Obligatory https://xkcd.com/927/

I (apparently) talked about this on the fringes of the conference about seven years ago:
https://hughbarnard.org/federated-apis/

As such my 'comment of the day', would be standards are a thing, adoption/implementation is another thing. There's a lot of inertia, TCP/IP beat X25 (I think) mainly because there was suddenly power at the edges in the form of PCs. So a new one usually has a very hard time.

I've restarted a little work on https://sourceforge.net/projects/cclite2/ as an anti-crypto demo (for one thing) and implemented MQTT via https://www.rabbitmq.com/ as an experiment. Lots of stuff possible with existing pub/sub.

Hi, I'm a frontend developer and am very keen to help build the PLANET app. Where do I sign up to do so?

@numblock you just did! :) I will send you a DM to discuss more...

In many cases, it might be difficult to imagine an app that doesn't yet exist? Could the approach to finding out what the groups need be different? Instead of saying we want to build this app, would you use it? Approach them and ask: "what digital problems do you have"? Or, in general, "what problems do you have" and then see if a digital solution can help solve those problems? The result may or may not be the same as foreseen or hoped for?

@Ivana I 110% agree with you. @Oli SB we really do need requirements from real stakeholders before we start specifying features. And I know that it does seem like an arduous task when everything seems very obvious. And, believe me, I feel this too – I'm speaking from my own experience. But building for collaborators from day one has really humbled my process within Kendraio and also made our app more relevant to real people, doing what they do, from day one.

@Ivana remember our group tools survey ? We did a huge amount of research ... and are feeding the results into our plan for PLANET ;)

Hi @Oli SB I love your graphics. Really easy to digest. Can I set up my own group? With my own group rules? What if I just want to do something on my own, can it be private? Can I have a private group? There's so much great features in the Planet app but can I use them if I don't want to share everything? I guess I'm wondering if there is enough freedom for the individual here. Am I free enough when using this app? Is the total stack (from tech to operations to philosophy) too fixed one way or can I change some part for me without having to ask for permission or get agreement from others? And does that make the whole thing a bit brittle? Cheers!

Thanks for the encouragement @Daniel Harris let me try to answer your excellent questions:

Can I set up my own group?

Yes, you can set one up on a hosted instance of PLANET, host your own instance of the PLANET code (for yourself and other groups) or use some platform / roll your own and adopt the same protocols

With my own group rules?

Sure, as long as you agree to the main principles and Membership Agreement of PLANET (TBD but essential agreeing that 'we rely on planet earth for our survival, therefore we put people and planet before profit, and default to cooperation rather than competition)

What if I just want to do something on my own, can it be private?

Sure, we imagine private groups coming in later phases - as the whole point of PLANET is collaboration, so private groups are not a key requirement

Can I have a private group?

as above

There's so much great features in the Planet app but can I use them if I don't want to share everything? I guess I'm wondering if there is enough freedom for the individual here. Am I free enough when using this app?

that's a hard one to answer without a definition of 'free enough'!! NB you may need to pay a small amount to cover hosting costs if you're on a hosted solution.

Is the total stack (from tech to operations to philosophy) too fixed one way or can I change some part for me without having to ask for permission or get agreement from others?

Not sure - this is a work in progress

And does that make the whole thing a bit brittle?

TBD but the main point here is that what we are trying to define is a set of protocols (which people can chose to adopt or not) and to implement them to provide a hosted solution for groups, which others can also install, or integrate with by using the same protocols - so members are not locked into one 'platform' or instance, so hopefully will feel free enough to want to collaborate with other people and groups in 'the network' / 'federation'

Hope this helps?

PS. This was meant to be the 'outreach' thread and this feels more like 'specification' so I may move these posts to the other thread.

@Oli SB thanks for your great answers! And I'm cool with you moving the thread. Yes, it does seem a little bit more like 'specification'. 🙂 By the way, I was thinking Planet was a standalone app but actually it's a hosted service. So, perhaps calling this the Planet Platform might be more appropriate? And now that I know this is a service, can we make sure that the communication between the user's device and the service is an open API? Or, if the app running on the user's device is just a branded wrapped browser, can we make sure that there is also an open API to the Planet server so that alternative interfaces can be created? By the way we are trying to make APIs mandatory for all websites, apps and services with our Kendraio API Law. Enjoy!

