Open Social

Summary

Open source has clearly won. Yes, there are plenty of closed source products and businesses. But the shared infrastructure—the commons—runs on open source. We might take this for granted, but it wasn’t a foregone conclusion thirty five years ago. There were powerful forces that wanted open source to lose. Some believed in the open source model but didn’t think it could ever compete with closed source. Many categories of tools only existed as closed source. A Microsoft CEO called open source cancer—a decade before Microsoft has rebuilt its empire around it. The open source movement may not have lived up to the ideals of the “free software”, but it won in industry adoption. Nobody gets fired for choosing open source these days. For much crucial software, open source is now the default. I believe we are at a similar juncture with social apps as we have been with open source thirty five years ago. There’s a new movement on the block. I like to call it “open social”. There are competing visions for what “open social” should be like. I think the AT Protocol created by Bluesky is the most convincing take on it so far. It’s not perfect, and it’s a work in progress, but there’s nothing I know quite like it. alicebob@alice.com@bob.comprofilecommentpostlikefollowprofile In this post, I’ll explain the ideas of the AT Protocol, lovingly called atproto, and how it changes the relationship between the user, the developer, and the product. I don’t expect atproto and its ecosystem (known as the Atmosphere) to win hearts overnight. Like open source, it might take a few decades to become ubiquitous. By explaining these ideas here, I’m hoping to slightly nudge this timeline. Despite the grip of today’s social media companies, I believe open social will eventually seem inevitable in retrospect—just like open source does now. Good things can happen; all it takes is years of sustained effort by a community of stubborn enthusiasts. So what is it all about? What open source did for code, op...