Do any moots know someone who we might be able to consult about restructuring a mid-size FOSS project? Essentially to migrate from a BDFL model to a more flat-structured democratic organisation.

We are discussing how to restructure #postmarketOS so that it can continue to scale up and be a truly community-run project.

We have some idea of how co-ops like Igalia do this, but we have a lot of differences (like being largely volunteer run and having very different goals) which leave us with a lot of unknowns.

To give an example of the kind of structure we're thinking of (by no means final, there hasn't been any broad agreement on a new structure yet):

We have the relevant pieces in place to form an assembly (everyone listed on https://postmarketos.org/team/ ) which could then democratically form teams and delegate responsibilities to them (e.g. finance/budget, technical policy-making, maintainers for various OS components).

The assembly would then also be responsible for deciding on focus areas and long term goals for the project (e.g. improving reliability, building a production-ready immutable version of the distro)

We could then form working groups to enable cross-team collaboration to move towards our specific goals.

Currently we lack a lot of understanding of the potential implications of something like this, how we can ensure the project doesn't get hijacked, that we don't drift too far from our mission statement, etc etc...

If you have a background in sociology and/or relevant experience from other projects then I would love to reach out and be able to discuss this in more detail!

#decentralization #opensource #freesoftware #foss

Today I fixed a television out of spite.

One of the most common faults with modern TVs is a backlight failing. These are cheap to replace, and the tools to test them are cheap to obtain.

But the effort to get to the backlights? Oh my!

A TV that was made to be repaired would have a separate pane for backlights you could slide out, or some other access mechanism.

But today's consumer TVs require you to disassemble practically everything to get to the backlights. That means getting to them is a huge investment in time (for self-repair) or money (if you go to a repair shop and pay for labour). TV companies know that most people will just buy a whole new TV.

So today I fixed the TV out of spite. Not because it was rewarding, or for environmental or financial concerns (although all of these are valid). I fixed it because the company that made it did not want it to be easily fixed.

En Alsace du nord, le péril permanent des déchets chimiques propagés sous terre

Entre 1964 et 1974, l'État a autorisé le déversement de 100 000 tonnes de déchets chimiques dans d'anciens puits de pétrole près de Pechelbronn. Ces produits se sont diffusés sur plusieurs kilomètres et les autorités doivent vérifier en permanence s'ils ne remontent pas à la surface. Un visqueux mélange de produits chimiques contamine les sous-sols de Pechelbronn, Preuschdorf, Kutzenhausen…

https://www.rue89strasbourg.com/alsace-du-nord-peril-dechets-chimiques-sous-terre-356940