside the mall.

He was uncomfortable about it. That I was kind of accusatory, shouldn’t he go first, to walk out of the mall and lure people outside instead.

So how do we encourage people that doing street graffiti is something they might want to do?

Putting my technologist hat back on, an open source mobile app like Sunlit is an interesting starting point.

Supporting Micropub and WordPress are great starting points.

Now what about a SquareSpace interface? Drupal and Joomla? Mastodon?

Tumblr? Flickr?

This mix of open source and protocols and networks gets us to an interesting spot.

Does multiple forks of Sunlit help? That is, say other people use the code and deploy apps to the App Store. Can that be additive to a network of users using open protocols and platforms? I’m sort of asking if we can kickstart a more open and federated network.

What if that app added “Buy Now” buttons? Where users could add their own links to a place where they could buy what is in the photo. Or tip the photographer!

Thanks @manton for open sourcing. That begins to give us the opportunity to contribute and build upon what’s there now.