Git-based discussion system?

Technology Software
21

@ODSCJames Thank you for all of your very good points!

It is really good to know what is out there, considering more about what may happen if someone “forks” a discussion site, etc.

I am still tempted to write some program that can be a huge improvement over mailing lists while being so cheap that it can be easily installed in standard web hosting service (My personal homepage costs $5.95/month - my MayFirst.org hosted site costs $100/year) without additional expense. :slight_smile: I’m also learning Scheme anyway so this will be a good project for the sake of learning :slight_smile:

So the pieces I have in my mind right now are:

  • Nix package containing necessary http pages and CGI software

    • Git for storing discussion messages
    • EcmaScripts for web front-end
    • Scheme program for the rest

  • Apache web server

22

Discourse is the tool you want to replace mailing lists.

I did exactly that for a Yahoo Group several years ago and my community loved it.

As I’ve said, running costs are minimal if you do it yourself.

Technically though, your project sounds interesting. Wish you luck with whatever route you choose.

2 Likes
23

Thank you @merefield, I have been also involved with meet.coop BigBlueButton hosting initiative and have started to think recently free software / open source license may be a good starting point but doesn’t go far enough - I think we need software that is designed from the ground up for democracy, worker cooperatives, serviceability, etc.

I have never heard of an “open source car” but if it did exist, I think there will be an obvious principle for all components involved - that they will be extremely easy to fix and replace, in order to radically reduce the total cost of ownership.

24

People have been discussing it for over a decade (@jdaviescoates and I first met at this conference in 2009). We will get there, the pace of progress is however slow as this is all having to be done from the bottom up, with resistance from the top, progress could be so much quicker with support, not resistance, from the top, but for them progress towards openness and equality is not their inherent direction of motion!

2 Likes
25

I have recently also started to wonder if it is possible to do software “crowd-programming” .

And sure enough, there is a wikipedia article:

And as some who is currently taking

https://platform.coop/blog/a-pcc-mondragon-course-helps-to-incubate-platform-co-ops/

It is obvious to me that:

  • Rent-seeking “investors” will abuse it to exploit the “gig programmers” :scream:

  • Worker coops will embrace it to enrich its ecosystem? :smile:

26

Sure, that’s how a lot of (most?) open source works. I met my current business partners through collaborating on open source.

I would say pick your fights though. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel for minimal gain. If something already exists that solves your issue, use it and move onto the next problem. It will also be harder to recruit collaborators for a use case that’s not novel unless it’s demonstrably innovative.

1 Like
28

Not to derail this thread but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the open-source motorcycle based upon the Ducati monster platform. It’s always been a dream of mine to build one of these :slight_smile:

4 Likes
29

Thanks for sharing! I was actually looking for something similar. I’ll test it.

1 Like