In this edition, we conducted an email-based interview with Aaron Wolf, co-founder of Snowdrift.coop, a web platform coordinating patronage specifically for freely-licensed works. Aaron Wolf is a music teacher by trade who got involved in the free software movement in 2012 building on his earlier interest in free culture and cooperative economics.

What inspired you to create Snowdrift.coop?

We need the general public to embrace and support free software and free culture.

We face many challenges, but one thing is clear: most people don't like proprietary terms, advertising and tracking on everything, or other anti-features. We would all prefer to have the same technology and creative works be free-as-in-freedom. Still, we don't all care enough to give up the features that proprietary works offer.

Our problem involves collective action. Each individual who uses proprietary software recognizes that they have negligible influence over the overall market. We need a critical mass of people together to move our support from proprietary to free projects if we want freedom without sacrificing the features and high-quality that many proprietary products offer.

Back in 2012, I was complaining to a friend about this situation. I described how I wished I could make an agreement with all sorts of other people who, like me, were hesitating to do all they could to help free projects. I'd like to make a pledge with others that I'd contribute a little more for each additional person who would join me.

That friend, David Thomas, happened to be a programmer and had some free time at that point. He convinced me that my idea was worth pursuing, and he offered to help make it happen. I hesitated but eventually decided to do it even though it meant giving up my plans to pursue a musicology PhD.

We brainstormed about names related to collective action, tragedy of the commons, prisoner's dilemma, and so on. And we settled on the metaphor of the snowdrift dilemma (we further adapted the metaphor to our context, see here).

We agreed that every detail of our new platform needed to be consistent with serving the public interest. Thus, we're structuring as a non-profit cooperative, building the platform with 100% free software, making it exclusively for free-as-in-freedom projects, and implementing the most ethical and honorable policies we can devise. Two years and huge amounts of work and research later, we're getting close to operating.

What's the project status today?

We have a live site but are still in alpha state. We have the matching pledge details figured out for at least the initial launch version (we can adapt things as necessary after we begin operations). It wasn't easy to choose what tools to use, and we ended up deciding that it would be most valuable to have an integrated platform that encourages engagement, feedback, and volunteering alongside funding. So, the site has accessory tools (wiki, discussion, ticketing) which we're using for our own development and which all projects may use if they choose.

We're currently running a fundraising-drive at https://snowdrift.tilt.com to cover our legal costs and extra development. At this point, we've reached our first couple goals for funding but hope we continue to get additional support as we have a lot more still to do.

Despite only testing with fake money on the live Snowdrift.coop site, we have registered over 600 users already. We see a lot of interest, and we're feeling optimistic. We hope to start getting projects listed soon.

What features do you think really sets Snowdrift apart from similar software?

We did a lot of background research about the history of funding for free software and culture and reviewed over 700 other web platforms; see our software history article and our review of other platforms.

A few other web platforms offer some features worth comparing, but we're really quite distinct. Our funding mechanism is new. Our technical design emphasizes progressive enhancement — that means everything is functional without relying on client-side JavaScript at all (and, of course, wherever we use some JavaScript enhancements, that's still all free software). Many bits and pieces can be compared to other software, but we're a unique package with a number of novel elements. For example, even our approach to ticketing is unique because we integrated it with our discussion boards in order to lessen the divide and the unnecessary duplication we often see between separated forums and ticketing systems.

Why did you choose the AGPLv3 as Snowdrift's license?

We aren't building the software with the main goal of others running it themselves (although we hope to split out some of the accessory tools so they can work independently), but we see it as important and ethically consistent with our mission that people have the freedom to run the software on their own or fork the project. If we ran the site with proprietary software, it would give us particularly strong lock-in, and that amplifies power imbalances and conflict-of-interest concerns.

AGPLv3+ allows us to not only share our software freely but to ensure that it stays free. I think it would be great for all software to be under AGPL. The Affero clause doesn't hurt anything; basically, it either does nothing (in the case of a program that would never be run over a server) or it protects our freedoms — so, might as well include it for any software.

How can users (technical or otherwise) help contribute to Snowdrift?

See https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/en/how-to-help. But, in summary, coders can jump in and help with patches. The main code is written in Haskell, but we have lots of work that mostly involves simple HTML, CSS, or JavaScript coding.

