The Linux Desktop and the Cooperative Model Part Two

This post is going to go more heavily into the details of cooperative governance and structure, as well as my ideas for how this will all work. It may get a bit dry but bear with me, it will be important later.

Cooperatives exist so that small holders or interested parties may combine their resources for mutual benefit. This differs from a traditional corporation whose sole aim is to make profit for the investors. In a coop, the aims are usually manifold. In a grocery coop, for instance, an aim may be to only carry organic products, or to minimize prices for members. The members and board must decide what is important to the organization and create bylaws to uphold their choices. The point is, the members of the coop decide what benefits them the most and they have a measure of power within the organization to ask for what they want.

Initially the Tuxedo Cooperative's chief aims will be: 0. To uphold the values of a Free and Open Culture. 1. To create the best possible user experience for desktop computers. 2. Use Free Open Source Software and Hardware wherever possible and 3. Develop Free Open Source Software and Hardware in areas where such an offering is missing or lacking in features or quality. 4. Provide income for developers, engineers, sysadmins, and techs that develop and support TuxedOS. 5. Support TuxedOS members in any way possible that doesn't conflict with any of the above aims.

Of course, these aims are tentative and may be stricken, modified or amended by future governance as they see fit.

In a typical cooperative, the members pay a one-time or recurring (annual) fee to be a member. This effectively entitles them to one share of the company and each member may only hold one share. They are entitled to whatever benefits that the coop's governance has decided to offer for membership. Usually, the benefits are: discounted pricing for products via the coop's collective buying power, a voice in the governance, and getting a dividend from any profit made.

For this free software cooperative, the members would receive the a powerful computing platform complete with a full suite of supported software (binaries would be available ONLY to members), they would have access to technical support and support forums. Also offered would be certified hardware for sale at discounted prices. Other possible benefits would be cloud storage accounts and VPN access. Any profits generated would go towards funding free software/hardware projects to move the platform forward.

The membership has the responsibility of electing the board of directors. These are the executives of the organization and they are directly responsible to the members. The board votes to elect one of their number to be the president, who presides over meetings and is the ultimate responsible person for the organization. The board is also responsible for hiring the key positions, as well as setting the agenda and maintaining the finances of the coop.

In my vision, this structure would be remixed a bit. The board would be made up of three representatives elected by employees. Three board members would be elected by the membership. And three would be appointed by the President. The President would be an employee of the coop hired by the Board. The President would set the agenda and be responsible for executing the board's decisions, but would not vote on board issues. The President's role is to be caretaker of the entire organization, to be the mediator between all parties and to offer the long view to all of the partisan interests. 

Hopefully, the benefits of this type of organization are beginning to become clear. The tech sphere has long been dominated by closed door development, dictatorial leadership, and a controlling attitude towards users. The FOSS movement has been a revolution in humanizing computing as an endeavor, and it is my hope that the cooperative business model becomes the natural economic companion to that movement.

More soon and thanks for reading!

The Linux Desktop and the Cooperative Model

There has been a lot of fuss made about the future of the Linux desktop. It has been going on as long as there has been a Linux desktop to fuss over, and not for no reason. The Linux desktop is a wilderness: desktop environments, widget toolkits, package formats, and various backend architectural things all occupying the same space and competing, both with each other and with the Titans in the proprietary realm. It's a lot to sort out, even for people who thrive on technical challenges and are impassioned by the Free and Open Source ethos. For the mundane user, it's just opaque. They don't see technical challenges as exciting, they see them as annoyances. To them, if they even understand it, the FOSS movement is nice but not of consequence if it can't deliver at least a similar experience as their tried and true Win/Mac systems.

The key, I think, to this failure of the Linux desktop to reach mainstream competitiveness is that there is no company pushing for it, no financial incentive. Yes, there are companies behind Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Red Hat, and SUSE but they are focussed on the enterprise use case, NOT general desktop computing. They are not concerned about Blu-Ray support or whether or not Netflix works. All of the niceties that exist on Linux for general use computing were delivered by conscientious members of the community who cared enough to step up and try to solve some of these issues. And that goodwill is the strength of the FOSS world, but it is not enough on its own. To develop a software solution to a problem is one thing, to maintain and improve it is quite another. Eventually the goodwill runs out at about the same time as the rent comes due and the project goes on the back burner.

The ascent of Linux at all is due its application in servers, supercomputers and embedded systems. The bulk of this work was financed by institutional interests with deep pockets. Which brings me to my point: if getting a sustained, focussed effort on a project is a function of financial support, who is the sugar daddy that is going to bring the Linux desktop to the level of a polished product for mass desktop use? The answer is simple: Us!

Let's back up a little, so I can explain. From Wikipedia: A cooperative ("coop") or co-operative ("co-op") is an autonomous association of persons who voluntarily cooperate for their mutual, social, economic, and cultural benefit. For Linux desktop users, the mutual, social and cultural benefits are already there, that is by far the community's deepest asset. But economic? That's where we are weak. To hardware manufacturers and suppliers, we are the red-headed step-child: too niche to really be able to support, to big to totally ignore. We get also-ran driver support, and rely heavily on unpaid work by developers to write the software of tomorrow. It seems to me that the cooperative economic model is a natural fit for advancing the FOSS movement out of its geeky niche and into a legitimate replacement for closed software.

More on this in later posts...

What is TuxedOS?

Right now TuxedOS is little more than an inspiration, a partially complete icon set and openSUSE. This is the answer I'd like to give to that question:

TuxedOS is a desktop computer platform curated from the best Free and Open Source software and hardware. Our aim is to make a user experience that is productive, aesthetic, secure, trouble-free and 100% Free and Open Source.

By drawing from the brilliant work of Free Software projects such as GNU/Linux, Mozilla Firefox, & LibreOffice (among many others) TuxedOS provides a complete out-of-the-box productivity solution for office or home.

This software will be optimized to run on the Tuxedo Reference Spec, a list of hardware components selected for its open source support, technological progress and economic value. In doing this, we narrow the focus of our platform allowing us to offer better service and performance, and also to provide a commercial home for open hardware projects.

While any computer following the Tuxedo Reference Spec will run TuxedOS, the best experience will be had by purchasing one of our built-to-order workstations preinstalled with TuxedOS. Purchasing these products will provide economic support for the organization's projects, as well as to popular upstream projects.

Additionally, we extensively dogfood our systems in our daily business giving us insight into the boots-on-the-ground effectiveness of our platform. We want our platform to be easy for any novice, without watering down advanced features.

TuxedOS is also a community. We are a for-profit hybrid cooperative. This means that our employees, board members and customers are all equals in making the guiding decisions that effect the platform, and that we all mutually benefit. This is a democratic arrangement that stomps out corporate schmuckery, empowers users to be involved in shaping the platform, and provides economic incentive to develop and maintain Free Software projects for the desktop.

This is what I'm working towards. This blog will document the progress of TuxedOS from what is now a hobby, to hopefully something bigger...

More information soon!