this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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Free and Open Source Software
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I would say you are lucky. I lived in my college town for 20years and it started out chock full of co-ops in the 80s and by the time I moved away they were all hardly recognizable or gone. Food co-ops, housing co-ops, internet co-ops... all mutated away from shared labor or were replaced by sole ownerships.
My wife works for an employee-owned engineering company, but they are anything but FOSS in their culture.
I hope these intermediate management structures that combine expertise and collective ownership grow more. But it still isn't a slam-dunk that should be assumed to be the stupidly-obvious approach unless such organizations compete with the grifters... and then their success won't be due to the fact that they are using FOSS but that they present a track record of success as an organization.
Sometimes I wonder what happened to all the food co-ops that used to be around, but since I'm in Canada it's probably just the same thing that happened to all the small independent grocers: They got squeezed out by the monopoly and monopsony power of the tight little cartel that now controls the whole market.
I'd say it's pretty obvious that other things being equal, it's generally better to run things cooperatively, just like it's stupidly obvious once you stop to think about it that free software is the right way to go. But it's not the only consideration, it's no guarantee of success, and the forces opposing it are strong.