!Firefox - I periodically have thoughts about the challenges of sustainably developing #opensource software.

Ever since university days I have been very much aware of the limitations of accountablity in #Trusts such as #Mozilla - They are accountable only to their Trustees and without a democractic process of appointing Trustees its difficult for community members to hold them accountable to their stakeholders. They can go off on their own personal agendas or be captured by those that offer the most funding to the organiation.

For this reason I have though that it might make sense to create a coop out of users of open source software that adheres to some democractic princples that mean that contributors retain the ability to influence open source projects.

A #coop that gives voting rights to members to shape where resources collected are funneled would mean that their wants would be taken into account in where paid development is focused.

To avoid undue influence such a group would need to:

Only allow natural people (rather than legal entities such as companies and other trusts and charities) to join and fund their activities.

Impose some level of minimum and maximum contribution (or limit decision making to a one person, one vote basis)

I wonder whether templates for #coops of this type would encourage more to forum and encourage those who want to contribute to opensource development to do so knowing that their voices and opinions wouldn't be lost as successful projects attract other funding sources.