Announcing a Community Call with Kollicloud.de and CoopCloud.tech

While many people think their only option is to depend on BigTech for collaborative workspaces and communication tooling, there are in fact many alternatives.

Apps for filesharing, calendering, contacts and for email. Or apps to work in agile mode, to run your projects with powerful Kanban boards for decentralised teams. Instant messaging and chat that are decentralised, so people can connect with one app to all their diverse organisations and communities they belong to.

Tech based in solidarity, commoning, security and privacy, instead of extractivism, monopolies, distopian futures, injustice and surveillance.

#CooperativeClouds #DigitalCommons #DemocraticTech @LIT_Local_IT

Our democracies are under attack by authoritarian tech, tech monopolies, Big Tech corporations that extract enormous amounts of value from the users, manipulate them and is "enshittified" as @pluralistic reminds us.

Our answer is: Democratic Tech -but hey, you ask what's that exactly?

Here's a long article tracking the origins of the term, https://freeknowledge.eu/democratic-technology-building-alternatives-to-techno-auhtoritarianism

TLDR:
Of the different connotations of "democratic tech" we understand it as commons, where a community takes care for the tech they use; it is tech that is under their ownership or control, instead of the tech (and its distant owners) taking control over the community. So we go beyond mere "civic tech" or "democratising access to tech".

I think this is pertinent in this time when our democracies are under attack by so called "authoritarian tech".

#Enshittification #commons #DemocraticTech

Here's a really insightful post by @Framasoft's Pierre-Yves Gosset about the French Government DINUM and their La Suite project. In French, translated: "The Digital Suite of the State: Criticism of Criticism."

TLDR: They comment the various criticisms and are generally very positive about this state run project.
https://framablog.org/2026/03/19/la-suite-numerique-de-letat-critique-des-critiques/

Really cool is their history slider of free software and the state: https://misc.frama.org/frise-etat-numerique-libre/

That said, note also the cooperative version @LaSuiteCoop which just opened membership signups. They aim to make La Suite as #DemocraticTech Excited about that!

#CollaborativeWorkspace #LaSuite

Once again, a truly astonishing amount of stuff has been happening with Co-op Cloud since our last blog post in October. Read about it here!

https://coopcloud.tech/blog/march-2026-equinox

– 3wordchant

#CoopCloud #LibreSoftware #DemocraticTech #OpenSource

In the context of the @DigitalCoup and #AuthoritarianTech, can we find an answer in #DemocraticTech? Something that goes beyond mere free/libre open source software, and combines #cooperativism and #commoning. Communities who govern their shared resources, and commit to shared responsibility.

I wrote an article about it, tracing the intellectual origins of the term "democratic technology", connecting to various intersectional critiques of the currently dominant model of surveillance capitalism from feminist, ecosocial perspectives.

Here's the article: https://freeknowledge.eu/democratic-technology-building-alternatives-to-techno-auhtoritarianism

Themed Co-op Cloud kite-flying, coming up in ~7.5 hours at 12 UTC today, Thursday 11th February 🪁

Today, we'll be talking about automating Co-op Cloud using Ansible (and maybe other tools).

Voice/video call: https://vc.autistici.org/CoopCloudKiteFlying#config.disableAudioLevels=true

Collaborative agenda / notes: https://pad.autonomic.zone/VtyrLUl9RWaJGgEDrncQUw?edit

– 3wordchant

#CoopCloud #LibreSoftware #DemocraticTech

What time is it? Time to fly kites!

Join members of the Co-op Cloud community for our informal, weekly(ish) drop-in, call "Kite flying". Coming up TODAY in 2 hours, at 19 UTC.

Bring questions, proposals, thoughts, problems… or just swing by and say hi to some other Co-op Cloud co-operators.

Voice/video call: https://vc.autistici.org/CoopCloudKiteFlying#config.disableAudioLevels=true

Collaborative agenda / notes: https://pad.autonomic.zone/VtyrLUl9RWaJGgEDrncQUw?edit

PS – if you'd ever be interested in coming along to kite-flying, consider letting us know your availability in this lil date poll , as we're currently spinning the wheel to find some new slots for these calls https://crab.fit/coop-cloud-kiteflying-660087

– 3wordchant

#CoopCloud #LibreSoftware #DemocraticTech

Anyone in or near the occupied Mohican / Lenape land of "New" "York" "City" 🗽, consider saving the date, Sunday 18th January 2026 (afternoon/early evening), for the possibly-first-ever local Co-op Cloud gathering & workshop 🤩 More details coming soon!

#CoopCloud #NYC #Events #LibreSoftware #DemocraticTech

I saw this guy, Johnny Ryan, recently in a European Parliament session on #democratictech together with @robin and others.

Today @johnnyryan publishes a great article in the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/09/the-eu-has-a-secret-weapon-to-counter-trumps-economic-bullying-its-time-to-use-it