Relaunching The Open Co-op

@Oli SB Hi Oli. Does the signal group exist already? But also.. how about Deltachat groups? it's an open source, decentralised, non-profit, E2E encrypted chat app? Or does it have to be signal for some technical reasons?

@Ivana I second what Ivana says here @Oli SB . Putting aside all the usual reasons not to depend on Signal, their software was designed for 1:1 chats not large-scale working groups, and although it does now have group rooms, AFAIK it isn't really suitable for that use case.

FYI there is only 1 chat system I know of that;

a) allows people to join rooms from a chat server of their choice,

b) allows rooms to survive the demise of the originating server, or a breakdown in relations with the admins of that server (by publishing room addresses on other homeservers)

c) offers Spaces that can umbrella a group of rooms used by a community, and allows rooms to join and leave spaces, and to be co-hosted by 2 or more Spaces at once.

That chat system is Matrix. I strongly recommend setting up an Open Co-op space on Matrix that includes any rooms the project currently needs (more can be added/ adopted as needed). Rooms can then be bridged to other chat services for anyone who really doesn't want to use a Matrix account to participate.

@Danyl Strype would you be interested in joining The Open Co-op to help develop PLANET? https://collab.open.coop/ maybe you could take on the role of open source advocate... or help set up open source tools for the members?

@Ivana we use signal to coordinate work for the simple reason that it works really well and everyone that is actively working on decentralised tech seems to be there already. The Open Co-op group is set up but is not in active use yet. We could use Matrix if people really want but our main objective is to facilitate 'the work' not to have conversations about which tools to use - and pragmatism comes first imho - i.e. we need to use the best available tools to make the relaunch of the Open Co-op and PLANET a success.

@Oli SB 

The Open Co-op group is set up but is not in active use yet. We could use Matrix if people really want

It's not an either/or. As I say, if you set up on Matrix, you can then use a Signal bridge to include folks who want to participate using a Signal account. Same with TeleGrab, Slack, Miscord, and any other proprietary chat service people insist on using.

maybe you could take on the role of open source advocate

I absolutely support what you're doing, but I'm already heavily committed. It's very clear from my end what the Open Co-op could get out of my unpaid work. If you can explain how joining would help me with the work I've already taken on (Disintermedia blogging, P2P wiki gardening, Lead Goose of fediverse.party, attempting breath some life back into the Open App Ecosystem group,etc) , I'll certainly consider it.

@Oli SB Point taken.