Infrastructure “We should own our infrastructure.” A lot of people would instinctively nod in agreement with that statement. Yet who “we” refers to shifts depending on the type of infrastructure. Highways, railways, bridges, and ports require nation-scale efforts. The water supply is usually put into the hands of municipalities. And the desire to own infrastructure goes down to a much smaller level: Owning your home is a dream for many—though such ownership doesn’t necessarily have to be organized on an individual level. Instead, cooperatives or city-owned housing1 can provide similar benefits.
I miss that world when XMPP was king and almost everyone was just using whatever frontend for it and there were no “we’re moving to our own privative, closed source protocol because security and features” cheap excuses so everyone could message everyone :(