The spoons.technology plot

Self hosting is a way to take control of your data. However, it also comes with significant effort and needs a range of skills to do well.

There are also other challenges:

• Little support if you have trouble
• Sharing with friends can get complicated quickly
• Can end up running more "side" services than you wanted to
• Duplication of effort

What is this project?

The goal is to provide some structure and services to make it simpler for people to take control of their own digital lives.

It's organised as a co-operative, with members sharing the costs and maintenance of services run for the benefit of the community.

Why the name?

It's inspired by The Spoon Theory. The thought is, one of the downsides of running your own services is that the times you need to work on them may not line up with times you are able to.

The hope is that we can all share a larger pool of spoons!

What sort of services is this for?

Broadly, "anything people want to run", though there is a bit of a focus on alternatives to big tech offerings.

There are also some core services to make running other things easier to do, especially when multiple people are sharing the load.

If I run a service, do I need to let other people use it?

No. The idea is to make it easier for that to be possible, but it isn't required. For example, you could allow login via the core authentication service, but only permit your friends to log in.

Can I use things other people run?

Maybe. Core services are available to all members of the co-op, but services run by other members may not be open to all.

Does it cost anything to be a member?

Maybe. This project is very new, and the costs are unknown.

The expectation is that the core services can be maintained without external funding, however there are foreseeable costs for some services that may exist in future.

For example, a member might create a service to allow sharing videos online - which will be costly in bandwidth and storage. Were this to happen, it would be good if costs could be shared among members.

Similarly, if we were to gain a service with social features, the co-op might find itself wanting to pay for moderator's time.