Microsoft used every trick in the book to lock users into a dependency on its software. One technique, for example, deliberately underdocumented the technical specifications for software, which made it impossible for non-Microsoft programs to interoperate perfectly with Microsoft Office. Because such performance is unacceptable to many industries and users, Microsoft in effect made its software noncompatible with other systems as a way to protect its market dominance and reap enormous profits.

The irony is that software developers were technically capable of using the Internet to collaborate online to produce office suite software. But this was not widely recognized until developers came together in the 1990s, working outside of large, proprietary software companies, to create Linux and the Apache Web server software. The success of these and other open source projects began to put pressure on many proprietary vendors as consumers and developers realized that they had alternatives. Even many large companies such as IBM and Intel started to see business opportunities in contributing to the development of open source software. The code might be free to everyone, but they could make money by providing technical support and service, as well as custom adaptations of the code.

Securing freedom for end-users of software has been elusive, however. Programmers regularly predicted that the next year would become “the year of the Linux desktop,” in which open source office apps would become popular, but these visions never materialized.

One bright spot, however, was OpenOffice.org, a corporate-controlled word processing program that a corps of dedicated software developers improbably converted into an authentic software commons. The story begins when Sun Microsystems, a company that once was a pioneer of proto-open systems, began to feel competitive pressure from open systems like Linux. With grandiose aims of displacing Microsoft, Sun acquired a German company in 2000 and released an open source version of StarOffice called OpenOffice.org (OOo).

As a corporate-managed open source suite of office software, OOo was not really a commons. Still, OOo was a full-featured office suite that was generally interoperable (with lots of rough edges) with Microsoft’s suite and thus the rest of the world. OOo provided a big incentive for users of nonfree Microsoft and Apple systems to install OOo, save money and learn about open source.¹

But it was unclear from the start how Sun would work with outside developers and whether OOo could break Microsoft’s near-monopoly. Despite Sun’s relatively progressive corporate ethic, it gave itself absolute control over project governance for OOo because it wanted to produce a “shrinkwrap” product. This proved to be a big disincentive to non-Sun developers to participate in improving OOo. In response, non-Sun developers in 2002 began providing their own versions of OOo, which they included in popular distributions of Linux in preference to Sun’s version. It was as if the commoners would not be thwarted in their drive to create a software commons!

Another force driving this effort forward has been Open Document Format (ODF), a major standards effort to produce an open and fully documented set of formats for office applications. The goal has been to ensure that applications from different vendors and communities could interoperate, thereby eliminating a major source of vendor lock-in. OOo was among the first applications to support ODF in 2005.

Microsoft began its own major effort to sabotage the standards process with a competing format, OOXML. It designed its software with proprietary extensions to OOXML, effectively retaining control over its formats as a tool to prevent users from turning to competing vendors.

While Microsoft succeeded in monkey-wrenching the process (see its current profits), ODF has made both technical and policy progress that will enhance its prospects, such as an authentic interoperability among different programs and legal mandates by various public bodies that only ODF-compliant software may be purchased.

Despite Microsoft’s resistance to open formats, OOo went on to become the main alternative to Microsoft, in part through the sheer attrition of proprietary vendors. But Sun, which continued to tightly control OOo development, was by the late 2000s a troubled company with its main server business in tatters due to competition from Linux. The prospects for OOo became even more perilous when the software giant Oracle acquired Sun for its server and Java technology. The writing was on the wall: OOo would not contribute to Oracle’s profits, and would likely be abandoned.

This dismal prospect galvanized the OOo community to take steps to convert OOo from a declining corporate sideline into a robust software commons. They “forked” the project (started a different development pathway for the code) by creating LibreOffice. Nearly all developers outside Oracle and Sun joined the fork, and nearly all communities with Linux distributions made plans to ship LibreOffice (instead of OOo) to users. A German nonprofit, The Document Foundation, was set up to give the project permanent community-oriented governance. Although these events happened very quickly, they were possible only because the groundwork had been laid by nearly a decade of commoning and community that had developed around non-Sun OOo builds and ODF advocacy.

It was no surprise that Oracle then terminated OOo development. But rather than cooperating with the new LibreOffice, Oracle donated the OOo code to the Apache Software Foundation, a trusted nonprofit steward of open source projects. This resulted in unnecessary acrimony between supporters of LibreOffice and the new splinter project, Apache OpenOffice. However, as two open source projects working on largely the same code, there are strong incentives for the two to collaborate – so LibreOffice happily uses code from Apache Open Office.

LibreOffice has clearly won the hearts and minds of the free and open source community by making it as easy as possible for anyone to contribute – and impossible for any one entity to seize control the project’s governance. As a result, LibreOffice’s features, user interface and interoperability with Microsoft‘s quasi-proprietary formats have improved greatly since the fork. This has put it in a better competitive position relative to Microsoft Office than any of its predecessors enjoyed. Its popularity has also been fueled by large-scale adoptions such as the City of Munich, Germany, and other municipalities.

