Building FireStriker: Making Civic Tech Free

(firestriker.org)

32 points | by noleary 1 day ago

3 comments

  • aaronbrethorst 1 hour ago
    I have some experience in this space and I want to strongly encourage the author to reconsider their free as in beer model.

    Yes, your target users don’t have a lot of money, but they also deserve a sense of whether or not you’re going to keep maintaining this project. Additionally, they are generally NOT technical and will not have the skills necessary to set up or maintain this platform.

    Without a paid offering, they will have to run the software and will not have any clarity about your long term commitment to the project. Feel free to reach out to me. My email address is in my profile.

  • dang 1 day ago
    URL doesn't seem to work?
  • caesil 1 hour ago
    Kind of sad to see AI water use as the first listed issue motivating this.

    It is a completely fake concern. See here: https://blog.andymasley.com/p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake

    • knowaveragejoe 12 minutes ago
      Okay. There are other criticisms of datacenter buildout that make this kind of product valuable. Moving on.
      • csunoser 8 minutes ago
        I am more sympathetic to the OG.

        There are many good criticisms against data center. And yet, the water issue always comes up first. Must we spew false/untruthhood just so our political message is catchy? I suppose yes - in times of war/politics, the laws/truths are silent. But it doesn't have to be so here.