Hi,

There are a few groups working on that you need. Don' t reinvent the wheel.

valuenetwork.referata.com

From there you can find other projects on github that want to federate and brake siloes.

I know all of them, don't worry ;)

HI @draft

I think lots of people want to work on an open app ecosystem, me included.
I'd like to work towards a system which would enable something like PLANET to be possible... https://open.coop/2017/01/10/planet-open-source-operating-system-collaborative-sustainable-economy/

I have also been chatting to @edwardwest about how to re-boot the Collaborative Technology Alliance https://medium.com/enspiral-tales/doing-more-together-together-seeding-a-collaborative-technology-alliance-82243ea30d41

We have been doing some outreach to work out which people and orgs and projects across the world would be interested in participating - and to try and work out what collaboration might look like / what we would work on together and an international group...

The main issue with collaboration in this area is that it is THE BIGGEST project the open source / collaborative tech / commons transition Worlds have yet to tackle - and to date no collective has managed to break it down into (technologically compatible) bite-sized chunks, so people / groups tend to spin off and carry on working on their own, overlapping yet incompatible (from a tech perspective) projects which is a HUGE shame imho

I would be interested to support work on this wider, coordination project, in order to try and achieve some of the network effects we need to move to scale...

Thanks for sharing @olisb . I'll add personal reflections because I was deeply involved in CTA discussions when its Hylo group seemed most active, for several months after @edwardwest posted the blog which you linked above.

CTA has been deeply interesting and intellectually fertile. It seemed to me however that beyond our Hylo discussions-- and, quietly at first-- most of the limited but real work aimed to create API integrations between specific platforms, including Hylo, which are controlled by small exclusive groups of owners and workers.

Perhaps some folks viewed that as merely preliminary work, towards developing truly open technical standards. Perhaps they also viewed it as necessary to help small separate platforms survive, grow, and compete with monolithic empires like Google and Facebook. I don't want to speculate much. I'd prefer for platform owners and workers to speak for themselves.

Anyway, if CTA ever revives in an openly inviting way, I hope there will be clearer indications of what the public is and isn't being invited into. For instance, if specific decision-making structures exist, I'd like to see them. I love open data.

As I wrote in Hylo recently, CTA's turbulent history has been a big influence on my personal development. Most of my work looks beyond "platforms" to focus on the coordinated development of open source standards. However, I think we all face the SAME challenges in trying to develop effective communications and decision processes which scale inclusively for large diverse communities. We each need to identify personally sustainable steps to pursue such visions. I hope to coordinate constructively with CTA folks and others.

While I'm here, I want to reiterate my creative debt to the original Open App Ecosystem vision. :)

Greg, totally agree with all of that. I do think the CTA turned out to be a wonderful gathering place, and a way for like-minded people to find each other. (I believe I met you there?) Through spirited discussion, we did sort out positions on various possible directions, and there was clear disagreement on some fundamental levels... which is totally fine. I do respect the right of those who thought some of us were a real pain (for pushing for open source as a seal criterion for example) to gather their own group and do things the way they want for their own life purposes; we can continue to be friendly colleagues and collaborate along the way when we do occasionally converge.

Sorry it took me a while to answer you, but I had too much things to do !

I think lots of people want to work on an open app ecosystem, me included.

Great !

I'd like to work towards a system which would enable something like PLANET to be possible... https://open.coop/2017/01/10/planet-open-source-operating-system-collaborative-sustainable-economy/

If you want we can skype so I can show you a website called "communecter" which is a planet like with an open community so anyone can contribute to the project to make it better :D One of the inconvenient is that it's not completly translated (work in progress). So for now it's just in french.

The main issue with collaboration in this area is that it is THE BIGGEST project the open source / collaborative tech / commons transition Worlds have yet to tackle - and to date no collective has managed to break it down into (technologically compatible) bite-sized chunks, so people / groups tend to spin off and carry on working on their own, overlapping yet incompatible (from a tech perspective) projects which is a HUGE shame imho

Yeah, it's just huge ! We just need to create methods and tools to make this ecosystem works, and then train people to these methods and tools (which needs to be well designed and easy to understand).

I would be interested to support work on this wider, coordination project, in order to try and achieve some of the network effects we need to move to scale...

Actually, it would be nice to have a chat with you on skype or something. My ID is : ckiltolier. We could tell each other on what we are working now ;)

@olisb I'd also be interested in working with a group towards this very worthwhile goal if a group gets organized. If you have made headway towards that, great! I know everyone is involved with their own projects (including me), but maybe it's time to try again?

