Define Open App Ecosystem

I'll adapt some of the comment I made in another thread yesterday:

the following detailed and demanding description of "open source" seemed rather popular in Collaborative Technology Alliance in 2016. Perhaps it seems relevant:

6 freedoms (1) to run the program, (2) to study and change the program in source code form, (3) to redistribute exact copies, (4) to distribute modified versions, (5) to have access to their account data, (6) to use without charge for non-commercial purposes.

Additionally, I'd personally suggest that any development teams which officially release a "finished" (i.e. not alpha or beta) open app should use some specific open organizational principles, including clear standards for processing potential contributions to the code base.

@gregorycassel - that defines open app pretty well. There's a lot of open apps out there. What could make them into an ecosystem?

And for what purpose? For example, https://www.npmjs.com/ is arguably an ecosystem of open apps for constructing node.js systems.

I want to generate a cooperative economic system. Npm will not necessarily help me do that. What do other people want an open app ecosystem to accomplish besides be open and apps that work together in some undefined way?

What do other people want an open app ecosystem to accomplish besides be open and apps that work together in some undefined way?

This is for me the main questions that we need to ask for the meeting. You can put your WHY in the google doc created for the meeting ;)

I agree with your why, no need to add mine. But I'll agree on the doc.

@gregorycassel - that defines open app pretty well. There's a lot of open apps out there. What could make them into an ecosystem?

Actually I don't think there are many if any apps which have every property I referred to in that comment, but I understand that you're trying to define "open app" in a relatively flexible and practical way (and you are of course welcome to do so.)

For instance, many apps fail to provide their users with easy (or any) direct exportable access to data. This creates a key area of social dependence and vulnerability. Thankfully, however, some apps make exporting easy. I doubt that any of them use all of the open organizational principles I'd personally recommend, including open accounting of revenue and expenses. That doesn't seem important right now. It could become important, if and when a lot of money is focused into the development of open app systems.

My next comment will personally address some of the "big picture" questions you ask.

(6) to use without charge for non-commercial purposes.

I would say : (6) to use without charge for commercial and non commercial purposes.

The CC0 license (or MIT for the code) is for me a reference.

Good points regarding open licensing. I quoted that 2015 Collaborative Technology Alliance text for reference, but I greatly prefer the simpler approach which you've indicated.

I know that many software developers may prefer to charge commercial users. I've discussed that with them before, and expect to do so again.

Here is something I have been taking notes on for several years, about what I want in an open app ecosystem: Searching for a breakthrough.

Short version: I want protocols, not platforms. I want to start with a Personator, my own app that represents me, that will meet other Personators and form organizations, which will have their own apps, and we will all make agreements to do things together and then we will do them.

No usernames, no signups, no accounts, just out on the Web together. I want to always interact from my own Personator.

Possible technical infrastructures include Secure Scuttlebutt, Solid, and Ceptr. Each of them has problems today. I think this is also possible to do in other ways.

This might not suit everybody. But think about it anyway. @lynnfoster also wrote a head design for a Personator.

My goal in sharing these is to get people to consider something other than plugins for platforms as the only way to do things. But no, I have not created any of these things yet, although I have experienced them in the Scuttleverse, so I know they can work.

P.S. the name Personator came from Connor Turland who was heavily involved in CTA version 1.

Short version: I want protocols, not platforms. I want to start with a Personator, my own app that represents me, that will meet other Personators and form organizations, which will have their own apps, and we will all make agreements to do things together and then we will do them.

From my perspective, that seems practically identical to the reason I've written Peer-to-Peer Digital Networking. However, that document is still slightly incomplete, and (as I've mentioned elsewhere) I'm focusing on Modular Organization Terminology to facilitate the development of a shorter and hopefully clearer edition of P2PDN.

A few related tidbits:

1. From P2PDN: "unique persistent user identities are crucially important for the development of mutually responsible relationships"
2. More recently, from MOT: "A personal agent is an agent which directly represents a unique person within a specific social context." https://github.com/gcassel/Modular-Organization-Terminology/blob/master/compound-terms/personal-agent.md

I'm not trying to derail the subject of defining an Open App Ecosystem, or to direct attention to my specific references above. I'm just hoping to generally indicate how I'm trying to work on what I perceive to be infrastructural needs.

With that said: @bobhaugen , you asked here earlier:

What do other people want an open app ecosystem to accomplish besides be open and apps that work together in some undefined way?

I have many goals in life for many reasons, but my intentions in media networking & open app systems relate closely and strictly to a deep personal devotion to the power of truth and empathy. I really do believe that more effective organizational forms can support truth and empathy in our general interactions. That relates closely to the current closing paragraph of Agreement Based Governance:

Organizational clarity has been a chronic failure point for complex groups and institutions. Major improvements in social tools and techniques, however, are well within reach. These improvements will dramatically favor collective activities which are based on direct agreements instead of violent, coercive, confusing or deceptive forces.

I should clarify a bit: when I describe my ideal architecture, which does not have usernames and passwords, I also see a big need for a single-signon person app like what Marc is working on here: https://wekan.indie.host/b/G4LCutYkTJLhSCAtn/open-app-ecosystem/Tkw9Sk8egsE7mHTE9 (hope I got the right link...)

We know lots of communities who are using a set of apps that have usernames and passwords, as well as our own existing software. So I don't want the perfect to be the enemy of the good...

I'm looking at https://beakerbrowser.com/ via tip from @jonrichter
https://github.com/valueflows/valueflows/issues/172#issuecomment-315547844

[edit] this from the SSB community, which could fix one of the main limitations of SSB: it has not been on and of the Web.