@Daniel Harris thanks for your thoughts on this - you made me realise that I have been trying to describe too much under the PLANET name, so I've now broken it down into: The PLANET Project, within which we are designing Protocols, Infrastructue and a Network, as detailed here: https://open.coop/planet/ hopefully this makes it easier to understand!?

And YES! There will be APIs - none of this will work without them... ;)

Thanks @Oli SB. This is getting clearer from me. But just so I understand totally, you want to build a service/website? This is not an app that can run offline on a device (phone or laptop) like Excel? This service is accessed via a web browser? All true in your view? Or are you not sure yet? And that's totally cool if you are not sure yet? We are all feeling our way. Knowing if these statements are true, false, maybe will really help me and others help you define the specification. But I want to be clear before I suggest stuff. Happy to have a call about this by the way. Cheers!

Hi @Daniel Harris good clarifying questions. Yes the MVP at least will be provide a way for Admins to host websites (or services, if you want to describe it like that) for groups of user members. It will probably be designed to be mobile first, and to be acccessed via a PWA. So, not strictly an app in the 'app store' sense, but still, an app experience for members. It may also be designed to be local first so that it is not reliant on a constant connection to the server and still works for people with poor connections... but all of this is still TDB.

Hi @Oli SB building an app as a PWA is totally legitimate and it is extremely common practice. Many of the apps in app stores are PWAs wrapped in native library that includes a browser. Apps in app stores don't have to be totally native but just wrapped in something that makes them look native. That's what we have in mind for Kendraio App too. I would also stress that the requirement of being able to operate offline totally changes the architecture not only of the local device app but also the hosted server software. So, knowing early in the design phase is essential. It's not something that can be bolted on later without a total rewrite – and expensive. And I totally support the Planet local device app being offline capable. It would be awesome! Are you going to the Local-first conference? I'll be there! I was in the second row last year. This year I have glasses so not sure which row I'll be in! 🙂

Hi All,

We just published our research into DIDs https://open.coop/2025/02/09/planet-research-decentralized-identifiers/ we think we may have found a suitable solution for PLANET in UCAN, but would love more thoughts and input on this. Selecting an appropriate ID system is clearly a foundational part of specifying PLANET so please do share your feedback!
In collaboration!

Oli

@Oli SB

We’re excited to hear about the reinvigoration of the Open Co-op’s PLANET initiative! My wife, Jennifer, and I have been developing a vision that closely aligns with PLANET—one that has evolved from a cooperative economic model I first envisioned in the late 90s while working on a transformative initiative for American Airlines.

In recent years, this vision has become increasingly user-centric, leading us to develop an open-source offers and needs app. More recently, we’ve focused on enabling small, close communities of care (CoCs)—designed around mutual respect and aid—to strengthen relationships through shared values and resources.

Introducing GoalPost

Last November, our Seed CoC came together in Greece to co-design and build the first prototype of GoalPost, an open protocol, open-source platform for community-driven collaboration. Like PLANET, our approach prioritizes meeting the foundational needs of our own community first, then iteratively expanding to broader communities in a way that embraces non-separability and regenerative values.

Using the Shape Up methodology (from Basecamp), we successfully completed our first GoalPost prototype in January. Our initial focus was on:

• Building a shared ontology & graph of core knowledge for seamless resource-sharing.

• Developing a Neo4J implementation & UX to facilitate intuitive navigation and collaboration.

• Prioritizing emergent insights from our user community to guide future iterations.

We are currently testing this prototype across two CoCs, and we’re already seeing promising results—particularly in how people engage with new connections and shared resources.

Potential Synergies with PLANET

We see significant opportunities for cross-pollination between GoalPost and PLANET. A few insights we’d love to share:

1. Sustaining Offers & Needs Markets – Our experience with open-source offers & needs apps revealed that initial excitement often fades unless resource-sharing is placed at the core of the UX. We shifted our ontology accordingly, replacing offers with resources and linking those to goals in a way that embraces needs, wants, desires, etc. We also introduced Care Points as a way to measure effectiveness. These are similar to the reputation features identified for PLANET, but focused more on mutual aid.

2. Leveraging Generative AI Without High Compute Costs – We’ve explored graphRAG with generative AI to reduce reliance on costly LLMs.

3. Enhanced Security & Distributed Identity – Given the sensitivity of community data, our approach to DID-based authentication and authorization extends beyond what we’ve seen in PLANET’s documentation.

Next Steps?

We’d love to discuss how we can best share our experiences to support PLANET’s mission. We could:

• Suggest open-source components that may be useful for PLANET.