P.S. Is Planet a reality yet?

@lynnfoster and @gregorycassel
Thanks for taking the time to reply - from what I have learned, CTA v1 provided many valuable lessons - many of which are still being discussed ... especially in @bobhaugen 's excellent thread "Why did so little convergence result from this wonderful CTA conversation?" in the CTA group on Hylo (can't work out how to link there for the life of me!? but you can get there from https://www.hylo.com/c/collaborative-technology-alliance )
There's so much more to say on this subject, but I don't want to rush off suggesting things until I have more feedback from @edwardwest ...
Rest assured CTA v2 is not far away - and this time it will be more co-operative, more open and more effective than we can possibly imagine - well, that's the dream!
best
Oli

@olisb here's that thread: https://www.hylo.com/p/23634?utm_swu=3328

@lynnfoster to clarify: PLANET is not existing software, or even a project which is being developed. I designed it purely as a vision of what a "global, collaborative, open source, co-operative network that puts people and planet before profit..." might look like. I am not precious about it and do not want to force my vision onto anyone.

The purpose of PLANET is to illustrate one possible vision... I first designed it in 2004 >> https://open.coop/planet-the-open-co-ops-dream-communications-system/ and some of the aspects I included now exist :) but not within an open source network :(

To me it seems that all the elements of PLANET 2.0, which you see here >> https://open.coop/2017/01/10/planet-open-source-operating-system-collaborative-sustainable-economy/ exist already. All we need to do is agree on some technological choices, some systems architecture, and open source standards and plug it all together.

Lots of people seem to think this level of vision / ambition / size of project is not practical. I believe that it's 100% necessary to bring 'the network effect', we so clearly need, to our various distributed projects, in order to bring them to scale.

@olisb thanks.

All we need to do is agree on some technological choices, some systems architecture, and open source standards and plug it all together.

All right then, let's do it. I think we need to keep to the absolute minimum what we need to agree on. Definitely open source standards for how the software platforms or non-platforms can communicate - vocabulary and protocols. What technological choices do we need to agree on? What kind of systems architecture? I am not an expert in that area, but I do understand some people like linked open data, some people want to go below the http layer (like scuttlebutt) and other emerging experiments. I hope more knowledgeable people can detail some of that out. But I also hope we can keep it as open as technically possible.

Vocabulary standards is my current primary focus (https://www.valueflo.ws/). @matthewslater post above exposes one of the challenges we have in the vocabulary arena. He is creating an api for offers/requests for LETS and timebanks. We are creating a more general one for economic activity including both exchange and production/creation. Some people around the Open Food Network are working towards a food vocabulary, and considered ValueFlows but saw it as possibly too general for their purposes (discussions are ongoing). We have discussed api's and vocabulary off and on over the years with Matthew too, but have not been able to fold our efforts together. Do we need some way to semantically associate more general vocabularies (like ValueFlows) with more domain specific vocabularies that will work better for some people? And of course ValueFlows is specific to the economic domain, it is certainly not all purpose either. This is just one example to say: this stuff is hard on many levels! Especially during this kind of chaotic transitional stage we are in. We'll all have to go through many cycles of knowledge in creating this kind of ecosystem until things settle out more.

I see @bobhaugen posted while I was writing this about working on this based on actual needs to connect, from the ground up. And I think Matthew also believes this, because he is doing it, and correctly calls on others to actually do it too. I agree - we need to be creating what people need while trying to converge with each other as much as we can.

PLANET is envisaged as a platform, perhaps influenced by the early Facebook, except it is useful.

There are now hundreds of platforms trying to find a niche in facebook's monopoly space.

In this post I suggest that the way forward for such things is to define protocols to all all those platforms to share information.

https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/from-platform-cooperativism-to-protocol-cooperativism/2017/07/05#comment-1578852

In practice that means REST APIs

I'm now working on a REST service called SolSearch, which very simply indexes geolocialised offers and wants; users of compliant platforms can search across platforms. This is the plan for the LETS & Timebanks which I support. Here's the API

https://app.swaggerhub.com/api/matslats/sol-search/1.0.0

The potential application is much wider of course. Question is, I hear everybody here calling for such things, I don't know what it takes for them to either help code it, or adopt it in their platforms.

Matthew

In this post I suggest that the way forward for such things is to define protocols to all all those platforms to share information.

