I don’t know what OGB is, but I do know a little bit about how unaffected Indians chose not to involve themselves in someone else’s affairs until such time arose when it was they themselves, alone, to fend for themselves and their culture.
Governance is a tricky concept. Certainly, it can mean just that, with rigid structures that disenfranchise parties the most interested, because they perceive it as a control mechanism manipulated by others, not themselves, with special interests not their own.
And that @aschrijver , @onepict , @weex , and others here, is what is being prepared here.
I’ve lived through the trademark lobby and WIPO infiltrating and capturing the community with abetting from the U.S. And European governments when Internet governance was (supposedly) gifted to the community.
It didn’t end well and now part of the #DeSoc initiative includes obviating DNS, and to a lesser degree which cannot be completely decoupled, IP, in some fringe project circles. That is certainly not part of the ActivityPub aim in DeSoc, since it actually depends upon leveraging DNS.
I see much in the way of verbiage like “inclusiveness” bantered about, which itself is a nasty term often used to weaponize exclusion, but not withstanding those terrible connotations, suffice it to mention that we talk about including more than just devs in the conversation surrounding governance and “do-ability”, and then disregard that majority when we actually get down to preparing to implement a governing body, or bodies.
I’ve presented several times, as a speaker of the GA at ICANN’s annual meetings, and even though it’s the heart of what that governing body is, the only policy set, is the policy set through fiat by the board with input from special interest groups mentioned above and a few select others.
There is no money here in our arena, so to speak. Only a concern and a will to advance and protect the Fediverse whilst adhering to its core philosophies - concepts that can and will be subverted and forgotten almost as quickly as those definitions are changed on its Wikipedia page - just like the history of ICANN and Internet governance.
We talk about a do-ocracy, and do-ability, and campaigns to enlist the most affected and unbeknownst to them, the most affected of the non coding demographic of our DeSoc space, then silently dismiss them when the rubber meets the road and a project or talk of a protocol or Decentralized Social community governance model is formulated.
The deprecated, privacy disrespecting, legacy monolithic silo systems have infinite monetary assets from which to purchase influence. Influence in the form of professional confidence men to infiltrate, disrupt, and ineffectualize organizing. Influence to force legislation it deems beneficial to itself and its design for dominance. Influence to affect outcomes of community interest when those interests are not parallel to its own.
Now that the Fediverse has a bit of a darling moment with the media, already this transition is taking place with respect to certain paradigms of Fediverse DeSoc space - one particular platform has been singled out, with s shift away from the branding of Fediverse being a horizontally scaling network to a transition of vertical scaling for that platform’s brand, even going so far as to scrub the word “Fediverse” from its marketing material where it doesn’t directly benefit that brand itself - i.e., stability is better assured when a well funded, professionally operated large Fediverse instance is chosen over that of any #smallweb or community self-funded instance initiative.
FOSS developers understand very well the significance of things FOSS, its roll in the democratization of software and indeed the online world. But they are arguably the least impacted, regardless of their zealously devout commitment to two things (software and Internet). They can go ahead and simply move to another project, paid or otherwise, open source or otherwise.
The user, however, the whole reason that this software exists, is left excluded and at the mercy of the elements - some of which sre governance constructs and bodies which have given much lip service to their intrinsic value and significance, then summarily dismisses them come time for their actual input and enormous value in those governance bodies.
The irony? Well, it’s that the big, corporate, deep pocketed dreadnaughts actually embrace those societal components - those non-dev (doer) folks, because that’s the body of power that enables you to win, to make the decisions that matter, and the devs just code what they’re told to on that side of the fence, because it’s run by business people, and lawyers, and strategists and public relations departments that have the juice to spin a narrative any way they want to.
So two things l propose here:
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) Make sure that this “community based” governance body is based upon advocacy, marketing strategy, and adoption as it’s primary mission - not infinitesimal operational specifications - We already have the FEP at Codeberg.
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) Insure that the largest component of those bodies be those from the most affected and interested demographic of the community - non-devs. Those are the people who can actually effect the outreach and understanding of the principles to the masses that the devs can distill for them which leads to popularization, adoption, and critical mass; and the greatest defense against the FUD and disinformation published by the deprecated legacy silo systems.
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) Stop taking about inclusiveness with respect to non-devs and then excluding them from the “do-ers” group - they actually DO, more than us.
Well, in closing I’d just like to thank everyone for taking time to read and as you know, my autocorrect is Satan and hates me; so allow me to apologize in advance for not proof reading in advance. I know, Cardinal sin lolz.
Thanks again and I hope that helps!
#tallship
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