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Community Supported Software An alternative for community tech?

Karrot

(Nick & Vasilis)

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Few things about Karrot and us

-what is Karrot ?

- a digital tool for community-driven projects

- supported by a small team of contributors (‘Karrot-team’)

- an open source political project ‘designed with’ rather than ‘for’ the initiatives that use it

- used today by 35-40 groups; most of which are foodsaving and sharing initiatives

-who are we ?

- Nick and Vasilis from the ‘Karrot-team’

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Karrot’s features

Apply to join a group
Messaging
Co-ordination, activities
Trust carrots
Membership review
History audit
Agreements, offers

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About this presentation

Discuss the idea of Community Supported Software as a model to develop (socially and financially) sustainable community tech
Builds on the concept of Community Supported Agriculture & Economy
Introduction and Discussion
Short very first report
Future plan: experiment with the idea/model

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How the idea of a Community Supported Software was born?

- fragility of community tech projects like Karrot

- personal engagement with Community Supported Agriculture

How to develop community tech within the hostile environment of platform Capitalism?

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History of open source (economics)

50s/60s - Produced by academics and corporate researchers
Bundled with hardware, until USA vs IBM antitrust case 1969
Closed source norm, enter Richard Stallman, GNU 1983, and GPL 1989
Open source as rebranding of free software without activism element 1998 - ”emphasize the business potential of the sharing of source code.”

Open source is not an economic model
“In the 1950s and into the 1960s almost all software was produced by academics and corporate researchers working in collaboration”
Then bundle software with hardware
Then "In the United States vs. IBM antitrust suit, filed 17 January 1969, the U.S. government charged that bundled software was anticompetitive.”
… copyright for software emerging 70s, 80s…
Bill gates letter to hobbyists 1976 “Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, find all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?”
Closed source became norm, Richard Stallman enters with GNU Project (1983), and GPL follows (1989), copyleft, to ensure modifications remain open

Supported by MIT, FSF funded by sales of copies of free software and services, manuals, etc. now from members dues (“a diverse membership of computer users, artists, software engineers, hackers, students, and activists”)
GNU toolchain, gcc, etc… no OS though
The four freedoms: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html : “the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software”
Still normal economics: “to exclude commercial use, commercial development or commercial distribution would hobble the free software community and obstruct its path to success. We must conclude that a program licensed with such restrictions does not qualify as free software.”

Linux from 1991, GPL
hobbyist/hacker culture ongoing, freeware, etc..
1997 Eric S. Raymond “the cathedral and the bazaar”, hacker community.. Top down vs bottom up
“Open source” as rebranding of free software without activism element 1998

“They concluded that FSF's social activism was not appealing to companies like Netscape, and looked for a way to rebrand the free software movement to emphasize the business potential of the sharing of source code.”

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Fragility of open source ecosystems

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Evolving open source?

-OpenSSL heartbleed, failed economics of software commons

- MongoDB / Elasticsearch move to SSPL

- Open core

- Crisis of values, “open source technologies are also being abused to sustain systems of inequity, violence, and oppression” -> ethical source, contributor covenant, barriers to participation by women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ contributors

- Tech for good “Developers, coders, designers, user experience people… all came together to see how they could solve the world’s biggest challenges, before going back to their day jobs on a Monday morning . (All the while wondering how they could make the move into a professional role doing this very thing)” -> double/triple bottom line

https://xkcd.com/2347/
Openssl heartbleed: “we never seem to get these resources because of the failed economics of our software commons”

“Obviously, it would be crazy to staff such critical projects largely with a handful of unpaid volunteers working in their spare time.”
https://pchiusano.github.io/2014-12-08/failed-software-economics
Snowdrift… https://snowdrift.coop/

mongo DB / elastic - SSPL license
Open core, open source as a teaser into proprietary model
Ethical source: https://ethicalsource.dev/

Crisis of social values… FSF, OSI…
“I see the role of organizations like the OSI as essentially conservative”
“Today, open source technologies are also being abused to sustain systems of inequity, violence, and oppression. It plays an increasingly critical role in surveillance capitalism, data harvesting, anti-immigrant violence, protester suppression, racist policing, the deployment of cruel and inhumane weapons, and other human rights abuses all over the world. And a growing number of open source developers want to do something about this abuse of their work.”
“Our work is volunteer-led”
Contributor covenant “to address barriers to participation in open source by women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ contributors”

Tech for good / volunteers / etc:

https://socialcoder.org
“Developers, coders, designers, user experience people… all came together to see how they could solve the world’s biggest challenges, before going back to their day jobs on a Monday morning. (All the while wondering how they could make the move into a professional role doing this very thing).
BVG gained momentum, setting up its first incubator accelerator in 2013 and supported by the likes of Nesta and Google”
““We’re looking for business models where impact is baked into what the proposition is, but also the commercial and social value that business created”.” Melanie Hayes, managing partner, BGV
Doing good paradigm
B-corps, double bottom lines, etc…

Alternative economics models

Gift economy
Co-operativism, coopyleft license
Commons
CSA / CSX

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Other economic models

Gift economy
Co-operativism, coopyleft license
Commons
CSA / CSX

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Fragility within Karrot

Underfunded

Small donations
NLNet
Some (failed) applications to fund Karrot

‘Understaffed’

4-5 ‘Karrot-team’ members

Design ‘disagreements’

Karrot’s design - communities’ needs
Design process
Community Cafe
Karrot days & Interviews
Forum(s)

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Who are we accountable to?

Adapt our vision and communities need’s to funders’ calls
‘Waste’ energy
‘applying-for-funding fatigue’

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From Community Supported Agriculture to Community Supported Software

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Community Supported Agriculture

-means of productions are co-owned, decisions are made collectively, are not for profit etc

-Farmers and ‘Consumers’ form a cooperative, share the risks and any surplus

-subscription in money and in kind (shifts/’beans’)

-Member-Farmers earn a decent living and are accountable to the other members of the cooperative

Could a similar model work on the realm of software?

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Community Supported Software

- Member-Farmers → Member-Designers (workers, developers, main contributors…)

- Member-’Consumers’ → Member-Users (groups in Karrot)

-Member-Designers & Member-Users form a Community Supported Software Cooperative

- Member-Users contribute in money (?) (subscription) and in kind (shifts)

- Member-Designers earn a living

- Member-Users directly contribute to the project (land/garden), share time with other-members (breaking the silo)

Food is very different to software….writing code is very different to pruning….

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Discussion

-reflections/comments

-identify challenges, potentials

-discuss future steps

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Concerns? Adaptations? Nuances? Issues?

Funding?
Member-Users shifts/’Karrots’?
Scale?
Context? Cases?

Groups as in Karrot
Individuals?
A new project taking its baby steps?

- ……….

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