The idea is simple. A worker-consumer hybrid coop that develops, maintains and hosts a lemmy-like fediverse platform that is open sourced.

There r two pricing tiers- a free and paid tier. If u pay a monthly membership fee, you become a member of the consumer body. If u r hired by the coop, u of course become part of the worker body.

The core of the coop’s workings are direct democratic. Creating, filling and destroying job positions are all done direct democratically. To pass a piece of legislation, either one of the following conditions need to be met:

  1. Simple passing: Both, worker and consumer bodies cast more than 50% votes each for the given bill.
  2. Consumer override: If the consumer body casts more than two thirds of the votes for a bill.

Assume that the quality of the platform is as good as Lemmy is right now. Assume that the functionality is similar too.

Would you be interested in being a member? Do u think this is a good idea?

I personally find Lemmy’s current donations based model to be severely lacking from a fundraising point of view. There needs to be a better form of organisation imo.

The direct democratic consumer coop element would bring in more people imo. I’m hoping that the worker coop element prevents worker exploitation.

Do you think this is an absolutely horseshit idea? Or do u kinda like it? Or do u have any suggestions? I’m seriously considering this, which is what made me ask this here. I have a Lemmy client nearing the MVP stage which I was developing with this purpose in mind. Sorry if this is the wrong community for the post.

  • UraniumBlazerOPEnglish
    3·
    4 days ago

    Hey, thanks for the response.

    What would be the monthly membership fee?

    I’m thinking of something like a minimum of 4.99/monthly contribution to become a member. Although I could change this amount with a little more market research. Just a quick clarification though. U wouldn’t need to pay money for an account. U can be a free user. U just won’t get voting rights, n u won’t be able to participate in moderator elections.

    What would be a reasonable SLA? If there is an outage on a Friday night, are the members okay if they wait until Monday to get it back someone online?

    I don’t believe there needs to be an official SLA. The coop isn’t offering a service per say in exchange of money. It’s kinda offering 90% of the service for free. Paying money gets u VOTING rights. U get a member share. U get to propose n vote on legislation to get what u want. Therefore, members would naturally propose and vote for the best service possible from the funds available.

    What do you think is a good hour rate to pay for an admin? What should you pay for someone to stay on call?

    Depends on:

    • Availability of funds
    • Need for more employees
    • Market rate

    At the beginning, I would be the sole worker (the MVP is getting ready by Sunday). Decisions regarding hiring more workers for x pay would be made with time direct democratically by the worker and consumer body of the coop.

    Can I run bots? How many? Does each bot count as a separate account?

    The consumer n worker bodies would decide that. I personally would have no issues letting people run bots that are functional in nature n those that explicitly let themselves be known as bots. But again, detailed bot policies would be made by the members.

    I think you’ll see that as soon as you start asking people to put money and to feel like they “own” it, the demands will increase and so will the costs.

    Honestly, I think the demands would give the coop enough pressure to take the most efficient decisions possible. They would give it a good developmental direction imo. Of course, I’m not saying that they can’t get toxic. But I think I would prefer the toxicity of a democratic legislature any day over that of a rich shareholder.

    Examples of other similar coops

    The coops u mentioned seem to be primarily instance hosting coops. I’m talking more in terms of software development. Development of the lemmy backend n the client by the coop would be the primary focus of legislature instead of instance policies. Which features to sanction the development for and so on.

    • rglullis@communick.news
      2·
      4 days ago

      Now I am confused, are you able to make changes to the Lemmy codebase? A fork? If you want to find a way to fund development, why not just work with the current team?

      • UraniumBlazerOPEnglish
        1·
        4 days ago

        Now I am confused, are you able to make changes to the Lemmy codebase? A fork?

        That’s not what I’m doing yet, although it is definitely something that I would need to do ahead.

        The platform that I’m developing has a much larger scope compared to Lemmy. It’s not just a “Fediverse’s Reddit”, but something entirely different. It has community chat functionalities similar to those of discord for example. Communities would also be able to organize in person events and so on.

        If you want to find a way to fund development, why not just work with the current team?

        I’m achieving most of the above functionalities without altering the lemmy backend source code. I’m doing this by kinda creatively using the Lemmy Client that I’m developing.

        Lemmy’s entire goal is very different from my goal for the coop. My 0 competency in Rust also makes me useless for Lemmy devs.

        I’m essentially just taking Lemmy’s source code, n jerry rigging it to get the functionality that I want while ensuring that my platform won’t affect Lemmy users in a bad way during federation.

        Of course, I would have to do some backend work to get certain functionality, but I can do that without touching Lemmy’s backend code. Not touching Lemmy’s code would be good for maintenance n overall development at least for now, when the only resource is me haha.

        I have an MVP coming up by this Sunday, so I would start posting about it from a new account. I find the client to be quite unique n beautiful looking, n m quite excited to present it to the world now haha.