Collectively owned apps (Socialist software) | Hacker News Reader

Collectively owned apps (Socialist software)

5 pointsgenseng3 comments

I’m fairly certain collectively owned apps will be “a thing” in the future. By that I mean, paying users will have their money distributed directly to the people building the software and not to a middle-man “owner” that obfuscates the price and bags a profit. I think crypto will enable this future on a corporate scale by allowing complex pools of money and coordinated payments. The more users, as long as costs stay fixed, the less it costs per marginal user. This will be especially helpful in areas of inelastic demand. I think this differs from a DAO in specific, nuanced ways. My question is:

1) Do you agree with me? If not, why? I’m curious to understand if I’m missing something here.

2) What is holding back the adoption of this model? Is it possible today or does specific infrastructure still need to be built in order for it to exist?

In podcasting this is already a thing, with Podcasting 2.0 [0]. One uses the bitcoin lightning network to send BTC, either with a message (a boost) or you can stream them back as you listen. Podcasting 2.0 has many more interesting features, like chapters, transcripts, LIT (Live Item Tag, your podcast app will show a label when a show is live). Good stuff imho, empowering for independent content creators. I bet it will come to software creators.

[0] https://github.com/Podcastindex-org/podcast-namespace/blob/m...

Nice, I’ll check this out

For me collectively owned (communal/socialist) software has not so much to do with only being limited to paying for software, but much more importantly with it being Free (as in freedom), open source, and collectively developed as a consequence. of code being available to all and everyone can contribute to development. By this I do not mean just coding, but also testing, artwork, documentation, translations, promotion, sponsorships/donations (monetary and in other forms)... It is about collectively owning the means of computation, if you will :)

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