

The Indie Tech Manifesto - api
http://indietech.org

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api
Very good, clear thinking here. The point about being design-led is very
important -- usability and user experience is paramount and is the main area
where OSS has failed.

Still, I think you're going to need businesses around this. Many things are
simply far too hard and resource-intensive for hobbyists and small indy
projects, and not everything can be made _completely_ distributed without
sacrificing usability. (See: CAP theorem)

What we _really_ need are a new breed of Internet businesses with business
models that put the user first (again), businesses whose model is _not_
surveillance or "eyeball farming" but delivering value to the primary
customer. I also think that such businesses will need, to have such
credibility, strong legal statements of privacy and user-control in their
EULAs. Being open source is also a good thing, and is not mutually exclusive
with having a business model.