@lynnfoster I think an ecosystem based on the individual is a good idea.

In the best case :
* You create your account on the persona/avatar app
* You are now part of the ecosystem : you can easily be part of actions, use shared ressources according to your location and the objectives you try to fulfill.
* You can use a suite of apps very user friendly and decentralized

Are we on the same page ? :D

Are we on the same page ?

I think so.

(6) to use without charge for non-commercial purposes.

I would say : (6) to use without charge for commercial and non commercial purposes.

This one is interesting. I'm OK with the original, without charge for non-commercial purposes. There are "commercial" purposes that I think are part of the next economy (coops, etc.), if you define the term loosely. But as economic entities, they can be supporting the OAE infrastructure development on which they rely to conduct their economic activities.

Maybe at some point, we could clarify what "commercial" means, so it isn't like a bad word.

@lynnfoster @gregorycassel For the commercial purpose, my model here is the MIT license which is really permissive. But maybe you don't like it ;)

I like MIT license, or any other open source license really. But that doesn't address the question of charging for commercial use as far as I know - my understanding is that would apply to using hosted software, not to whether there are different rules around open source. Anyone, feel free to correct me, maybe I am missing it.

Whether or not a team charges commercial users-- or anyone else-- for a software hosting and user service system needn't be directly related to the way(s) in which they license source code.

I'm sure of course that you realize that, @lynnfoster , but it seems to be a useful point for context here.

I think that P2P Foundation, including Michel Bauwens, are putting lots of thought into peer production licenses with the hope of restricting commercial use of software code and other media resources. Frankly, I think that that's not a promising approach for developing globally useful media resources. It could create lots of unnecessary and inefficient "red tape" complexity. However, perhaps such restrictive licenses could be useful for media resources which only hold (legitimate, non-hostile) value to specific communities. For example, maybe such restrictive licenses could be helpful for some media developed through private, socially sensitive community-specific research. I don't know; I haven't given it much thought.

Anyway, I personally support very permissive licenses for media which is shared for general public use-- and, I also support teams charging anyone anything they think that they need to charge for software hosting and user service. Bearing in mind, though, that most of us are quite used now to accessing tons of hosted software platforms without any direct financial cost. We expect stuff to be "free", even though Google & facebook etcetera will (1) use paid commercial advertising and (2) will mine our data to engineer corporate profit. So, I think it's really hard to sustainably require an admission fee for software hosting and user service. Rather, I generally suggest pay what you want models attached to open-book accounting and comprehensive long-term fundraising and budgeting strategies.

I have a friend who wrote wrote the Pylons framework (and book) that now powers reddit.com to 8 billion page views / month http://pylonsbook.com

He made that code open source but now refuses to work on open source projects as he see's the "leaching" (development) of open source code into the proprietary world as "ripping off people that develop open source".

if his code had been protected by the PPL, which @gregorycassel mentions, he would have made a lot of money which he could now be living on, so he could develop more useful code for the OAE and similar... or, Reddit would have had to develop something of their own...

I discussed this with Nathan Schneider in my article and it raises a few interesting thoughts... mainly that co-ops CAN re-use PPL code for commercial purposes but "late capitalist" business can't. To me that is a good solution, but I understand why others may disagree.

Here's an extract of our discussion:

NS: Part of what excites me about the platform co-op movement is the way in which it offers a kind of corrective to open-source so far. For one thing, people are developing licenses like the Peer Production License that create commons that only fellow co-ops can commercialize; if Linux were licensed that way, for instance, Google couldn’t use it to create the Android surveillance system.

OSB: The Peer Production License is a very interesting development which we at Open hope to see utilised more, to encourage the proliferation of open source development whilst avoiding its exploitation by commercial businesses. I know coders who have been put off releasing their code as open source after seeing their previous contributions subsumed by businesses which have been grown and sold for enormous profits, so the PPL seems like a great concept. What do you think are the biggest obstacles to it becoming widely adopted?

NS: Part of what helps good ideas spread in the online economy is a successful use case. Among the projects I’m aware of that have employed the PPL, I’m not sure any have actually been commercially (or otherwise) successful because of the PPL. If this license is going to take wings, it’ll be because it meets a need, and creates possibilities, where other licenses fall short. And, until the tech co-op scene is much more robust, the PPL’s main benefit will be a liability; precisely what enables lots of open-source projects to work is that their contributors include corporations that intend to derive commercial benefit from the tools they’re contributing to.

mainly that co-ops CAN re-use PPL code for commercial purposes but "late capitalist" business can't. To me that is a good solution, but I understand why others may disagree.

Thanks @olisb , I don't object to the various nuances of open source that restrict people making a lot of personal money off us. But I still don't think the OAE can include software that is not open to fork for communities (including but not limited to co-ops) that are about creating a new economic and social system. However we do that is fine.

One way that seemed promising in that whole huge discussion in CTA is to talk about ends, not means.

if his code had been protected by the PPL, which @gregorycassel mentions, he would have made a lot of money which he could now be living on, so he could develop more useful code for the OAE and similar...

We can easily identify such legitimate benefits (for media creators) of restrictive media licensing. However, I think it's also easy to quickly identify costs and risks which such licensing creates for media users. (Plus it creates predictable costs in systemic oversight and enforcement-- especially for highly complex, interrelated media resources.)

Nonetheless: if anyone can create, use and enforce peer production licenses in ways which reliably support sustainable culture, I'll be quite interested in the details. Meanwhile, I'll be working to develop sustainable media production processes for the public domain, including open-book accounting and open-ended crowdfunding.