The corporate web may be dying/reinventing itself. Everyone talks about FOSS and having a user driven experience.
But one thing we don’t have is a true FOSS web, a protocol like HTTP that only allows FOSS websites to be hosted and bars any corporate interest from hosting for profit.
Would something like that be possible? A “dark web” but not for illicit schemes but for free and open hosted content?
You go to https://website for your comporate fix and to foss:// for none “open source” content. (Stuff like fediverse, self hosted websites etc.)
You’d have to have a governing body, something like the Free Software Foundation that ensures everyone hosting on the foss-web follows the open source guidelines and goes after violators.
FOSS does not exclude corporate interests. Most contributions to the Linux kernel for instance come from corporations, including Microsoft.
Edit: Also see Facebook entering the Fediverse soon. Their frontend JavaScript library is also open sourced by them. Their backend PHP version as well.
Can’t see how realistically it could be done.
I’m an individual. I register a domain using my surname. I upload a blog of my keyboard building. Additionally, I link to my git repo with the stl and gerber files.
All good so far.
But then someone asks if I can build one for them, as they don’t have a 3D printer/can’t solder/whatever. So we agree on a price and a deal is done. Still ok?
A few people ask, and I figure it’s a nice side hustle, so I build a form and une my bank’s payment gateway. Still ok?
It’s bringing in some decent money now. I’ve quit my day job, and hired someone to help me with all of my soldering. Because I need to pay them, I set up a company to pay them out of. The only thing that changes on my website is a little bit of text at the bottom that now says <surname> pty ltd. Not ok anymore. But who is going to police that?
The idea is that a company wouldn’t be able to keep users and their data hostage on their servers or to their arbitrary standards, monetise it by influencing their decisions and stuff like that. Not your little keyboard side gig.
Like with GPL, even large corpos can enter the space, but can’t take advantage by not providing anything back.
Hmm corporate != anti foss. FOSS is all about giving some things for free, and thats it. Maybe youre thinking about Copyleft Movements where they purposefully make softwares thats derived from theirs to also be copyleft (like a virus).
About the protocol, there already is something called Freenet, but its dying/dead. It doesnt have a governing body to do that though, because their main mission is to keep everything thats posted there to stay as long as possible.
FOSS is all about giving some things for free, and thats it.
I would disagree with that. Free as in freedom, not as in free beer. The GPL as an example even encourages to charge as much as you want or can for the software.
I mean we’re almost there with some of these protocols… It doesn’t even need a policing body, as long as the small parties are willing to kick out the corpos by not collaborating or federating. But as the recent debate about Meta has shown, that’s not the case.
But one thing we don’t have is a true FOSS web, a protocol like HTTP that only allows FOSS websites to be hosted and bars any corporate interest from hosting for profit.
Would something like that be possible?
Possible? Maybe. Meaningful? Not in my opinion.
One principle of free software is that everyone can use it. Also for commercial things. Or for example to control missiles that kill people.
In addition, many companies contribute to the development. Without them, Linux, for example, would not be as developed as it currently is. Whether you like it or not, we need companies. Excluding them would therefore be a mistake.
