GNU/consensus/whistle/012013-07

GNU/consensus Whistle

Volume I, Number 0

Editorial: Looking Through The Prism

Edward Snowden achieved in a few weeks what we could not do in the last two decades. Thanks to his exposure of the massive surveillance program of the NSA, Prism, he brought to the mainstream the topic of privacy. He demonstrated the need for it, and the need for decentralization. He turned decades of accusations of police state and loss of freedom, that were until now ignored by the general public, or deemed paranoid, into visionary statements. The Prism scandal, exposed, gives us free software developers and activists, an unprecedented opportunity to leverage mass consciousness and collective intelligence to break free from the social network services oligarchy, to build a truly end-to-end and participatory (voluntary) social environment.

But that won't go without a hitch. In this first issue of the GNU/consensus Whistle, we'll see how a momentum is being formed that we need to seize for binding chaos and overcome the current trust crisis altogether, for the benefit of all people.

This issue will feature some less known software projects that may be of interest to developers. We're aiming at a monthly interview: SOMEBODY' will get us started. Finally, the Whistle will provide a short agenda of things past and to come, for which you're welcome as a project or community manager to submit either to the list or to the wiki for inclusion in the next issue.

It's also time that we think about organizing a common fund, or a shared funding strategy to cover development and hosting expenses of free software social networking. Each network, each software project should evaluate and report its real costs and needs, so that we can estimate what it takes to reach a decent independent social networking. Lack of finance has long been hindering the development of sustainable alternatives to centralized commercial platforms. Maybe it's time to reconsider that central issue, in the wake of the massive spread of consciousness relative to the Prism leak. From there, I'm convinced there's an opportunity for a globalized solidary economy for independent social networking, and economies of scale. Think FreedomBox, Guifi.net...

---

hellekin (GNU/consensus maintainer) <hellekin@gnu.org>

Incoma: Visualizing Conversations

Incoma is an application to visualize and characterize conversation flows. Its objective is to enhance collective intelligence and provide an appealing interface to facilitate massive participation in conversations.

Repository

https://github.com/Incoma/Incoma

License

GPLv3

Languages

Javascript, HTML5, PHP, MySQL

Status

Beta

Try the demo at http://incoma.org/?c=sandbox

State of The Federation

• UnHosted Meeting, 18 July 2013
• Lorea Virtual Assembly #22, 29 July 2013