A Note on “Security” for the #FOSS Crew

We need to have a clearer, more grounded conversation about “security” and what it actually means in the context of the #openweb. There is a long history of thinking in #FOSS spaces that security is something we can solve purely technically: better encryption, better protocols, better architectures. But in everyday life and practice, people need to work from a much simpler starting point - We do not trust client–server security. We only meaningfully trust what can be verified through […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/a-note-on-security-to-the-foss-crew/

The Tech “Empiricism” Problem

(This post is being modified)

https://hamishcampbell.com/the-tech-empiricism-problem/

The #dotcons assume you want to be a techbro

One of the quiet assumptions built into almost every #dotcons platform is that the user secretly wants to become a #techbro. Not literally, of course, but culturally. You are expected to optimise yourself by building your “personal brand” to track your metrics. Engage with algorithmic growth loops by understand platforms, feeds, APIs, monetisation tools, creator dashboards. You’re supposed to treat communication as a kind of performance engineering problem. Most people never asked for […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/the-dotcons-assume-you-want-to-be-a-techbro/

OMN: Broken Institutions, and the Need to Rebuild the Commons

For progressive and radical people, one of the central political questions of our time is simple to ask but hard to answer - Why is it so difficult to rebuild the institutions that were destroyed in our #deathcult worship of the 1980s and 1990s? And more importantly why does the impossibility of rebuilding them make it so hard to change the needed balance of power in society? These question matters for working on the future of the society and most importantly the grassroots part of this: […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/omn-broken-institutions-and-the-need-to-rebuild-the-commons/

A note to #FOSS funders

I’ve been working at the heart of this space for more than 30 years, funded and unfunded. In that time I’ve seen hundreds of alternative tech projects start with energy and good intentions. Most of them wither on the vine, a very small number flower. After watching this cycle repeat for decades, one thing has become clear: the projects that survive and grow almost always follow a simple pattern. I call this the #4opens. Other people describe similar ideas as open source development, open […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/a-note-to-foss-funders/

Why good faith is a technical requirement for #FOSS

If you’ve spent years in #FOSS, you’ve likely developed a strong allergy to vague political language. You care about licenses, reproducibility, governance models, and whether something actually runs. Good. That discipline is why free software exists at all. But here’s the uncomfortable question, what if the biggest blocker to the #openweb right now isn’t technical debt - but social debt? And what if “good faith” is not a moral nicety, but a core infrastructure requirement? The […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/why-good-faith-is-a-technical-requirement-for-foss/

The tension is that the #geekproblem tends to reduce political and social questions to technical architecture #FOSS needs to take a social lead https://hamishcampbell.com/foss-need-to-take-a-social-lead/

#FOSS needs to take a social lead

This matters for #FOSS because as if it remains culturally trapped inside the #geekproblem, it becomes socially irrelevant at the exact historical moment it is most needed. Right now, most #FOSS energy still assumes that if you build complex tools, argue narrowly, and keep everything technically “open,” people will come. But only a tiny minority actually want to live the full-stack geek life: self-hosting, compiling, debating licenses, maintaining infra. That path selects for a […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/foss-need-to-take-a-social-lead/

Age Verification Is Not a Technical Problem

If you think age verification is just an engineering challenge - better cryptography, better zero-knowledge proofs, better ID rails - you’re likely a part of the #geekproblem at best, or at worst the control culture we need to compost. We need to better balance this mess, as a technical problem and a political instrument of control. Across multiple jurisdictions, “protecting children” is used as the framing device. But the mechanism being normalised is much broader: mandatory identity […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/age-verification-is-not-a-technical-problem/

Most people sense that something is off

Meany people see the world degrading, enclosure accelerating. They see climate, politics, media all bending toward extraction. And even when they can see the trajectory, they feel powerless, so they cope by optimise their careers. They scroll. They argue. They consume. They retreat into irony. From birth, we’re trained into one core assumption: There Is No Alternative (#TINA). Not because it’s true, but because every dominant institution reinforces it: Schools train compliance. Media […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/most-people-sense-that-something-is-off/