I know a group who works on that. They call it the "semantic bus". It enables to make interoperate all the platforms together. But I don't quite know the project. If you want I can connect you with the team ;)

I have said before, in another Loomio discussion, that I see actual collaboration, convergence, and interoperation happening when two or more different organizations want to do some concrete work together for some shared purpose. As an abstract idea, regardless of how wonderful, it don't tend to happen...

So who wants to do something together?

I have said before, in another Loomio discussion, that I see actual collaboration, convergence, and interoperation happening when two or more different organizations want to do some concrete work together for some shared purpose.

I completly agree with that. The fact is here we want to work together. We just don't know how for now ;) But we will when we'll have a clear objective to work on !

Thanks @olisb for this -- and Bob, Lynn, and others -- I think I was about 2 years ahead of what I could competently help build when CTA began. It's been a huge experience for me to try to learn how to build a company, while helping to seed a network, and a movement. Still lots to learn about all of these things.

We're finally at a position beginning in August to get more serious about our contribution to the API side of things, and I hope that together we'll be able to do some great things for the collaborative tool ecosystem.

It's been terrific for me to connect with Oliver SB and discuss how to get this in motion again.

@edwardwest great to hear from you. Looking forward to fruitful connection in the future, and will be interested to hear where you all want to go with api work in August.

And thanks @olisb and @draft for working on the networking side of things.

@draft can we just stay here in loomio rather than create yet another venue that requires signing up? Or am I the only person who thinks that?

can we just stay here in loomio rather than create yet another venue that requires signing up? Or am I the only person who thinks that?

You do whatever ;)

It's just if some people want to talk about "How to make an open apps ecosystem", they can do it in the chat, which is a better tool to easily exchange ideas and things in general.

The loomio is great for threads, and constructives and long answers.

It depends of your needs actually. I put the link here, anybody can use it, but people can do whatever they want ;)

Hi @lynnfoster,
Likewise - great to hear from Edward, I think there is consensus building around the need for API work...

I am continuing my outreach and am keen to find more collaborators who would be interested in pursuing CTA v2, with the goal of developing an "open app ecosystem".

I think there are valuable lessons to be learned from v1 - and the various posts on here and in Hylo about why some things to date have failed.

A great chat with @asimong just now has almost convinced me that it will be necessary to go back to basic and start by thinking about governance and social structure, since the values of any tech we build are going to mirror the values of the people that build it... and without some deep, shared vision, values and purpose we may fail.

I'm also keen not to devolve the discussions into any other forums - unless necessary.

best
Oli

A great chat with @asimong just now has almost convinced me that it will be necessary to go back to basic and start by thinking about governance and social structure, since the values of any tech we build are going to mirror the values of the people that build it... and without some deep, shared vision, values and purpose we may fail.

I think this is in essence what occurred in CTA v1, and was not resolved. I'm not sure I want to do a whole round of governance prior to doing work though, because some of this level of unity will come more clearly through hashing out the actual work. But some preliminary effort to get better acquainted and confirm basic values and principles would be welcome, especially if there is a project on the ground we want to work on together.

I also think that people can collaborate tactically even when there isn't deep agreement on values and goals, as long as that is very clearly and honestly shared up front. (It took a long time to unearth that in CTA v1, there were assumptions made by all of us, that didn't even occur to us would be different among others in the group.) For example, I (as someone who wants to make change in the current system as quickly as possible and doesn't need to mix day job with movement work) can potentially work with someone who wants to do a start-up with their friends, if we can agree on things like all code is open source, and even if I would rather work with people who are creating a co-op than a start-up.

So in other words, I think this is a fairly complex set of topics that can be worked through somewhat piecemeal as needed, even as we start work on the ground together, which I think is the most important.

Likewise - great to hear from Edward, I think there is consensus building around the need for API work...

I do think this is the best way to interoperate platforms !

I am continuing my outreach and am keen to find more collaborators who would be interested in pursuing CTA v2, with the goal of developing an "open app ecosystem".

I'm in :D
Let's do it in one year, let's say beginning of July in Cuba ! :D

it will be necessary to go back to basic and start by thinking about governance and social structure, since the values of any tech we build are going to mirror the values of the people that build it... and without some deep, shared vision, values and purpose we may fail.

I disagree with that. I would even say the contrary. I'd love to work with people without the same way of thinking, it makes me evolve so much !
I'm currently working on the taxonomy of the ecosystem, and a method to make it resilient. I can tell you about my work !