We also have legal, design, organizing, illustration, and other work to do. It would even help to have more people actively welcoming visitors to our #snowdrift IRC channel at freenode.net. It also helps to have more people simply testing the site and participating in the discussion boards at Snowdrift.coop. We welcome all sorts of questions and constructive feedback.

We also want to determine the optimal projects to sign up for our launch. Ideally, those will be downstream, user-facing, reasonably broad audience sorts of things that have decent history but clear need for more funding.

Enjoyed this interview? Check out our previous entry in this series featuring Jessica Tallon of PyPump.

Join the FSF and friends on Friday, December 26, from 2pm to 5pm EST (19:00 to 22:00 UTC) to help improve the Free Software Directory by adding new entries and updating existing ones. We will be on IRC in the #fsf channel on freenode.

Tens of thousands of people visit directory.fsf.org each month to discover free software. Each entry in the Directory contains a wealth of useful information, from basic category and descriptions, to providing detailed info about version control, IRC channels, documentation, and licensing info that has been carefully checked by FSF staff and trained volunteers.

While the Free Software Directory has been and continues to be a great resource to the world over the past decade, it has the potential of being a resource of even greater value. But it needs your help!

If you are eager to help and you can't wait or are simply unable to make it onto IRC on Friday, our participation guide will provide you with all the information you need to get started on helping the Directory today!

We say that running free software on your computer means that its operation is under your control. Implicitly this presupposes that your computer will do what your programs tell it to do, and no more. In other words, that your computer will be loyal to you.

In 1990 we took that for granted; nowadays, many computers are designed to be disloyal to their users. It has become necessary to spell out what it means for your computer to be a loyal platform that obeys your decisions, which you express by telling it to run certain programs.

Richard Stallman's latest article offers a "tentative definition" of a computer that is "loyal to you," the user.

Join the FSF and friends on Friday, December 19, from 2pm to 5pm EST (19:00 to 22:00 UTC) to help improve the Free Software Directory by adding new entries and updating existing ones. We will be on IRC in the #fsf channel on freenode.

Tens of thousands of people visit directory.fsf.org each month to discover free software. Each entry in the Directory contains a wealth of useful information, from basic category and descriptions, to providing detailed info about version control, IRC channels, documentation, and licensing info that has been carefully checked by FSF staff and trained volunteers.

While the Free Software Directory has been and continues to be a great resource to the world over the past decade, it has the potential of being a resource of even greater value. But it needs your help!

If you are eager to help and you can't wait or are simply unable to make it onto IRC on Friday, our participation guide will provide you with all the information you need to get started on helping the Directory today!

We've just released a printable version of our online Giving Guide, which helps gift-givers choose tech gifts that respect recipients' rights as computer users and avoid those that don't. The printable version (available in color as well as black and white) makes sharing and translating easy so the Giving Guide can spread far and wide.

The guide is an easy-to-use resource that can make a difference in what people buy. We just need to get it in front of them. Can you help us spread the word by organizing a Giving Guide Giveaway this winter? Giveaways are public meet-ups where free software users gather to hand out the print Giving Guide to shoppers considering electronics gifts. By having face-to-face interactions with people in your area, you'll be getting your message across way more effectively than we can by talking about it online.

To make planning Giveaways easy, we've created a primer with tips and a planning timeline. Get a few friends together for a small Giveaway, or make a splash with a big one -- it's about spreading the message in whatever way is best for you. Check out the primer now, and organize your Giveaway! If you need to do your Giveaway in January or February, don't worry; shopping doesn't stop with the holidays!

This paper version is in English for letter sized paper, but we don't want to be limited to it! If you have the skills, please translate the printable version of this guide into any language you can and adapt it to other paper sizes, like A4. Send translated and resized versions as attachments to campaigns@fsf.org, with matching directory structure and file types to the original archive. Feel free to credit yourself on the translation.

If you're in the Boston-area, you are invited to the Giveaway the Free Software Foundation is organizing on Thursday, December 18th, meeting at 6:30 PM in the Harvard Square Station. Please RSVP to campaigns@fsf.org if you're coming.

Happy holidays!

Thanks to your support, 2015 marks 30 years of the FSF! In the next 30 years, we want to do even more to defend computer user rights. To kick off in that direction, we're setting our highest-ever fundraising goal of $525,000 by January 31st. Donate, join as a member, or read more about our work.