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   Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 02:35:47 JST Angle

   So I was complaining like a week or so ago about FLOSS software not being good - about treating the needs of normal people as though they were secondary and unimportant, and developing exclusively for a narrow group of purists. And I definitely think this happens! Which of course raises the follow up question: What does it take to avoid this sort of thing?

   • alcinnz repeated this.
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     Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 02:35:44 JST Angle

     in reply to

     In order to increase the amount of work that gets done, I think there needs to be a good system for bringing in new devs and helping to onboard them - I know I've struggled to figure out how to even get started. I think we need dedicated positions for onboarding new people and teaching new devs. This is far from trivial, and I expect it will take a lot of work to figure out how to make it work, but I think it needs to be done.

     alcinnz repeated this.
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     Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 02:35:46 JST Angle

     in reply to

     First off, I think it's going to take a lot more work. Which, given that FLOSS software is already struggling to cover the existing maintenance work, is something of a real problem. In order to solve this, I think two things are going to be necessary - both dramatically increasing the amount of work that gets done, *and* increasing it's effectiveness.

     alcinnz repeated this.
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     Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 02:37:45 JST Angle

     in reply to

     next, in order to increase the effectiveness of work, I think we need to specialize? Like, there should be FLOSS devs not associated with any one project, who specialize in a particular area of software development, and who get called in by various projects to help with specific tasks. Profiling and optimization seems like the most obvious place to start with this, but I'm sure there are lots of other things where specialized skills are valuable.

     alcinnz repeated this.
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     Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 02:44:09 JST Angle

     in reply to

     There's also the possibility of creating FLOSS orgs dedicated entirely to organizing - but there are a lot of finicky details that need to be handled correctly to make that work properly. :/

     alcinnz repeated this.
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     Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 02:44:11 JST Angle

     in reply to

     This will add a fair bit of complexity, of course. I'm not entirely sure how to handle that. My first thought is to start off by having people document the work they do? Like, keeping some kind of log of what work was done, where, for what purpose? That's not a small ask though, and it opens up all sorts of opportunities for new problems, so, some experimentation may be required.

     alcinnz repeated this.
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     Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 02:49:48 JST Angle

     in reply to

     There's also the problem of money - some people will work on these problems for free, sometimes even a lot of people, but eventually we're going to need some actual material incentives.

     alcinnz repeated this.
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     alcinnz (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 02:50:26 JST alcinnz

     in reply to

     @Angle Or at least... Avoid the disincentive of needing to do something else to afford to live...

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     Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 02:50:36 JST Angle

     in reply to

     So, how would the money be sourced? How would it be distributed? I have no idea. I don't think direct consumer purchasing works - the majority of the benefits of of FLOSS require either a total lack of gatekeeping, or are third party externalities anyway. Charity might work? It's iffy. I think overall, the key needs to be government funding, which means governments need to be sold on the idea, and then we need to figure out proper distribution.

     alcinnz repeated this.
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     Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 02:52:23 JST Angle

     in reply to

     I think government funding would be worthwhile - the benefits of FLOSS are ginormous, even in the current state, which delivers like 1% of the potential it could if it were properly supported - and the costs really aren't that high. But in order to get governments on board with this, it needs to be communicated to them, and then we need to actually deliver what is promised.

     alcinnz repeated this.
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     Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 03:04:23 JST Angle

     in reply to

     Overall, I'm thinking a cellular approach where each organization has a clear primary purpose - but also lots of supporting purposes, and in particular, connects to other cells to help them fulfill their purposes and support each others functions, with lots of inspiration from biology.

     alcinnz repeated this.
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     Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 03:13:30 JST Angle

     in reply to

     I suppose one problem with government funding is that as soon as a line item shows up in a government budget, there are people looking to cut it and discredit the very idea, regardless of what it is or why it's there. I have no idea what to do about that. I suppose that tendency really needs to be combated in general? It's a real problem though, and not just for FLOSS. :/

