Will the #Fediverse succeed if some group or person with a more business-oriented mindset comes into play? I remember how excited I was as a teenager when I first started using #Linux, with its core ideas, but only geeks really got into it.
The game has changed a lot since #Ubuntu was released more than twenty years ago by #Canonical, led by Mark Shuttleworth. Maybe the Fediverse and all its players, initiatives usually led by geeks, are in a similar state to Linux before Ubuntu.
I'm not saying the big tech social media will disappear or stop being used as the main form of communication by most people. This didn't happen when it comes to the adoption of Windows and Mac OS, either.
But we are not there yet. The Fediverse initiative is still in its infancy, and it's hard to see it as the same reason why people like me were so excited about open knowledge in our twenties or even earlier.
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#nonprofit #sustainability #outreach #geeks #SocialMedia #BigTech
In 2011, I traveled to several European countries and a few in the Middle East to gain experience and learn. I also wanted to bring back projects to #Brazil. After visiting twelve countries in three months, I decided to bring the Open Knowledge Foundation to my country. I successfully founded its chapter, Open Knowledge Brasil ( @okbr). One of my core ideas was to create a business-oriented organization that was not for profit, similar to its parent organization and the #Wikimedia Foundation ( @wikimediafoundation), two organizations where I volunteered and worked professionally. I was inspired by how they did things.
We achieved several goals, such as winning Google's Social Impact Challenge* in 2004 and building several projects, organizations, and partnerships, as well as raising awareness in the country regarding open government data and access to information. However, I am still uncertain whether the organization can be sustainable, even though it has directors who are much more competent than I am.
This may be related to the current state of the nonprofit sector in such an unequal country. Having lived in a wealthy country for nearly a decade, I now better understand how challenging it is for such initiatives to survive in a country like Brazil.
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* https://impactchallenge.withgoogle.com/brazil2014/charities/open-knowledge-foundation
