I have written a short blog on how Solid can address social issues . It is just a start of talking about a quite complex subject and I’ve, of course, left much out.
I would very much value feedback and this forum is probably the best avenue for that. Thanks in advance!
Where I tied it to some of the stuff I have been talking about before on this forum:
I really love this, @jeffz and I feel it is a very inspiring example of how linked data can be applied in new and interesting ways (so that’s a nice follow-up to what I just wrote in topic Is RDF “hard”?).
There’s a very broad applicability to this model, that goes beyond “organizations” (though it depends what semantic meaning you attach to that term, I guess). Thinking more general about the social benefit of any Actor (ActivityPub terminology) or Agent (Valueflows terminology) that touch on my interest areas.
I’m involved in preparing a new (crowdsourced) initiative called Social Coding Movement (not yet launched, will be somewhere later this year) that focuses on the social aspects throughout the entire Free Software Development Lifecycle. Software that focuses on real human needs is an important aspect, but considering the social benefit of a project organization that delivers the software is equally important.
So I will take this into consideration for that effort. These kinds of models come into play when building supportive tools for social coding, and where we want to wield the Fediverse to roll them out. Another potential Fediverse application applies more universally: the Fediverse consists of 1,000’s of servers, called Instances, where the member base of an instance forms an implicit community. Instances may have a specific theme, but more importantly they have their own Code of Conduct and moderation policies.
I am advocating to decouple “Community” as a ‘fediverse-native’ concept from artificial server boundaries, by having communities be represented by Group-type Actors and also be able to better represent the intricate ‘social fabric’ of real life by letting them have meaningful Relationship objects to other Actors. The Social Benefit model may play a role in that too, by defining Code of Conduct and ‘purpose’ in general in machine-readable fashion. Apart from that, and as something to be modeled on top I am interested in a concise “Governance” so you’d be able to shape ‘democratical community governance’ on the Fediverse.
Will post your article to some other people whom I know will be interested in it (like Bonfire and aforementioned Valueflows teams).
Thanks. I dont really understand the restrictions of that license. So I have to date avoided that forum. When I sign up there’s a big sign, or at least there was, from a company
The NonCommercial part was what I would want to understand better. An issue was raised on it here:
So I am cautious to post to, or reply to that stuff
It seems to me that talking about ValueFlows etc. could lead to things that are commercial in nature too. And I dont know the implications of a NonCommercial license
Yes, Solid is weirdly and worryingly targeted in large part to commercial markets. They OSS everything (MIT) but no copyleft FOSS in there. This is a focus in the core team I think, which seem to see the corporate world as the best way to broad adoption. Something which I highly doubt is a prudent strategy and have also discussed that on the forum in the past and that I felt that the core team has a kind of “ivory-towery” approach, too formal structure, and are neglecting community-building (and neglecting that forum with that). But also it is on that forum where I found devs with the proper values and free software mindset, and was hoping to interest these to cross-community collaboration.
@bhaugen and @lynnfoster, both of Valueflows, are most qualified to answer that. From what I’ve seen they are firmly on a post-capitalist “new way of doing things” exploration that has great appeal to me.
Don’t know the full implications of NonCommercial license myself (wonder if Solid folks are even aware it is used there), but I think it applies purely to your posts. Not sure if mere mentioning idea there for the first time means that it can no longer be used commercially.
Also true. Valueflows will support any kind of economic activity, including solidarity economy experiments and capitalist enterprises. Mostly we worry about making sure it will support the former in its many different forms, and let the latter just happen as it does.
this, @jeffz and I feel it is a very inspiring example of how linked data can be applied in new and interesting ways (so that’s a nice follow-up to what I just wrote in topic Is RDF “hard”?).
