Introducing Minds Community Open Source Initiative

The Minds Community Open Source Initiative (MCOSI) has been setup to provide support, guidance and advice to both Minds Inc. and to the community members of Minds.com. This initiative aims to not only aid within the further development processes of the Minds project and to provide a structured framework for community members to provide suggestions but also to provide a framework to support Minds.com in continuing to uphold the principles of free speech, transparency and open source commitments.

Recently several community members decided to investigate the viability of providing this form of initiative and so far we have had two meetings. The first meeting was attended by various members of the community including myself (medworthy), Luculent, MindsGaming, SerkanDevel, RealMindsChan and Jack (Chief Operations Officer of Minds Inc).

The purpose of this first meeting was to explore several ideas, brainstorm and examine the viability of MCOSI, as well as assigning various roles to existing members (specifically staff and community liaisons).

The second meeting was held a week later in which myself, Luculent, MindsGaming, SerkanDevel, RealMindsChan and FretzCapo attended. We also invited three other members of the community to serve as independent observers.

Whilst this second meeting took longer then what was originally expected, we did cover a number of subjects (I would like to take this opportunity to apologise for the running time and to express my appreciation to Manport, ChessChats and Lebowsky for attending as the independent observers).

The second meeting had five objectives, these objectives included:

• Examine the infrastructure requirements of MCOSI

• Review the MCOSI logo and group banner

• Produce a mission statement

• Produce a list of MCOSI overarching objectives

• Review the current group project which as been overseen and promoted by both FretzCapo and RealMindsChan.

With the exception of producing a mission statement (which will be further examined within the next meeting), all objectivities were completed successfully.

We have all agreed that MCOSI will promote the following four objectives:

• Support Minds Inc. in providing a social media platform that is dedicated to open source and free speech principles

• Support in the creation of documentation relevant to the ongoing development and support of the Minds open source framework

• Build upon providing transparent meetings that aims to discuss the provision and implementation of bug fixes, users support and further development ideas

• Support the community (ie. the user-base) by enhancing the overall experience of Minds.com

As many members of the community are already aware, over the last month both RealMindsChan and FretzCapo have been running an open forum to discuss the current issues surrounding the exiting group functionality.

Both RealMindsChan and FretzCapo (with the support of the larger community) have produced a comprehensive document which lists a number of suggested improvements and bug fixes. This document has been sent to the staff members of Minds Inc. and we are inviting a member of staff to attend the next meeting to provide us with further feedback.

We have also agreed upon the logo and the group banner image for MCOSI, in which MindCom provided us with image suggestions (again, I would like to share my appreciation and say thanks to MindCom for providing these image suggestions).

We would like to ask other minds.com community members to join the Minds Community Open Source Initiative group and provide further suggestions, improvements and examine current ideas. If community members would like to support Minds.com further then I recommend subscribing to the Minds Plus service.

Minds Community Open Source Initiative would like to thank in advance all community members that participates in the continuing success of both the MCOSI project and Minds.com.

“If you focus your mind on the freedom and community that you can build by staying firm, you will find the strength to do it”
– Richard Stallman (free software advocate and founder of the GNU project)

References & Other Resources:
* Minds Community Open Source Initiative Group
* Minds Community Open Source Initiative Channel
* Group Overhaul Project
* MCOSI Meeting Agenda (September 2nd 2018)
* Minds.com Plus Service