The corporate web may be dying/reinventing itself. Everyone talks about FOSS and having a user driven experience.

But one thing we don’t have is a true FOSS web, a protocol like HTTP that only allows FOSS websites to be hosted and bars any corporate interest from hosting for profit.

Would something like that be possible? A “dark web” but not for illicit schemes but for free and open hosted content?

You go to https://website for your comporate fix and to foss:// for none “open source” content. (Stuff like fediverse, self hosted websites etc.)

You’d have to have a governing body, something like the Free Software Foundation that ensures everyone hosting on the foss-web follows the open source guidelines and goes after violators.

  • Andy
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    31 year ago

    Can’t see how realistically it could be done.

    I’m an individual. I register a domain using my surname. I upload a blog of my keyboard building. Additionally, I link to my git repo with the stl and gerber files.

    All good so far.

    But then someone asks if I can build one for them, as they don’t have a 3D printer/can’t solder/whatever. So we agree on a price and a deal is done. Still ok?

    A few people ask, and I figure it’s a nice side hustle, so I build a form and une my bank’s payment gateway. Still ok?

    It’s bringing in some decent money now. I’ve quit my day job, and hired someone to help me with all of my soldering. Because I need to pay them, I set up a company to pay them out of. The only thing that changes on my website is a little bit of text at the bottom that now says <surname> pty ltd. Not ok anymore. But who is going to police that?

    • @WhoRoger
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      1 year ago

      The idea is that a company wouldn’t be able to keep users and their data hostage on their servers or to their arbitrary standards, monetise it by influencing their decisions and stuff like that. Not your little keyboard side gig.

      Like with GPL, even large corpos can enter the space, but can’t take advantage by not providing anything back.

      • Andy
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        21 year ago

        Gotcha, I’d misunderstood the context I think.