Loomio
Thu 21 Dec 2023 6:59PM

Urgent proposal: Social.coop will sign onto the Cooperative Digital Manifesto

SE Steve Ediger (ChiCommons) Public Seen by 219

Over the last year, a small group of people including Trevor Sholz (Platform Cooperativism Consortium), Noemi Giszpenc (Data Commons Cooperative), Steve Ediger (ChiCommons LWCA), and Thomas van Dyjk (Waag Futurelab), and some others developed a [Cooperative Digital Infrastructure Manifesto] (https://datacommons.coop/cooperative-digital-infrastructure-manifesto/) that we plan on submitting to Ariel Guarco, President of the International Cooperative Alliance.

Based on a suggestion from @Matt Noyes, we propose that Social.coop review this manifesto and sign it as a cooperative. A [Manifesto Loomio group] (https://www.loomio.com/d/p3FuZM7f/manifesto-for-sharing-and-commons) has been established, if you want to interact about the Manifesto

The Manifesto and Signature page can be found at https://datacommons.coop/cooperative-digital-infrastructure-manifesto/

More Detailed Background

On Wednesday, April 5, 2023, during the Platform Cooperatives community assembly on “Recent Developments in Data Collectives, Data Commons, and Peer Production Licenses”, the idea came up to compose a manifesto and open letter to the leadership of cooperative networks calling for support. The Data Commons Cooperative (DCC) created a Loomio thread (requires a free Loomio login to join the group) for discussion and invited all those attending the assembly and interested followers of the Data Commons to participate. Trebor Scholz of Platform Cooperativism Consortium wrote the first draft, which underwent extensive revision with input from Data Commons Cooperative, ChiCommons LWCA, Waag Futurelab, and several others.

This published manifesto / open letter is intended as an invitation to work together on co-creating the policies and structures that will support digital tools for cooperativism. We hope that many more groups and people will join us to envision and call forth the digital world we need and deserve!

We recognize the nature of getting consensus on a critical document such as this. We offer this draft as an early call to action and hope that you and/or your cooperative can sign on in good faith. We view this as a living manifesto and commit to developing an updated version 2.0 when more folks support the effort.

We plan on delivering this Manifesto to Mr. Ariel Guarco, President of the International Cooperative Alliance early in 2024.

M

mike_hales Thu 21 Dec 2023 7:43PM

@Steve Ediger (ChiCommons) Responding here rather than in the dedicated loomio space https://www.loomio.com/cooperative-digital-infrastructure bcos it's hard to see where to fit into an already extended conversation. (I joined that Loomio too).

I signed. Coop awareness and collaboration does matter.

But the propositions seem fairly unclear to me. There are 'toolstack' terms or concepts that seem underspecified - infrastructure, tools, platforms, etc - and their relationships with digital data. There is the 'commons' concept, whose definition seems pivotal, since commoning and cooperation are not entirely the same thing or the same history (though of course, they can be brought into convergence). Particularly, seems to me that digital commons, data commons and tool/platform commons are by no means the same thing? And free-libre and coop-commons perspectives and cultures don't necessarily map neatly on to one another, as we found in meet.coop (The online meeting coop).

This isn't academic. Practical actions - federated coop-to-coop infrastructure 'provider' provisions, coop 'user' policy initiatives - depend on a quite well dedveloped mapping of infrastructural elements and forms. Issues - especially issues of digital data - are powerfully shaped by the locations in the infrastructures (technical, institutional, national, geographical, sectoral, etc), where data are generated or actors are located?

Whereabouts in the discussion might this kind of concern be best expressed? Love & solidarity / mike

SE

Steve Ediger (ChiCommons) Thu 21 Dec 2023 8:48PM

Our target for publishing this manifesto is to get signatures by the 31st of December and give it to FACTTIC (an Argentinian federation of tech coops) to personally hand to Ariel Guarco, who is Argentinian. However, we understand that the wheels of cooperative governance turn slowly, so let's consider this with all due haste and make a decision as quickly as possible.

SE

Steve Ediger (ChiCommons) Thu 21 Dec 2023 8:54PM

edited the proposal to make it urgent after reviewing the wiki on governance.

MN

Matt Noyes Fri 22 Dec 2023 3:27AM

Would it make sense to do a quick sense check poll, to look for objections?

SW

Sam Whited Fri 22 Dec 2023 12:17PM

I definitely support this. The number of co-ops using proprietary software, often without even considering other alternatives, absolutely baffles me. I don't want to underestimate how much harder the open source variety is to use sometimes, but I think most places just use whatever name they've heard before and call it a day and in many cases there's no reason not to use, eg. Big Blue Button or Jitsi instead of something like Zoom. I'd go as far as to say that using closed source software is antithetical to the cooperative values. I think this is largely a messaging failure on the part of the open source community: most people likely don't even know that more cooperative options exist.

This proposal seems to be a good kicking off point to solving this problem (among other related problems), at least among the ICA folks.

NS

Nathan Schneider Fri 22 Dec 2023 5:09PM

I support this. I recommend making a formal proposal: https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Make_a_proposal

P

Paul030 Thu 28 Dec 2023 1:44PM

It's too late for an urgent proposal now, right? Is there another way social.coop could sign the manifesto/open letter?