[BW-dev-discussion] BW-dev-discussion] Proposal: Build BW on top of buddyPress

[John Bates]

Hello friends,

Midsch referred me to this discussion, and I see he has mentioned the
discussions the two of us have had recently.

I like both Midsch's and Callum's proposals, not only for BW but as an
element in a larger context, beyond BW and even beyond hospex.

Midsch and I are both interested in decentralization and privacy. In
fact, the most important goal of my involvement in CS was
decentralization. Later, I came to BW with the idea of encouraging
decentralization and diversity in the hospex space. Relative to CS and
HC, BW definitely added diversity in several ways, most notably the
emphasis on democracy, transparency, and volunteerism. I was pleased
when BW decided to make its software open-source; not only as a matter
of principle, but so that it would be easier for new communities to form
using the BW platform.

I have been observing discussions about the future direction of BW for
over a month now (after a long absence), and I notice the same thing
I've noticed over and over again: how difficult it is to reach a
consensus on anything (including lately such things as platform, values,
purpose, usefulness) when a single group is too large or too diverse
(internally). Even democratic methods of making decisions inevitably
lead to a dissatisfied minority. Some compromise is always necessary,
but it can be minimized by associating with sufficiently like-minded
people.

My goal is to reduce the barriers to the formation of new communities. I
would like to see it become very easy, technically speaking, for a group
to split off to form a new community when they feel that the old one no
longer resonates with them. Right now, starting an independent fork of
BW would be a big task, even for developers, and is not even an option
for the average member. What if it became almost as easy as clicking a
mouse? I doubt that this will ever happen for the current BW platform,
but it may well come to pass for a platform based on Drupal or
BuddyPress, and relatively soon.

I was happy to support BW in the past and still am supportive of it,
but I wish to go further with decentralization. Given that, my
interest is in adding hospex specific functionality to Drupal or
BuddyPress, independent of whether BW adopts this solution now or later
or never. The initial goal would be to make a bundle that is quickly and
easily deployable for any new community that wants to enter the hospex
space with whatever focus interests them; for example, a community like
casarobino.org. Once they have established their community, they would
then be free to develop relations with other communities with enough
similarity to make joint ventures worthwhile. So, I am also interested
in protocols for interaction between numerous similar communities of any
type, not just hospex.

Taking the ideal of decentralization even further, I would like to see a
decentralized, private hardware platform as an option, eliminating the
need for third-party servers and the need to pay for them, as well as
increasing security, reliability and privacy.

I repeat Midsch's invitation to send us an email if you wish to
brainstorm with us.