• Share insights on semantic knowledge graphs & privacy-centric architecture.

• Explore how our graph-based AI approaches align with PLANET’s roadmap.

Would you be open to a call or a deeper discussion via DM? We’d love to find ways to contribute meaningfully to the PLANET initiative.

Looking forward to your thoughts!

Best,
Robert & Jennifer Damashek

Hi @RobertD - thanks for highlighting your work, which looks excellent and so aligned with PLANET we'd be crazy not to collaborate somehow! Let's aim to set up an open meeting which others can attend too (no point in having private DMs - at The Open Co-op we like to work in the open!)... perhaps once you have a version of GalPost which you are able to demo. Which time zone are you in? Feel free to suggest some dates / times to meet? (Mondays and Thursdays, UK day time work best for me - but lets go with whatever time suits the most people) We can use the Open Co-op BBB meeting room. Looking forward to hearing more.

I have also been chatting to @Grace (Rebecca Rachmany) who worked on a game around community sufficiency which feels related to your work, about which she said "...the purpose is to generate self-sufficiency and strong trust in a region. It's not to "fulfill needs and offers". In other words, it's a sufficiency approach rather than being based on marketplace conceptualizations of what needs and offers means.... The idea is that you might not get exactly what you need, but a lot more value is created by just sitting down and discussing how each group can help one another, rather than how do we simply exchange goods. For example, we can borrow a truck from a neighbor instead of buying it, or we could teach our young people to construct cars from old parts. Those solutions don't make sense for an individual or in a strictly defined trading system, but on a local level you start to expose resources and solutions that are otherwise unavailable."

I think this kind of interaction is a key part of the local groups we want to support with PLANET and suggested that "somehow we need to embed this thinking / practice into local group processes... perhaps it should form part of an 'onboarding guide' for new groups that express interest in using the PLANET O&W tools..."?

This also feels highly related to what Indra has also been working on with the CANS so we have lots of experiuence on which to build!

Both this community side of mutual aid / O&W / local groups, and the tech, are things we can discuss when we meet.

Looking forward to it!
Oli

@Oli SB We would love to have an open meeting in the Open Coop BBB! We are on US Eastern Standard Time (GMT-5). We are expecting to have a demo app instance installed and operational sometime this week, and Thursday’s don’t tend to work well for us. I would suggest we explore either the week of 24 February, Monday or Wednesday, 2pm GMT, or the following week of 3 March at the same time. We could do a demo and explore alternatives for collaboration with Planet.

The community sufficiency game sounds interesting to discuss as well as CANS. It’s also interesting to explore how small groups (ours are small but not strictly local) focused on mutual care might collaborate with a platform cooperative offering care-centered, regenerative (e.g., non-transactional) services.

We plan to apply AI for matching in a subsequent prototype, with an emphasis on matching semantics first (GraphRAG) to minimize the use of LLMs and their drain on planetary resources. This is likely a topic for a subsequent discussion, but I would point out the wonderful set of like-minded resources sponsored by Gesturing towards Decolonial Futures.

Thanks again Oli and look forward to meeting!

Robert and Jennifer Damashek

@RobertD  2pm GMT on the 24th works for me - see you then on BBB: https://de.meet.coop/oli-qef-zg3-r06 all welcome! :)

@Oli SB it's in my calendar! Cheers!

Hi All,

Just a quick reminder, we're meeting at 2pm GMT today to see a demo of @RobertD 's Offers and Wants system and to discuss ways of enabling communities with Offers & Wants in general, all welcome! :) - see you on BBB: https://de.meet.coop/oli-qef-zg3-r06

@RobertD that sounds interesting! I'm particularly curious about your offers/needs software, with resource sharing. Do you have links that would explain that more, or even a demo?

Also interested if there is more you can share about your GoalPost prototype? Thanks!

@Lynn Foster Thanks for your interest. Just to clarify, I’m wondering if you are interested in our earlier offer and needs app. If so, we have a demo version of that here. We also have an open source repository available here, and the ReadMe describes the project goals fairly well. However that software it is not under active development. It was built before we fully realized the issues with sustaining engagement in OANMs, and that resources were more important.

We do expect to have our demo version of the GalPost prototype 1 with test data available sometime next week, and are happy to arrange for a demonstration .

