I am looking to contribute to the prefiguration of the world for a non-capitalistic one by using digital tools offered or maintained by cooperatively run organizations or are open source, as often as practical.
Do you know of a curated list of digital tools from entities that operate cooperatively (for example, by a worker-owned coop) or are cooperative-friendly (for example, the Public Interest Registry which operates the “.ORG” top-level domain)?
I’m currently interested in digital tools for managing all aspects of an individual’s online presence, but lists of any other types of digital tools are welcome.
For example, I found the most cooperative-friendly top-level domain for personal use is “.ORG” (which permits personal use, although they would like all non-business organizations to have an “.ORG”) and my go to for email, custom domain email, and VPN services is Proton.
I’ve done a few Google searches including on reddit and github, but I haven’t found what I’m looking for yet, so I thought I’d ask here. (I did find a Tools for Activism list that relates but is not the same).
Thanks!
Edit: And if there isn’t one, we can start it! Tool suggestions welcome!
One useful tool is the NewsSocial platform, which has two instances newssocial.news (with Newssocial.news apps on stores as well) and mushtarek.org (with Mushtarek app Arabic).
The platform is developed by NewsSocial Cooperative society (www.newssocial.co.uk). You will find some details on the web site, or simply download the apps or sign up from newssocial.news
NewsSocial creates an an ecosystem for inter-cooperation, democratic governance and community wealth building, supporting sociocracy
Our cooperative has developed a platform called coophub, that allows you to view the public repositories of technology cooperatives. The main idea of this project was to be able to explore the technological solutions developed by other cooperatives while making visible the open source repositories created by the social economy with the aim of promoting them and enabling possible collaborations between cooperatives. You might find it useful, since you could search for open source technological solutions developed by cooperatives there.
There are still many functionalities to be added, to improve the experience of those who are looking for a particular functionality or solution, for example. It is an open source project, so any contribution to improve it is welcome
In terms of domain name registries Nominet is not a co-op but it is fairly close to being one:
Nominet is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee. It has members who act as shareholders, but without the right to participate in the profits of the company. Anyone can become a member, but most members are internet service providers who are also registrars.
However it is not without it’s problems and it is not one-member one-vote – the bigger registrars have more votes than the smaller ones, Webarchitects are members and have been for 20+ years.
I came across a related list. A list of software for self hosting basically anything you can imagine. Cool for people willing to learn! Although I’d still like to support co-op-related entities at this time.
yeah they hosted Blake House for several years when we started our cooperative. Not without its faults (our emails/website would tend to periodically go down for absurd reasons), so we moved to a UK host predominantly to receive support better suited to our working hours. Probably a perfect host for less demanding websites
Indeed, I’m in the (slow, when time allows) process of beginning to offer hosted Cloudron servers to organisations who want to reduce their dependency of unaccountable tech giants, see https://selfhost.cloud
(although note: anyone with an in-house technical person could very easily do this for themselves as installing Cloudron is just copy/ pasting 3 lines of code as per Cloudron - Install Cloudron )
