Stuart Croall @stuartcroall@librem.one

"Online, there is no requirement of proximity, which allows students to get instruction from the best teachers, no matter what school district they reside in."
- #EricSchmidt

Schmidt, like so many people, doesn't seem to understand that teaching is more like counselling than programming. It's more about facilitating learning than installing capabilities and pushing content. The younger the students, the more true that is.

The software commons gets broken and fragmented by morality licences like the Hippocratic License and Anti-996 License. Maybe instead of trying to have their cake and eat it too, these principled software engineers could campaign to abolish proprietary software, and refuse to work for any organisation that makes it? Without it, any activity using computers would be open to public scrutiny, and tech companies couldn't build oligopolies on free code by wrapping it in proprietary layers.

I'm taking my #Hubzilla instance for a test drive, and trying to learn about all its features and possibilities. The one challenge of finding tools, software, and platforms in the #decentralized, #federated social world is simply the number of options, and their various quirks

I'm interested in the idea of social networks and virtual social spaces bridging the physical/virtual divide, where groups of physically-proximate communities could collaborate to host servers for their communities, rather than relying on physically distant, often abstract entities to host their server-based tools.

For a couple of years now, I've thought about Community Centres - in the sense of the actual physical locations and organizations of people that exist here in #Winnipeg - as potential places to start in terms of a physical unit of organizing hosting and tech support.

Another model that is interesting is that of "community bike shops/collectives." Here in Winnipeg there is a growing number of these organizations that train volunteers to help others repair their bikes, and learn to repair their bikes, and even build their own bikes from parts. On a number of occasions, they've organized volunteers to salvage bikes from the piles of old bikes at the city landfill, and then had a marathon volunteer bike-building session where, using the parts from salvaged bikes, they build bikes for those in need.

I like the idea of the #social.coop. The #cooperative movement is strong on the Canadian prairies, and I think the idea of #platformcooperatives could certainly resonate among Winnipeggers and other prairie folk. I do think, however, that there is some additional value in terms of adding a tangible physical-local component to such a model.

Coming back to Hubzilla, one of the reasons I'm drawn to it as a platform, and to some of its underlying concepts and philosophies, is it seems like something that could serve a great virtual hub, to mirror a supportive and cooperative physical-local hub, such as is presently represented by #community centres.

These are all just thoughts and ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for a while and I'm, just now, trying to fill them out and ground them in reality. Any thoughts or comments anyone has would be appreciated :-)

Lots of great pieces have come out recently calling upon those of us in the free/open-source software to go further in making ethical tech.

* @ntnsndr on the culture war in open-source https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-culture-war-in-open-source-is-on
* @CoralineAda on **ethical** open-source software https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/a-six-month-retrospective-on-ethical-open-source

#OpenSource #FreeSoftware

#ShowerThoughts giant container ships are engineered around the way combustion engines work. Trying to swap in electric engines for the diesel engines on those ships is dumb. What we need to do is ask engineers to design entirely new forms of marine transport, which take advantage of what electric engines can do that diesel engines can't.

Remember. Western society tries hard to make us cold and ruthless. An act of kindness is an act of rebellion.

Go. Rebel.

"Our collective objective should be, to make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offence, or the disadvantage of anyone."
- Buckminster Fuller

David from our #LibremOne team shares why he is excited for the #LibremMini https://puri.sm/posts/why-im-looking-forward-to-the-librem-mini/ #privacy #security

You can also use the Librem Mini for your:

• Media center https://puri.sm/posts/a-mini-media-center/
• Home or office desktop https://puri.sm/posts/a-mini-desktop-replacement/

Continuing our series for those working from home #WFH:

• New article: Use multiple accounts and a password manager https://puri.sm/posts/you-need-two-accounts/

• Free software for #RemoteWork https://puri.sm/posts/our-essential-list-of-free-software-for-remote-work/

• Our tips for #RemoteWorking https://puri.sm/posts/our-tips-for-remote-working/

$1,000 a month doesn’t solve every problem. But it sure makes a lot of them easier to deal with.

The question is how do we generate an environment and culture in which a mindset of scarcity is less pervasive. Getting the economic boot off of people’s throats would help immensely. So would a higher degree of empathy and compassion. The opposite of scarcity is abundance.