you know, I think I'm just going to delete my fucking LinkedIn account.

[lina@neuromatch.social]

@aud
literally how tf do we land grant money to start a queer tech workers co-op that we can live off of?

like, just start with a simple, fairly easily achievable idea like this https://mas.to/@kissane/113392528258484984

and then try to build some community around it that can inform development of in-house products and experimenting with various ideas and whanot

[lina@neuromatch.social]

@aud
there's so many competent, if not exceptional, devs in our same situation that'd jump at something like that. just how do you get it started without engaging in VC/founder/etc bullshit

[aud@fire.asta.lgbt]

@[email protected] I've been wondering the same type of thing. Obviously you need a couple people to agree on the same thing you want to focus on and then how best to go about it.

I have no idea how you get funding for it even once you get some people to agree. There's crowdfunding type situations, but I think you'd want a lot of prior work/experience/art to show you're worth throwing a few dollars to (at least, I personally would) and that it itself takes time and money. It's hard to focus on things that might not bear out when you're either busy with your active job or job seeking so that you don't starve.

[aud@fire.asta.lgbt]

@[email protected] I used to think of computing as freeing, but the way it's been used has been to shackle people into place as much as anything else. We need for technology what the library was for books: something open and free that allows everyone to benefit with no strings attached. I think a lot of people would like to build towards something like that, except... well. Paying the bills and all that.

[aud@fire.asta.lgbt]

@[email protected] I have jokingly considered asking Google to fund an open source community-owned search competitor to help them avoid anti-trust regulation

(as an example of the half baked ideas I've considered to find funding for genuinely freeing tech)

[lina@neuromatch.social]

@aud
hah, that's a good one

[aud@fire.asta.lgbt]

@[email protected] I mean! It worked for Mozilla.

[lina@neuromatch.social]

@aud
agreed. would be dope if we could get some sort of federal job guarantee going that would easily fund open source projects, but this country can't get its shit together ofc.

and yeah, crowdfunding def seems like a less feasible goal when starting from scratch bc of what you said. VCs have all the money to throw around "taking on risk" , while most people can't just toss donations at people who don't have a working product or at least are far enough along to provide something close to a guarantee.

that's why I think grants have more potential, if you're able to propose a project and your feasibility can just be "we have X years of experience developing stuff like this, we just need funding to be able to focus on it".

[aud@fire.asta.lgbt]

@[email protected] yeah, I totally agree. I'm supposed to be focused on finishing this proposal (no idea what my chances are; taking it anyway) but I'm rather distracted by... life. And a little fear, I guess.

Still, it's good practice for future potential grant proposal writing, I think.

[hipsterelectron@circumstances.run]

@lina @aud i think a coop funding model could work to support software dev directly serving paying users. we kinda see this with masto admins rn but that's hosting and moderation not dev itself. i think a coop funding model for software can work like a more standard support contract

[aud@fire.asta.lgbt]

@[email protected] @[email protected] I've thought about trying to pitch something sort of similar for community owned search; basically, seed money for the open source development, then a modest return for X years on income from hosting+support contracts. Unfortunately, that would be an uphill battle both because "modest returns" and I'd ideally like communities to support the infrastructure necessary for this sort of thing and that means access to limited and important funds (and with the idea that it's a non-profit and/or co-op sort of thing so there's no way in hell I'd put a pitch that squeezed anyone)

that and I have 0 experience doing this sort of thing.

[lina@neuromatch.social]

@aud
oh nice, good luck!!

[aud@fire.asta.lgbt]

@[email protected] @[email protected] But yeah, definitely need "prior art"/work shown for this to be effective.

You have to prove that you are worthy of trust and can do the work. Or, at least, that's the kind of thing I would need to feel comfortable suggesting people throw money at work I'm doing.

[aud@fire.asta.lgbt]

@[email protected] thanks! I'm trying to get in by the first deadline, which is Friday. I have a lot written but admittedly it's sort of... trauma-revisiting to be writing it lmao. So it's extra good practice! Just not very exciting to work on to perfection...

[hipsterelectron@circumstances.run]

@aud @lina cc @ireneista who i'm paraphrasing

[aud@fire.asta.lgbt]

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] I feel like if I could put together a working bare bones implementation of a federated, community-run search engine (which I am actively working on), in theory I could pitch for it in some way, even if it's just for people with disposable time to start working on it.

I think it's really important that people, not corporations, control the access to information. I really long for the expertise of say, librarians, for example, to be able to help contribute to maintaining knowledge (and access to it).

I also thought that if I could get that together, it would in theory be workable for smaller projects (internal knowledge bases, etc), as well, and modest support contracts could be eked out to help maintain development while it gets rolling.

[hipsterelectron@circumstances.run]

@aud @lina @ireneista i'm very interested in distributed text search i will keep an eye on your work

[aud@fire.asta.lgbt]

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] thanks! It's currently overlapping with the other work I'm doing, but part of the reason I'm designing it the way I am is so that I can split it off and use the work there to start using AP/ActivityStreams to create a federated search engine. I think it would work. And would be easy for people to spin up and help curate (and be auditable).

[aud@fire.asta.lgbt]

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] I've only got some basic concepts for search itself from @[email protected] who was kind enough to give me a little guidance regarding critical terms and concepts to look up and research in the search space.

[aud@fire.asta.lgbt]

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] I have a mental model forming about how distributed search could work (I mean, all search is distributed to some extent; it's hardly like google runs on one fiddly ass ancient server, compute wise. And the backend as well, I'm sure, although I couldn't tell you whether they use a partitioning scheme or what) without causing intense load across the network for every query, for example, as well as updating/curation/auditing. Buuuut I haven't written it down yet.

But I think after this writing is done I maybe will, if nothing else so that someone who might have the time and desire to give feedback can critique stuff.