FYI @Lynn Foster @RobertD I have 45,000+ users signed up to my old car/ride share platform Freewheelers which we will soon integrate into Kendraio App as a Kendraio Pilot. And extend from cars/rides to other services. We will also integrate any other offer/request platforms (that have an API) into Kendraio App. Note that Kendraio App is a free, open source, personal, local-first, no-code app that enables users to aggregate similar services into their own personal dashboards. Also note that there is no requirement for any of the platform APIs to be similar. We create a bespoke connector for each service. Kendraio App runs on a user's device and connects directly to the platforms. There is no middle server. Kendraio (the team/non-profit organisation) does not take a cut of transactions nor have any view of the transactions. We are also experimenting with integrating to shopping systems so that users could build their own personalised Amazon. I think the Planet system will be an awesome part of the positive change ecosystem.

@Daniel Harris Thanks for sharing about Kendraio. I had noticed that with interest when first reviewing the PLANET threads. It seems like a wonderful initiative and the level of grant support you’ve achieved with it is marvelous! My initial review of the architecture in the Kendraio documentation leads me to question if it will support the core capabilities we have envisioned for GoalPost. I would be glad to discuss that further if you’re interested.

Hi @RobertD I'm very happy to discuss further. From what I can tell, from your description of GoalPost, you are most likely correct. If I'm not wrong, with GoalPost, you are building a service that is hosted on a server whereas Kendraio is building an app that is installed on the end-user's local device (mobile/laptop). However, if you present all functionality as APIs then Kendraio App can provide the end-user with a view on to your service via an UI that they control. Kendraio is being build to provide the end-user with more freedom. Freedom to choose and modify their own UI and freedom to choose how they combine and visualise the data that they interact with from all the service providers that they interact with. This is very much about decoupling the user interface and user experience from the hosted services and data. And also reducing data siloing where user data is captured within each service. I hope that makes sense. So, actually Kendraio is a great fit with any hosted service that has a decent API. We are collaborating in multiple sectors and with services that have APIs in order to demonstrate how this app could be a personal hub. So, I reckon GoalPost would most likely be a great fit. Cheers!

@Daniel Harris Would love to learn more about how readily the Kendraio app could be applied to provide users more freedom in crafting their own experiences and sharing spaces while accessing our services that in turn access open protocols and APIs. Like Kendraio, we intend to ensure our services are lightweight enough that they can execute in and on local user devices as well as community servers. Care for user privacy, anonymity and local control of knowledge sharing, are all critical features we plan to be support in our services. Look forward to the discussion next week and seeing if there are deeper ways we can collaborate.

For my part I'm adamant that what's needed is a modular system defined by protocols. The offers and wants is clearly the most important functionality. I see it as a web service with 3 discreet components:
- storage with detailed filtering.
- indexing the global filtering via murmurations
- some kind of AI to help with matchmaking
- some design patterns and code for the UI

@Matthew Slater All on-board with the needs you identified, Matthew. We are leveraging a multi-layer, modular service architecture, with each driven by a defined open protocol and open source components. Based on resource constraints, we are prototyping each layer incrementally. This definitely includes AI for matchmaking, as you can see in my response to Oli in this thread. I look forward to a deeper discussion!

The other day a fediverse enabled marketplace was brought to my attention. This Italian community implements the open source "flohmarket" software: http://FediMercatino.it People can publish their offers (and wants I suppose). The platform is ActivityPub enabled so people with accoubts on other fefiverse instanxes can just as well communicate with the people publishing their ads. It is still quite simple, but possibly a good start. This bei g inside the fediverse makes it potentially very powerful.

Probably @Lynn Foster and others have heard of this already, but I thought it useful to share. Also thinking of Bonfire having this functionality in their roadmap. What do you think of this?

@wouterfreeknowledge.eu thank you, I had not heard of flohmarkt, and am happy to know of them, and will try to learn more. I don't know if they used the FEP (fediverse extension proposal) for offers/wants using Valueflows, but I'm guessing probably not.

I agree about the potential power of getting this kind of work into the fediverse. I'd be interested in exploring how the pub-sub architecture of Murmurations (and therefore PLANET) which supports broad publishing and discovery could be used with the actor model of ActivityPub in the fediverse to support the conversational interaction not really supported with pub-sub. I'm wondering if there could be a relatively seamless use of both for offers/wants (for example), making best use of both architectures?

Hi All,

Quick update: We've been debating the core features for the MVP and, based on the obsevations that making a Groups based system is HARD... and that integratinging chat is problemeatic (since everyone already has too many chat systems / their preferred platform) and technically resource intensive, we've been thinking more about the core requirements of the MVP... and ways to ensure it's attarctive / useful enough to gain users...

