

Indie's crowd-funding campaign is now live - mikegioia
https://ind.ie/be-the-hope

======
Mithaldu
Can we get an explanation of what this is that doesn't necessitate already
knowing what it is? [https://ind.ie/about/](https://ind.ie/about/) is not very
helpful.

~~~
mindcrash
Full disclosure: I'm a long time supporter of this project (plus long time
friend of Aral, the founder, aswell).

So in short I guess what eventually Indie's end goal is is being the dual of
Apple. Whereas Apple's business model is based upon making user friendly
software and devices in a closed ecosystem, Indie wants to do the same by
doing this in a open ecosystem, using open tools and basically operating
completely in the open, to the point that everything which is going to be
produced will be free (as in free speech) from day one.

Another goal of Indie is to break the hegemony of Google and Facebook (and the
startups that (want to) follow in their footsteps). The reasoning behind is is
that these companies operate in a way that seriously undermine, dare I say
destroy, human rights and democracy. Whilst Indie is aware that these problems
cannot be tackled with technology alone, there's room for some fresh thinking
and alternatives. That there's room for technology which respects the user,
not only from a user experience perspective, but also from a human rights
perspective. The first of these alternatives, Heartbeat - which is aiming to
become a free (as in speech) and open, well designed, fully distributed social
network is to be launched next year.

I hope this gives a better idea about what Indie is trying to accomplish. For
some more background information see Aral's talk "I, Simulation"
[http://vimeo.com/106681730](http://vimeo.com/106681730) and/or the
transcripts and videos from the first get together:
[https://ind.ie/about/summit/](https://ind.ie/about/summit/)

Or just ask away here, I'll try to answer them while Aral is out in the UK
celebrating his birthday :)

(A small note beforehand: feel free to write any reasoned criticism about
Indie or its ideas if you would like to do so. However, due to the rather
"radical" rationale behind Indie recently some not-to-be named people thought
it was best to let their criticism known by verbally assaulting members of the
Indie team via email and/or other forms of communication, even going as far as
doing some nasty tactics popular with the 4chan crowd (if you get my drift).
I'm open to having (serious) discussion about (the rationale behind) Indie,
but if we head into that area it's pretty safe to say discussion will be
over.)

~~~
Mithaldu
You wrote a lot. And sadly my criticism is exactly about that:

I'm still unclear what you wish to achieve. And that's not even the criticism,
that's a statement of fact. I don't understand what you're doing. You have an
elevator pitch that's 5 minutes long.

And i'm a highly active open source developer who spends a lot of his time
contributing to dogma-free projects that practically anyone can and does do
whatever with (CPAN).

Now consider how far you're gonna get with your average person if you can't
make me understand. That said, if you're interested in chatting, i'll happily
give you mind dumps. You can find me on the original free social network: IRC,
specifically freenode or irc.perl.org under the same name has here. :)

