A few people have now replied off list so I am posting more detail, based on email replies to them below in order to provide more context and explanation:
More background:
I’m really keen to see more global collaboration around the Open App Ecosystem concept - on which PLANET is based.
To that end I have been talking to Edward West about the CTA project he started - in order to develop a global network of technical developers to collaborate on the development of an Open App Ecosystem to enable the development of PLANET, or a similar open, collaborative network.
We’ve been conducting a bit of outreach to work out which people and organisations might be up for reinitiating the CTA but, as you will appreciate, this is THE biggest, and hence most challenging, collaborative project… which, despite some chat and general agreement about direction, makes it extremely difficult to organise.
So my idea about “Quoting for PLANET” is to provide more background, and to (hopefully!) demonstrate that there is a technically feasible and financially viable (i.e. thousands not billions of £!) path to making it, or similar, a reality, in order to garner more interest and… to potentially work out who would be interested in collaborating to make it happen (possibly via the CTA, mentioned above)… and to potentially fundraise (via crowd-funding / any other way) to kick off the work. I fully recognise how ambitious this is but believe if we/I could say “Co-Tech (or other developers) believe they could deliver PLANET (or similar) for £XXX,XXX”, it would create some interesting discussion and help raise interest from like-minded developers, which might make it more likely to happen.
I’m not wedded to my specific designs for PLANET, or convinced that it should initially be an OS, but I am convinced PLANET contains a lot of the right ingredients for a open, global, collaborative network with the power to create lasting change.
What I hope to get out of the process of asking people to “Quote for PLANET” is a rough (but well thought through from a systems architecture perspective) development plan, which possibly goes as far as to suggest which technologies would be used and how, with very rough costing against each stage.
I am not a technical developer - my main skills are in front end, design and marketing. Hence the call for more technical input.
My rough development plan - based on nothing more than my limited understanding of the tech required, and discussion with people to date, currently goes something like the below. I may be approaching this in a completely inappropriate way but I believe that, in order to garner interest and users, the first most immediate step should be to satisfy a user need - and the most obvious user need to me, is an open social network.
1 - Base infrastructure + Use case 1
Develop the following, as the core infrastructure on which PLANET would be based:
- Identity / Login system - to allow people to log in - ideally using a non-email based system which is as secure as possible
- Profile page - allowing members to share aspects of their profile with various permissions (i.e. with specific individuals, groups, or other levels of connections e.g. “all friends”, “friends of friends”, and wider groups)
- Permissions system - (data licences) to enable the above and more - Highly granular, user controlled
- Follow system - allowing people to follow others by subject (imho this aspect (being able to follow people per subject) is really important to reduce noise and increase relevance of data) and local relevance
- Posts system - allowing people to post content (to their ‘timeline’ / similar) with topics (subject tags) and local relevance
- Feeds - where your feed of news from people you follow is displayed (and ultimately ranked by other users up and down votes etc)
The above aims to provide the basis for a truly scalable social network, with better functionality than Twitter / FB combined.
This is something I am very keen to try and cost.
2 - PLANET apps
Once the base infrastructure is in place there are numerous other projects / apps / bits of functionality which could probably be developed concurrently, including:
- An accounting system - based on £ AND an internal currency (tokens) - I am almost convinced that the internal currency should not be based on block chain since it’s objective is to make transactions 100% transparent (i.e. not anonymous) in order to build trust.
- The trading system - to allow offers / wants and transactions in £ or tokens
- The calendar system
- A chat system (Rocket chat seems like a good example of this)
- VOIP calls
- Task management
- Decision making - like Loomio but with some refinements
- Groups - with “chat / working / trading” statuses, and “open / closed / private” access - Linked to the above (calendar, task management, chat, and decision making systems, etc)
- My local - maps with events / offers / wants etc
- Ratings systems - to allow people to vote any content up and down - these votes would contribute to a users reputation
- Reputation system - to calculate and present a users reputation based on aspects such as:
- How much a user has verified their identity
- Claims (of skills)
- Reviews (of “claimed” skills) from other users
- Honesty (claims vs reviews)
- Wisdom (up and down votes on content)
- Ecological footprint (how resource intensive a users lifestyle is - essential to incentivise one planet living)
- Proposals system - to allow users to make suggestions and changes to any aspect of planet
There are probably many more potential apps and this list would hopefully grow as PLANET develops, the above is simply a starting list of the apps I believe are required to deliver the basic functionality of PLANET.
The above should probably be developed and deployed in a carefully orchestrated order to facilitate the development timeline but also in order to deliver maximum utility to the user, which imho is essential for the network to be used and grow.
Each of these “apps” is something I am very keen to try and cost.
3 - "PLANET FORGE"
In order to deliver against the above I imagine it would be essential to provide a ‘platform’ on which developers could find, learn about and contribute to any of the PLANET app projects - kind of like Source Forge for PLANET - which also allows developers to earn tokens for their input.
This might therefore be required before 2 (PLANET apps) making this aspect of development number 2 on the timeline.
This is also something I am very keen to try and cost.
So, to be clear, I am not proposing to rush off and try and develop any of this right now, simply to initiate conversations about how the above should be approached, with what tech, and in what order, and to get a rough idea of “developer hours / days required” in order to progress a plan for making it a reality.
If you can help refine the above into a workable, and possibly costed, plan I am sure it would help push the global conversation about an Open App Ecosystem forward… and potentially lead to something useful upon which we and others could build. If only in terms of agreeing the tech choices for step 1. Which I believe requires a collaborative conversation involving as many stakeholders as possible (which is why i am so interested in the development of the CTA).
Thanks for taking the time I’m very interested in any and all feedback.
All the best
Oli