Escape Silibandia

Escape Silibandia is an outgrowth of an effort by The Authenticity Institute to identify open-source components for its public HCI platform, which includes only open source code. We’re happy to share the results of our research here to provide a resource the various projects that are working to save us human beings from the ravages of surveillance capitalism in its various forms, starting by helping the projects to be aware of each other.

Escape Silibandia is not just about open source or decentralization, but about recognizing and challenging the structures of control built by Silicon Valley and its ecosystem.

The Authenticity public HCI platform acknowledges that Silibandia thrives on the distractions of debates over licensing and decentralization, which often divert attention from the real problem: an entrenched digital system that thrives on information about everyone's habits, relationships, beliefs and affiliations, with the intent of keeping us all down on their plantation. Silibandia’s true power lies in its ability to quietly integrate into our daily lives, while masking itself behind the allure of convenience and connectivity.

Note: Silibandia does not include government entities. Generally, governments are too clueless about what’s going on in digital space to be part of Silibandia’s organized oppression; and they’re stuck with physical borders in a world where packet streams flow with no regard for geography. Even China’s Great Firewall is regularly ignored by its citizens using VPNs. The nation-state is headed for obsolescence and irrelevance.

What Does Escape Silibandia Support?

Escape Silibandia supports projects and organizations that align with its mission of freeing individuals from this control. It focuses on technologies and platforms where the source code is available and encourages self-managed servers, sovereign identity systems, open databases, and end-to-end encryption.

Whether they are simple brainstorms, fully functional software, or even abandoned projects, Escape Silibandia recognizes the value in bringing together these diverse initiatives. The goal is to help them collaborate, share resources, and identify synergies that can move us closer to true digital freedom.

NOTE that Escape Silibandia is not mostly about open source or decentralization.

In fact, Silibandia loves to see us arguing about open source and decentralization because they distract people who are trying to fix things from the real problems and solutions.

Escape Silibandia and “Open Source”

“Open Source” is in quotes because the term is used for everything from a sneaky way of presenting “try before you buy” open versions of proprietary software to Richard Stallman’s original principle of creating environments where anything proprietary is excluded by means of licensing terms.

Escape Silibandia is not for purveyors of proprietary software simply because it’s impossible for Silibandia to escape Silibandia.

Perhaps we should say that Escape Silibandia is for groups that deal only with source code that is available on reasonable terms, paid or unpaid, with or without strings attached. We don’t get hung up on licenses and terms as long as the source is reasonably available. As Eron Wolf puts it, "The obvious meaning for the expression ‘open source software’ is ‘You can look at the source code’”. We accept that definition of open source.

Escape Silibandia and Decentralization

Everyone these days wants to see that word Decentralized™. While it is a powerful brand, the only really decentralized system is Bitcoin, the facilitator of money laundering, human trafficking, terrorism, plus some legitimate stuff. Other groups like to fly the decentralization flag while they provide specifications and rules from a centralized governance source that eschews the word “authority.”

Whatever. Authority is authority, whether or not you call it that; and if there is a central source of it then it's centralized authority.

Systems must be governed, and as the decentralization advocate Lawrence Lundy-Bryan notes, “There is no such thing as decentralized governance.” The Authenticity Institute, together with Osmio, its source of participatory governance, provides a source of authority and governance to the enterprises of The Authenticity Alliance

Eyes On The Prize

Regardless of the categorization terminology used by the projects listed here in Escape Silibandia, the important thing is that they're fighting Silibandia’s oppression. That’s the common denominator.

Escape Silibandia’s initial mission is simply to list the projects and groups that are trying to give us a way to escape Silibandia’s plantation, described using information from the About sections of their sites. Surely we have missed some, so please let us know of those.

After that, the mission of Escape Silibandia will evolve as a platform with which to evaluate the degree of freedom-vs.-entanglement of the various projects and groups. How free are they? Do they depend on the use of an “open source” browser that reveals itself upon close examination to be part of the beating heart of Silibandia? Or, at the other end of the spectrum, do they offer apps and projects where subtle little entanglements with Silibandia are avoided whenever possible?

Pure Play

Investors use the term “pure play” to identify the stock of companies that focus only on the specific industry or product category in which they want to invest, and which don’t dilute their capital and management attention with other stuff.

Since “open source” and other descriptors provide only vague hints about a particular project’s intentions with respect to escaping Silibandia, Escape Silibandia’s purpose is to identify as well as possible a project’s intentions and goals as they pertain to helping human beings escape the pervasive clutches of Silibandia.

The only qualification for inclusion in Escape Silibandia is that the project’s stated agenda fits with that of Escape Silibandia, and that its source code is available for use by others.

Some of these projects are barely past the brainstorm stage, while others have been abandoned by a founder who needed to turn their attention to a source of paid employment. There is no implied statement of fitness for any particular purpose here; the purpose of this list, beyond the reason why it was first started, mentioned earlier, is simply to let the people involved in these projects know about each other and perhaps discover synergies that will give them new viability.

Additions to this list, as well as clarifications and corrections, are more than welcome. This is just a start.

Freedom Projects By Group

We’ll start with projects organized into groups whose clear intent, as far as we can tell, is to help you and me escape Silibandia.

FUTO https://futo.org

Apache Software Foundation https://www.apache.org/projects/

India Stack https://www.indiastack.global/

GitLab https://gitlab.com/explore

Electronic Frontier Foundation https://www.eff.org/

GitHub https://github.com/explore (Note: GitHub is owned by Microsoft)

Awesome Lists (part of GitHub) https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome

Hackers On Planet Earth https://hope.net/

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_and_open-source_software_organizations

SourceForge https://sourceforge.net/

Cluetrain https://cluetrain.com/

Open Source Initiative (OSI) https://opensource.org/

Crowd Supply https://www.crowdsupply.com/

RISC-V https://riscv.org/

Open Source Software Directory https://opensourcesoftwaredirectory.com/

The Authenticity Alliance https://authenticityalliance.com

EIEIO https://eieio.io

Project Liberty https://www.projectliberty.io/

Open Hub https://www.openhub.net/

Fediverse Platforms https://joinfediverse.org/

Subreddits https://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/

Open Source Collective https://opencollective.com/