Empowering Fairness, Fostering Autonomy
DonateMission
The Democratic Open Source Software Institute is devoted to cultivating fairness and user autonomy within the open-source technology sector. We believe in a truly accessible open-source environment, unmarred by restrictive vendor-specific practices that disadvantage users, especially those within rural areas. Our primary mission is to raise awareness to potential exploitation within this ecosystems, while championing democratic engagement in policies and practices governing the sector.
Establishing Authority in
Open Source
Driving Conversations for Change
Community Infrastructure
Community Infrastructure is a framework where democratic user participation, user trust, and developer best practices are the cornerstones. This infrastructure is a subset of open-source infrastructure, where open-source decision-making power is decentralized and placed directly into the hands of open-source contributors.
Values
The values that underpin this model of Community Infrastructure are deeply tied to the notion of full participation. In open-source projects, this is reflected in the open-source decision-making process, where both the direct interests (developers) and the affected interests (users) have a say.
Purpose
The overarching purpose of this decentralized approach to infrastructure is to create a world where there is no cloud rent – a metaphor for eliminating the reliance on centralized platforms that extract value from users and developers.
Envisioning Justice in
Open Source
Exploring how John Rawls’ principles of fairness and equality can guide us toward a more democratic and inclusive open-source environment.
Decoding
Collective Action
Understanding group dynamics and the role of incentives in fostering effective collaboration in open-source communities.
Articles
Are cooperatives and open source projects and communities a natural fit? What are the similarities between the two? What is the difference between a traditional company that invests heavily in open source and the traditional products and services that are produced from a cooperative? This paper reviews what the major themes shared between open source and cooperatives are and how they relate to one another. These themes are decentralization, democratic governance, community value, compensation schemes, and ethics.
Not all meritocracies are fair. New forms of meritocracies are emerging where ideas are harvested into an ownership hierarchy. This results in a system that lures participants into giving away assets that they would normally keep for themselves or forgo creating altogether. The three behaviors necessary for new meritocracies are the promotion of ideas, hierarchy of ownership, and harvesting. Good management obeys customer desires 2. Customers desire more of the same 3. Therefore, good management obeys the desire for more of the same.
When there are multiple paths to an outcome with no one path being better than the rest, that outcome is a bike shed. The term bike shed comes from an example of a company engaging in a relatively trivial and unimportant discussion to develop a storage area for the company’s bicycles. The specific way to develop a bike shed is not 1 important and the series of steps used to develop a bike shed creates this unwarranted discussion.
When there are multiple paths to an outcome with no one path being better than the rest……