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     Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 03:16:12 JST Angle

     in reply to

     I suppose one way to get started on this kind of thing, is for existing FLOSS orgs to try and work not just on their particular projects, but to support the ecosystem as a whole? That's not a small thing to ask, but there are ways to get started - actively working to train new FLOSS devs, or to increase the skills of their devs, for example.

     alcinnz repeated this.
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     Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 03:19:05 JST Angle

     in reply to

     Better yet, working to found new FLOSS orgs, and to better connect with other existing orgs. Even something small, like founding a dedicated FLOSS org for profiling and optimization, can make a difference - especially if that org then actively seeks out other orgs to connect with and offer it's services to, and works to actively improve the ecosystem.

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     Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 03:20:19 JST Angle

     in reply to

     We're also going to need some level of accountability and oversight beyond the individual organizations. Which will, itself, need to be overseen and accounted for. I think overall transparency goes a long ways in this direction, and having a distributed system of oversight with different orgs that can check each other will be the way forwards? It's not a small question though.

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     Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 05:17:22 JST Angle

     in reply to

     The one alternative to government funding I can see is individual contribution, with lots of individuals putting, like, at least a couple percentage points of their incomes into funding. If you could get even a tiny percentage of people to do that, it would be enough to fund all of FLOSS, even with the higher standards I desire, but it's probably too much to ask. :/

     alcinnz repeated this.
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     alcinnz (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 05:18:10 JST alcinnz

     in reply to

     @Angle Might have to defeat capitalism to achieve this dream of crowdfunded FLOSS...

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     Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 05:20:29 JST Angle

     in reply to

     • alcinnz

     @alcinnz IMO, FLOSS is one of our best bets for defeating capitalism, or at least for laying the groundwork. So, we'll need to figure out some other way to fund it.

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     alcinnz (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 05:20:41 JST alcinnz

     in reply to

     @Angle This gordian knot's frustrating at times...

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     Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 05:24:27 JST Angle

     in reply to

     I will also note, we probably can't rely on funding for the bulk of our efforts - which means that FLOSS work needs to be worth doing even without funding. This means it needs to be light enough work that it doesn't burn out volunteers, and it needs to provide some other reward. The sense of a job well done, the opportunity to learn new skills, the opportunity to connect with others and make a difference, etc, etc.

     alcinnz repeated this.
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     Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 05:24:32 JST Angle

     in reply to

     All of these are things that can be provided in greater or lesser extent, based on how we structure things - if you want people to be motivated by the sense of a job well done, then you need to make sure they can tell how important the job is and how good they're doing at it. If you want them to be motivated by the opportunity to develop skills, then you need to make sure they actually get that opportunity, same for connecting with others, etc.

     alcinnz repeated this.
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     Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 05:28:47 JST Angle

     in reply to

     And of course, none of these will effectively motivate people if the work is too heavy, so it needs to be kept light enough it's not a prohibitive burden. Spreading it out over multiple people could certainly help, though obviously that presents its own challenge?

     alcinnz repeated this.
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     alcinnz (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 05:30:04 JST alcinnz

     in reply to

     @Angle To me spreading it out across multiple people is at its core just good software architecture!

     Then again you do need to find multiple people to spread it out across...

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     Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 05:31:32 JST Angle

     in reply to

     • alcinnz

     @alcinnz And you need to make sure they're able to communicate and coordinate, which adds it's own requirements in terms of skills and time, on top of the actual software development.

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     Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)'s status on Monday, 16-Dec-2024 06:22:39 JST Angle

     in reply to

     Additionally, on the subject as a whole, many of the things I outlined are pretty hard to do at a major scale, but I think there's a lot of potential to start chipping away at them in little bits and pieces, and take things from there. If you have special experience in some manner of coding, say profiling and optimization, or infosec, for example, maybe offer that publicly as a resource for FOSS development?