Don't know the details about why this failed. But the question why IT infrastructure development fails is a broad and complex one.

From my experience, one important success factor for IT infrastructure development is to be embedded in a community of practice. The software needs to come from people who are actually doing the real activity on the ground, and I am not talking about programming as activity, I am talking about all the other activities. Software is just a tool, and the community of practice will shape it and use it if it is useful.

Governance and culture are created within the community of practice. They don't come before the community. Governance is also a tool as much as IT infrastructures and methodologies of work. Culture is a set of incarnated values and norms (habits) that make this community of practice operate smoothly.

At the button of everything we have a bunch of individuals who are doing something together and adopt ways to do what they do better, and that includes adopt rules, methods, tools, i.e. build an organisation.

The problem today is that we have a class of devs/programmers who think code comes first and society follows. Disruptive technology creates new possibilities and people figure out how to materialise and benefit from these possibilities and that leads to social change. But incremental technology usually comes in response to a need that people express while doing something. The process must be a pull not a push. But sice there are a lot of programmers around looking for their opportunity to fame or make it big, they dream software applications that respond to imaginary needs and imaginary users. Can't blame them, their passion is to write code and like anyone else they look for validation and recognition. The problem is in the divide between programmers, who meet on platforms like Github and form their tribes, and the practitioners who are busy with real world problems and congregate in other places.

Fortunately, there are programers who work closely with practitioners and understand the powerful symbiosis between themselves and practitioners. I had the chance to meet one, Bob Haugen, who the first thing he told me was that he was looking for a community doing real world work to develop software along with it. I know others like Bob, but on the other side, we have such a massive waste of brainpower developing applications from imagination, from surveys and discussions and opinions, detached from reality which has infinite granularity and diversity, applications that no one will use. I guess this nonsense activity is similar to playing computer games, one needs to give himself challenges and get excited when the computer finaly does what he wanted it to do, yeey, victory. It's cool to have fun, as long as we know we're just having fun. But having fun with the impression of working hard for a cause is a bit wired... and I know a bunch of programmers caught/hooked into their virtual world to obsessively solve a mathematical or programming problem or find a more elegant solution, just fornthe sake of it, because it is intellectualy beautifull or exciting, thinking that they are actually doing service to society. We need to worry about this behaviour. As a practitioner, I try to stay away from this type of programmers, because they will pull you in their direction just because that's what they like to work on, this is where they find their challenges, because they are driven mostly by the kick they get out of it, less by the goals of the community of practitioners. Again, it' good to have fun, as long as we are able to distinguish between when we have fun and when we are actually doing something useful with others.

So I think this is the major cause for software development projects failure. They are detached from practice, for different reasons.

I hope some devs/programmers are reading.

I really appreciate Tibi's kind words, and I totally agree with his advice, but I made a lot of mistakes on Sensorica's software project. Trying to learn how to do it better in the next set of projects...

but on the other side, we have such a massive waste of brainpower developing applications from imagination

I agree on what you say :) Let's not work with them ! And if our methods and tools work. They will possibly come to us afterwards !

I could help with the structuring of this project and build into it support activities such as mapping, outreach, project management and Governance, crowdfunding, ...

hey all!

i'm still working on an open ecosystem of digital tools at:

• Value Flows
• Scuttlebutt
• Root Systems Ltd.
• Enspiral

❤️

This is a project that was started as a collaboration between people from Mikorizal (NRP), Fair Coop, GoPacifia, and Matrioshka (a spinoff from Sensorica):
http://rea-project.readthedocs.io/en/latest/intro.html
Some of those people have stayed active, some have not. The current work is going on in
https://github.com/django-rea/rea-app/wiki

The ultimate goal is a a set of software lego blocks for assembling economic network systems. That is where @lynnfoster and I are mostly focused these days, along with continuing work on these older projects:
* NRP (Network Resource Planning): https://github.com/valnet/valuenetwork, currently in active use by Sensorica and Learn Deep. Not sure about Matrioshka...(@tiberiusbrastavice ?)
* OCP (Freedom Coop's Open Collaborative Platform): https://github.com/FreedomCoop/valuenetwork/

I am also playing around with the Value Flows Vocabulator:
http://valueflows.pythonanywhere.com/

Hi Bob and all
There was a great effort in trying to interconnect and interoperate all these platforms and communities. Easier said than done , it might be a good time to get together again , on our side we've just released the new version of communecter.org
and have a few new features around interoperabilty developped.
@bobhaugen @lynnfoster @ishanshapiro @elfpavlik @tiberiusbrastavice, every one shall we try to meetup to share ou activties ?

