Hey people, so open-source software for community/ neighborhood resource sharing / mutual aid. Eg tools and machines. What is there? @liaizon #CommunityOrganizing #CommunitySoftware #ResourceSharing #MutualAid
@abekonge can you elaborate on what you mean by this? what sort of actions do you need specific tools for?
@liaizon yeah sure. I’m specifically thinking about software for sharing resources in a local community. So if I need a really big pot, or a hedge trimmer or a spot welding machine, I can look up who has that, contact them and arrange to borrow it. Or if I have tools or machines that I want to share I can use such a platform to share it. So like a distributed tool-library kind of thing, a Craigslist for gift economy or a buy-nothing kind of resource-database.
I know different sort of proprietary and data-surveillance kind of software that does this - but I very specifically do not want to lock these resources and networks in walled gardens. Also many of these apps wants people to make money of each other, like “renting” from each other - and I want to build relations and community, not make markets in even more places. So more like couch surfing - not airbnb, in quality of relations.
@abekonge there are lots of people wanting this type of thing and I have talked about it with @mariha and @bhaugen and others a number of times. I think @bonfire has some potential to provide some infrastructure towards mutual aid networks like this. I think a federated or distributed network is a *must* for these types of tools to flourish cause we need to be able to have really niche community oriented tooling but still have a global focus
@abekonge @mariha @bhaugen @bonfire https://openhospitality.network was trying to work on infrastructure for all this but it really needs a new push and more active people to move forward (and I think Solid was the wrong direction)