SAFE Pods and Decentralizing Project SAFE Development
Community ownership is a concept that has existed since the beginning of human interaction through shared goods and responsibility. In recent history, this concept has taken shape in many forms including collaborative and cooperative based organizations, neighborhood initiatives and business models. When a group of individuals are working together towards a common objective, giving those individuals the freedom to contribute their skills and experience without barrier proves valuable in several ways.
In many cases today, common services are actually controlled by a central group of individuals under the guise of community ownership. However, at MaidSafe it is a priority to distribute control and ownership of Project SAFE. Businesses like ours creating open source products have the greatest potential to realize the power of individuals by offering them an equal opportunity to contribute with proportional compensation.
Project SAFE is a global effort to grow a new Internet by those who value privacy, security and freedom. MaidSafe is committed to help catalyze collaboration and cooperation by setting up builder pods in various places around the world. These “SAFE Pods” will focus on distributing core development and bring together creators of applications which will run on top of the SAFE network. Here in the San Francisco Bay area, we are setting up the first hub by bringing together local developers through regularly occurring in-person hacking and study sessions so that together we will learn about the core protocol and over time partake in its maintenance. If enough locations take time to do the same, we can decentralize core development while at the same time enabling infrastructure for support and growth of SAFE apps.
In combination with the safecoin builder incentives, these SAFE Pods bring opportunity for freedom-minded developers around the world to make a living working on open source development. There is potential for Project SAFE to not only disrupt the server-based Internet but also the business of building open source applications. Project SAFE will serve as an example for rewarding developers for building free (as in both beer and freedom) software without resorting to distractions like ads for revenue. Automated payments for app builders and improvements to the core brings incentive while in-person collaboration brings dynamic discussion around new ideas, faster iteration of those ideas and better understanding of priorities.
If you’re in the San Francisco Bay area, please join us. A new Internet is here so lets collaborate on making it the best it can be!