Hey @tiborkatelbach and @ahdinosaur great to hear from you both!! Yes it was easier said than done, but maybe the time is getting more ripe, who knows?

Tibor, I'd be interested in what interoperability features you have developed in the latest Communecter.

And I'd be very interested in a gathering to see where we are and where we might want to go together or in smaller collaborations or whatever.

I know it's the Big G, but I'd propose a Google Hangout so we can record and publish easily for anyone who wants to follow asynchronisly

I'm okay with google hangouts. Do you know what their current practical group size limit is? (With skype on linux, by the way, it's 2.)

@bobhaugen @joshuavial @matthewslater @olisb @tiborkatelbach @lynnfoster @tiberiusbrastavice @ahdinosaur @edwardwest @gregorycassel : You seem all very interested in assembling a set of software together to enable new economy and social systems to come. And you made a lot of great work going in this direction.

What I propose to you is a video conference to update everyone about our own practice and network, and to define the method we'll use to work together. I've started a google doc about the agenda of the meeting. Feel free to contribute to it ;)

If you are interested in this meeting, please fill the form to know your disponibilities.

Thank you all for your motivation, it's really great to work in this kind of environment !

If you are interested in this meeting, please fill the form to know your disponibilities.

@draft Matthew commented in the form, and I have the same question: what time zone is assumed?

likewise - a time would be useful - since I (and I assume others) am rarely free all day - even just AM / PM might help
??

My bad, I'm not used to work in different time zone, plus I forgot I would do it with loomio which far better. Just forget the old URL, I'm making a new form

Hi @draft
I think this is a good plan, although Skype sometimes gets painful with more than 3 people on a call (not sure if you are proposing Skype or another system?) - especially when using video, so that might be a problem...

I am keen to get involved but am hoping we may be able to branch out slightly wider than just the people listed above and especially to include people from:

https://www.progcode.org/
http://opensupporter.org/
http://commonstransition.org/
https://enspiral.com/
https://www.valueflo.ws/
http://www.mutualaidnetwork.org/
http://www.sensorica.co/
https://diglife.com/

(@bobhaugen covers some of those listed above - and @joshuavial covers Enspiral) but it would still be nice to have a few more people from other projects / org / networks such as

https://solid.mit.edu/
Scuttlebutt
any maybe some others too

It may also be hard to cover all the ideas in your agenda on such a call (even if no video) and some of them may not be required (e.g. Why) so it may be more pragmatic to split this down into more specific meetings on "Objectives" and "ways of working together" which I see as the main issues.

Happy to go with the crowd tho... :)

best
Oli

Skype sucks bad on Linux. Some people have been using jitsi or appear.in, but all of the video meeting apps have their own problems, especially re bandwith. But I'll try whatever is decided.

I agree with all what you said :)

Skype or whatever, it needs to be good :)

I put all the questions we need to answer, if we can't answer them in one call, we can split no prob and be more precise about the objective of each meeting.

If you want more people to get involved in the video conference, no problem. Let's agree on the objective of the meeting (I make a proposition, you can answer me in the google doc : Why do we want an open app ecosystem, what would it be, and how are we gonne make it ? (as said earlier, we can do it in several parts). I never done a 10+ participants in an internet meeting, so I don't know if it's good or not.

What do you say ?

I'd also like to see more async preparation for a meeting, either here in this thread or elsewhere. (But loomio does give us some good features for group conversations for action, which is difficult at best.)

@ahdinosaur You can add hours on this form ;)

I'm also fine with G hangouts, or anything else besides skype.

we managed around 8 people not so long ago
with a simple protocol, where everyone cuts the camera and mic
and turns camera on to talk , and then the mic when the current person finishes and so on ....
it worked fairly well

@tiborkatelbach I think this time poll can figure out the time zones and present you with yours. (I'm not positive, but I see 6am, 8am, 10am - and i'm pretty sure that isn't what everyone sees.)

@tiborkatelbach @lynnfoster Lynn's right, loomio's a good tool :D

I let you know that the poll finishes in 16 hours ;)

According to the time poll, I propose this date : Monday the 24th of July - 12:00pm UTC

You can see what's the hour means in your current country here : http://www.worldtimeserver.com/current_time_in_UTC.aspx

Tell me if it's good for you !

Good for me and Bob!