I've attached the latest thinking as a PDF - which links to some other User Story Docs (forgive me, these are in G-Docs, if you don't want to enter the Google Death Star to view these let me know and I'll make PDFs so you can comment here and I'll incorporate comments into future iterations).

It would be really useful to get some constructive feedback on this - especially from everyone who voted to say they would be happy to feedback and test ideas... I will kick off a poll too... :)

Hi @Oli SB nice one! I'll take a look over the next 48 hours. Excited to see where your thoughts go. I get the thing about not liking Google Docs but I also feel we should be pragmatic and if there are no open source and free(dom) systems that work well for us I am not afraid to use tools from the dark side 🙂 to do a good job. We use Google Docs extensively because they work well so I'm really happy to comment in those docs if I can. Cheers!

@Daniel Harris cool - my thinking too... you (and anyone with the link!) can comment in all the Docs :)

@Oli SB I have one question about the features describe in the Opportunities section, and the limitation on which parties could publish Offers and which could publish Wants. Is there any reason to limit who could publish either? Per our discussion about GoalPost, when working with small groups and non-transactional collaboration, it’s not only Orgs that publish Wants. Individuals do as well all the time. In particular, we have some situations where they explicitly said they could see themselves reaching out across a trust network for services (offers) to fulfill certain needs (wants). The reverse is true as Orgs may want to share offers that meet the situational wants of certain individuals. I just want to make sure that it’s the intent of the MVP to support all these situations.

@RobertD agreed - sorry if that was not clear / needs updating - Yes, I think both types of members should be able to publish Offers and Wants

@Oli SB Thanks - that helps!

it was me that pointed out that doing groups is HARD, but this was in the context of building a monolithic application and then adding groups later, when you have to extend literally every feature to accommodate groups.
But there is another approach, which is how I'm encouraging CES to be architected, which is to make groups the driving force of the software architecture, as we see mastodon.
- users sign up to one and only one group (which implies place-based groups)
- each group runs a full instance of the software
- the protocols support all the features that need to work between groups.
I would be very happy if PlaNET took this approach although it only supports mutually exclusive groups. If other types of groups are needed, that would still be HARD!

@Matthew Slater When you capitalise HARD does it stand for anything (an acronym) or do you just mean it's very hard? cc @Oli SB

@Daniel Harris when I used caps on 'hard' I just wanted to emphasize it would be very hard!

@Matthew Slater, @Oli SB is there a middle way? My concern is around power structures: implicit and explicit. Much (or all?) of the technology we use creates implicit power structures that are baked into the systems we use but rarely discussed. For example, as soon as we touch any app we lose so much freedom because non-developers cannot alter the structure of the app they are using. And we don't talk about this because we think it is too hard to solve. But what if we could solve these issues?

So, listing the values that you want in the world is as crucial as user requirements before any design topology is defined. Of course, I'll instantly break my own rule and from a gut reaction say: how about a many to many approach? Then the user has freedom to move from one instance to another without asking for permission. The user can then interact with more than one instance if, for any reason, some instances block others. Mastodon is great but also has some very heavy dictatorial aspects that are baked into the architecture. I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm just wondering if we can do better.

Ah! One last thing. Having aspirations which we don't know how to implement today is OK. We can just build to what we do know and then experiment thereafter. We need to be prepared to experiment because if we only build what we know how to build then we wont innovate. Of course there's nuances in everything here but I hope you get my drift.

Another last thing, groups are made up of individuals. Individuals define groups by agreements. Please let the process of forming and agreeing group structures be decoupled from the technology hosting the group system. Again, it's about people being free to decide their own destiny and not be dictated by a select few who just happen to host the system. Can we bake in (more) freedom? What's the goal here?

@Daniel Harris  can you talk more about the restrictions inherent in mastodon And remember that every restriction is a form of simplicity that makes it more buildable, and every option adds complexity. Also remember that users could create different accounts in different groups without any load on the architecture. Only if the same identity is in different groups do architects need to care.

@Matthew Slater good Q: I think it's best if we answer for ourselves, and our Orgs, in real life now...

@Oli SB I just tried to vote and have a question. Did you intend for the only possible answers to be 1 or 5? Because those are the only answers the poll is letting me enter.

@Jennifer Damashek you can slide the sliders to any number from 1 - 5... maybe this is not the best type of poll for this but I think it works OK