Runrig has begun publishing an article series that explores the design principles and methodologies behind the project. The Runrig Journal will be a critique of conventional software development methodologies and how they often come freighted with the implicit assumptions of proprietary technology and capitalistic modes of growth – e.g., concepts like scalability, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), and even object-oriented programming. It will also look at ways free & open source software can go beyond the narrow scope of mere individual liberties and explicitly socialize the project for software freedom. A new set of design primitives and computing metaphors will be argued for that can help to counteract those embedded assumptions and more fairly redistribute control over our shared technological inheritance. Finally, through Runrig’s ongoing work and emerging project proposals, the series will address what concrete strategies have worked, which ones have not, and how to adapt those lessons to serve a broader community of farmers, food workers, and technologists.
The Runrig Journal will include articles for a general audience, along with more technical reports, tutorials, and even the occasional long-form essay. You can sign up for the newsletter, subscribe to RSS, Atom, or JSON Feed, or follow Runrig on Mastodon as @[email protected] or on Bluesky as @runrig.bsky.social. The goal is a biweekly cadence, but will probably be less frequent as time allows. Don’t hesitate to email Jamie with questions, comments, or if you’d like to contribute!
I finally got around to taking a look at this and I am loving what I have read so far, both on an intellectual and emotional level.
There are so many parts of this that I want to dive into deeper and figure out how to incorporate into my work. In the short term, your paraphrasing of Runrig’s original proposal feels very relevant to some of what our team has been struggling with in defining what we do.
Continuous experimentation and free play, jeu libre, when practiced throughout the lifecycle of a project like Runrig, can have tremendous potential that cannot be overstated. The evolution of a software system is only one factor in the evolution of the broader social and natural systems in which it is embedded. Experiments may succeed, or they may fail; ad hoc measures may eventually find wider adoption as a general solution, or they’ll only ever serve a tiny niche of user scenarios; freely sharing some bit of knowledge or a particular technique may be recognized and reciprocated, or that datum will merely fade into the background hum of information and culture. Regardless, each one of these outcomes will be metabolized within an open system of communal stewardship. The small lessons and incremental progress each one marks will be contributed back to the whole, always in one form or another, so that it continues to nurture and expand the commons.
People usually want a clear plan or some level of confidence before working on something that it will be useful in some scalable way, but that is almost impossible to know ahead of time.
