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should we start a community to announce and seek contributors for open source projects? (awful.systems)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by self@awful.systems to c/servernews@awful.systems
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given the absolute fucking state of the open source community in general, and the fact that hacker news of all places is where the majority of new open source projects get discovered, is there any interest in starting a community here where folks can announce and solicit for help with their open source projects?

we could possibly use NotAwfulTech, but:

  • I kind of want to keep self-promotion out of that community
  • my code is probably awful for everyone else, that's why I'm seeking contributors

let me know if anyone's down for the new community or wants to expand the scope of NotAwfulTech to include stuff like this. if you're on team new community also feel free to suggest a name

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[-] swlabr@awful.systems 8 points 1 year ago

One potentially relevant idea I’ve thought about is starting a design collective with a focus on anti-capitalist/profitable design. We’d intentionally make designs that people can build from easily obtainable/reclaimable materials to take the place of products that you would normally buy instead. This is already a reality within the realm of programming/the open source community, but you don’t really see this for physical objects. Like you can fork the code for some open source project, but good luck building a computer from the component level up to run it on.

Again- just something I’ve been thinking about. Creating user-buildable designs for complex things like modern day computers or motor vehicles would be difficult. I guess I want to live in the past when you could buy DIY house/car kits??

[-] fasterandworse@awful.systems 7 points 1 year ago

I guess I want to live in the past when you could buy DIY house/car kits??

If you haven’t you should read Victor Papanek’s Design For The Real World or How Things Don’t Work

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 5 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the rec!

[-] fasterandworse@awful.systems 3 points 1 year ago

Always happy to recommend his work. It’s a shame sometimes his ideas are considered silly or far-fetched because they go against scale-up thinking

[-] self@awful.systems 7 points 1 year ago

this is, no shit, exactly the thread I’ve been chasing with a bunch of my projects. a lot of the hardware I use the most is either handmade or heavily modified with bespoke components, and that process has already produced so many things I’ll likely keep using forever that I’ve been looking at extending it to the rest of my computing environment

to that end, I’ve already got a static site generator and operating system distro/programming workbench that are both a little bit of polishing away from an initial public release, and I plan to release them under anti-commercial terms and form a collective to manage those projects (and maybe down the line reform it as a cooperative, if any of the projects get big enough that it makes sense)

organizing around these principles wouldn’t by any means be required to participate in the new community, but I feel like it’d be a good vibe to start on

this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
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