Loomio
Thu 5 Mar 2020 3:17AM

Could social.coop set up it's own Loomio instance?

DS Danyl Strype Public Seen by 51

Loomio.org is no longer offering ongoing gratis hosting for unfunded groups, and groups set up under the pay-what-you-can deal are now being offered the choice to:

  • sign up for a paid deal

  • beg for a $1 per member per year deal

  • leave Loomio.org

I don't think this is cool, and I've started a discussion with the Loomio Community about it here (you may need to be a member of that group to access this thread):

https://www.loomio.org/d/hWZD4Ewb/please-restore-posting-functionality-on-groups-created-before-compulsory-subscriptions

What this suggests to me is that we can't allow ourselves to depend on centralized infrastructure, even when it's run by social enterprise, structured as a worker-owned cooperative. Does the social.coop community have the capacity to:

  • stand up and maintain its own Loomio instance, for its own use, and as an added benefit to members of the social.coop cooperative?

  • help to develop automated export/ import tools so groups can easily move their groups between Loomio instances?

  • help to developed federation tools, so that users on any given Loomio instance can participate in groups and decisions on other instances?

The Loomio developers often seem to have more things they'd like to do than they have the capacity to carry out in the short term. I expect they'd be happy to accept code implementing these features into upstream, as long as they didn't cause any bugs or other problems. If not, a set of plug-ins or a soft fork could be maintained for any instance admins wishing to use them.

DS

Danyl Strype Sun 5 Apr 2020 6:54AM

Update: the Loomio Co-op have reconsidered their decision, and agreed to let the groups who signed up during the pay-what-you-can era continue to have gratis use of Loomio.org. Full functionality will be restored on those groups, and the message asking groups to "upgrade" to the paid plan will be replaced with some messaging that offers them some non-cash ways to contribute to Loomio. My faith in the Loomio crew is thoroughly restored.

However, the centralization issues revealed in this whole saga have not gone away. I think hosting a Loomio instance, and working with other instance hosts to federate Loomio, remain a medium-term priority. There's also this idea, which I posted on the fedi today: https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/@strypey/103943457744963741

NS

Nathan Schneider Sun 5 Apr 2020 7:59PM

Glad to see them have this flexibility, but I still see it as one of the main purposes of having something like Social.coop as being to offer solidarity and support to co-op ecosystem builders like Loomio. Centralization isn't an issue for me here, as the effort and development and initiative is centralized, and I think the product is worth supporting that crew.

DS

Danyl Strype Mon 6 Apr 2020 11:57PM

I've been a vocal evangelist of Loomio since it began. But it would be
remiss of me not to point out that the Loomio Cooperative took on
outside investment a few years ago. That means there is huge pressure on
them to become commercially profitable, despite their founding
aspirations as a social enterprise. This recent episode is not the first
time they have changed the deal on legacy pay-what-you-can groups (eg
removing the ability to create new subgroups), in an attempt to drive
them into paid plans. If I was running my own servers, I wouldn't be
trusting my core decision-making forum to a group who have responded to
"market logic" by doing that, but YMMV ...

NS

Nathan Schneider Tue 7 Apr 2020 4:33PM

I reported on that investment. It didn't come with direct control. It was from an aligned investor. One way or another, groups need to find resources to support their work. The heavily updated tool you're using right now is a result of that investment. One way or another, we need to find economies to support what we're doing. I think Loomio has done an admirable job of trying to balance cooperative values with meeting its members' economic needs. Great software doesn't come out of nowhere.

M

mike_hales Tue 7 Apr 2020 6:14PM

That’s the ‘dance of contribution’ that DisCO/Guerrilla Translation, for example, pays core attention to. How many coops have two left feet ;-) Something we all could learn?