This is a private note that has been shared.
Preview of the Microblogging Cooperative
What happens to our blogs when we die? I wrote a chapter in my book about this. Lately I’ve been thinking more about concrete solutions and how they’re intertwined with the longevity of Micro.blog itself.
Automattic’s 100-year hosting plan also deserves a shout-out. I wrote the draft of this blog post over a year ago, before Automattic announced their plan, but I’m interested in learning from Automattic and anyone else attempting long-timeframe hosting.
I’ve said that eventually the Micro.blog core platform source code will be open source. We’ve already open sourced everything else, including apps for iOS, Android, Mac, and blog themes. I can’t spend much time managing an open source community, but I do want people to feel they can take the Micro.blog code and run with it, splitting off any pieces that might be useful.
I’m also inspired by some of the business solutions that have come from other web-related projects:
- WordPress. Automattic is a for-profit company that runs WordPress.com and Tumblr. The WordPress Foundation is a non-profit that helps the open source community.
- Mastodon. Mastodon gGmbH is a non-profit that owns the trademark for Mastodon and runs a couple of the most popular Mastodon servers. There is also a new organization in the United States.
- Ghost. Ghost is an open source project and a non-profit company that provides paid blog hosting.
- Flickr. Flickr is run by SmugMug. The Flickr Foundation is a non-profit set up to maintain access to Flickr photos for 100 years.
- Mozilla. The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit that owns Mozilla Corporation and its product Firefox. Mozilla maintains the MDN web docs and does a lot for the open web.
Do any of these models work for Micro.blog? Sort of! Here are my goals:
- Provide a home for the community around Micro.blog’s related open source. The official native apps, core web platform, Hugo themes, and companion apps like Epilogue, Sunlit, Wavelength, and Strata.
- Support projects and organizations such as the IndieWeb that can further the health of the open web. This could be helping organize contributors in the spirit of WordPress’s Five for the Future.
- Renewal of domain names and hosting beyond a person’s lifetime. Currently you can prepay for 10 years of a domain name at many hosting providers. But what about 50 years? What if there was an organization that managed and paid for this for its members?
This thinking has led me to found a new organization: the Microblogging Cooperative. It’s structured as a cooperative, owned by its members. There will be member fees to join and those fees will support the mission above. Anyone with a blog will be able to join as a voting member.
(There’s no way to join yet! You can sign up to be notified of updates here.)
There will be regular meetings and votes by members to shape the future of the organization. There will be a board, elected by its members, to help with strategic decisions. Special thanks to the initial board who will get us started: 1, 2, 3.
I’m excited to have a framework for this, even if there are many details to sort out. Micro.blog will continue to be run as a separate company to host micro.blog and support our community.
