This IoO project explores and documents efforts to form free, open source alternatives to corporate cloud infrastructures, especially through cooperative business models.
Cooperative clouds
- CoCloud – A proposed cooperative to “deploy and share free/libre/open software developed by communities around the world”
- Under development
- CommonsCloud – “Cooperative, collaborative and decentralised cloud, alternative to the proprietary software platforms”
- Dark Peak Data Co-operative – “Open-source software, hosted for your convenience, with democratic accountability”
- Offerings: web hosting, RSS, git
- Drutopia – A free-software project and hosting service for easy web development with Drupal
- fairapps – “communication solutions on a fair basis for creative teams and initiatives” run by the cooperative fairkom
- HCoop – “an Internet hosting service and community, run democratically as a USA 501(c)(12) non-profit corporation”
- Offerings: OpenAFS, web hosting, email, mailing lists, git, MoinMoin wiki, Jabber
- May First / People Link – “engages in building movements by advancing the strategic use and collective control of technology for local struggles, global transformation, and emancipation without borders”
- Offerings: email, web hosting, webmail, Jitsi, ownCloud, GNU Social, OpenID, XMPP (Jabber)
- Social.coop – “a coop-run corner of the fediverse, spearheading a cooperative and transparent approach to operating our social platforms”
- Offerings: Mastodon
- WebArchitects – “a Sheffield based, small and friendly, multi-stakeholder co-operative which provides ethical and green, web hosting, virtual servers and GNU/Linux sysadmin support services”
- Offerings: web hosting, git.coop (GitLab), WordPress, Discourse, MediaWiki, Nextcloud, and many other applications
- WebHosting.coop – “become a member of our democratic and socially ran web hosting cooperative association and experience the incredible benefits of transparent, honest, and reliable service”
- Offerings: web hosting
Commons clouds
- Chatons – French network of commons clouds
- Framasoft – “A network dedicated to globally promoting “free” and particularly free software.”
- Konrad Lischka, “How a French association with 6 employees offers mainstream users free and libre alternatives to Facebook Groups, Slack, Skype and the like” (February 26, 2017)
- Riseup – “provides online communication tools for people and groups working on liberatory social change”
Open-App ecosystems
Development co-ops
- Autonomic – Worker co-op that offers open-source, secure cloud tools
- Digital Life Collective
Further resources
- Awesome Self Hosted – “A directory of free software solutions and web applications which can be hosted locally”
- erwin blom, “Open Source Alternatives for Everything,” Product Hunt
- De-google-ify Internet, a project of Framasoft
- Holo – holochain-based “peer to peer web on mini-servers”
- Indienet – “an initiative led by Ind.ie and The City of Ghent to explore the development and deployment of Federated Personal Web Sites (FPWS) to empower citizens with individual sovereignty, agency, and autonomy in the digital age”
- Marco Fioretti, Percloud proposal website
- Jesse Kriss, “Anti-capitalist human scale software (and why it matters)” (February 10, 2016)
- Open App Ecosystem – “interconnected independent open source applications”
- Nathan Schneider, “Prospectus: IoOCloud, a Cloud-Services Cooperative,” The Internet of Ownership (January 14, 2017)
- Oliver Sylvester-Bradley, “PLANET – An open source operating system for a collaborative, sustainable economy,” open.coop (January 10, 2017)
- unhosted web apps – “Also known as ‘serverless’, ‘client-side’, or ‘static’ web apps, unhosted web apps do not send your user data to their server”