While these developments might normally accelerate LibreOffice’s assault on Microsoft’s near-monopoly, the shift in computing from desktop applications to the cloud and mobile devices is undercutting such gains. Google Docs, for example, has become an essential organizing tool by providing an online office suite that enables real-time collaboration on documents; it runs on Google’s servers and is accessed by individual web browsers. Google Docs does not generate the same sort of near-monopoly profits as Microsoft’s suite of office software, but it does entail a much more direct loss of user control: Google can change the software at any time, and access all files edited and stored online. Microsoft has also produced its own online version of Office, with the same properties as Google Docs – leaving commoners to once again play catch-up with proprietary vendors. LibreOffice Online has existed in prototype form since 2011, but only recently gained a dedicated development team. In 2016 LibreOffice Online should provide a robust alternative to reliance on corporate-controlled proprietary services for collaboration and organizing.

The pattern of a corporate steward of an open source project going bad, followed by a community revolt, plays out over and over. The database program once owned by Sun, MySQL, is the next best-known example. This commons-based, post-Oracle fork of code is known as MariaDB. The example of LibreOffice and ODF standards, however, point to the great potential of open governance, open development processes, and collaborative financing and marketing – and, indeed, the promise of public policy advocacy to provide legal support for commons-generated software. With motivations ranging from local skill development to national security, governments around the world are requiring the evaluation of open source options in software procurement (Italy), banning Windows 8 on government computers (China), and mandating support for open formats (UK).

Patterns of Commoning, edited by Silke Helfrich and David Bollier, is being serialized in the P2P Foundation blog. Visit the Patterns of Commoning and Commons Strategies Group websites for more resources.

Mike Linksvayer (USA) serves on the boards of Software Freedom Conservancy, OpenHatch, and AcaWiki, and is a member of the Open Definition Advisory Council and the steering committee for Snowdrift.coop. From 2003 to 2012 he served as Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Creative Commons.

Photo by jcorrius

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Nithin Coca: With all the controversy engulfing the global ride-hailing giant Uber, there is more attention on alternative platforms that meet people’s transportation needs and don’t have the company’s ethical baggage. One of the newest and most promising alternatives is LibreTaxi, founded by Roman Pushkin, a San Francisco-based developer and architect with a decade of experience in the technology sector.

LibreTaxi is a completely open-source project, meaning that developers can take the source code and adapt it for local uses. Since it was launched in Dec. 2016, the app, which can be used to find rides across the globe, has grown to 20,000 users. The highest use so far is in Taiwan, Iran, and Russia.

Currently, it is a simple app that can be downloaded and used on the messaging platform Telegram. Through its easy-to-use bot, riders and drivers are directly connected and negotiate prices independently of LibreTaxi, and pay fares in cash. We talked with Pushkin about LibreTaxi, its origins, and how it fits into the larger, ride-hailing and ride-sharing ecosystem.

Nithin Coca: Where did the idea for LibreTaxi originate from? Why did you decide to make it an open-source project?

Roman Pushkin: The idea came from where I was born, in Russia, in a village located far from any big city. There, there were no services like Uber. There was just this list, a piece of paper with phone numbers, and when people were looking for a ride, they were just calling by each number from this list. It was not very convenient, so we tried to improve it with computers. Initially we used Skype chat for this purpose. It worked, but it was not very convenient either – when someone needs a ride you have to scan through all of the messages — where you go, your location, etc.

Public chat is not solving this problems efficiency — it works, but not that great. So I started looking for a way to create application for this purpose. The aim was to create something like Uber, but open source, and free for everyone. Hence, LibreTaxi. LibreTaxi was originally created for rural areas – but also works in cities too.

LibreTaxi is open source because people from India, North and South America, China, from Russia, from any part of the world should be able to use it and customize it.

How is LibreTaxi different from Uber and Lyft?

There are three main differences. The first thing — LibreTaxi is free for drivers. Second,  anyone can register, and anyone can become a driver in just one minute. And the third difference, there’s no built in payment system, so passengers have to pay drivers with cash.

Actually, the aim of LibreTaxi is not to compete with Uber directly. If someone tries to build an application to compete with Uber, this battle is lost already. They spend a lot of money on app development and promotion in different countries.

LibreTaxi is different, and its target is different audiences. For example, in many Latino Communities across the U.S., there are people who are not eligible to work in the U.S., so they can’t drive for Uber. Also, in those communities, many people have outdated vehicles, which are more than 10 years old, so Uber won’t accept you as a driver. There’s no such problem with LibreTaxi. It will be much easier to use LibreTaxi inside that community, to give rides to people you already know. LibreTaxi has the same concept as Uber, but in reality, it is completely different.

We’re targeting different people, people who already know who their passengers are, who their drivers are, and we hope that LibreTaxi can help their own community.

What is your growth strategy going forward? How can you achieve financial stability while also meeting user needs?

Right now, I am working on this only when I have time, in evenings, weekends, but I am planning to work on this full-time. For this, LibreTaxi needs to be more organized.

The very first thing is that we are planning to do create a nonprofit organization for LibreTaxi, because I want people to know that this service is absolutely free, and will stay that way. We are not going to charge drivers and cut their earnings like Uber does. Second thing is that the nonprofit can help us make this application more user friendly, safer, and help us polish some rough edges. Our financial model will be based on donations. We’re not looking to make a lot of money, and we’re not going to be a middleman between passengers and drivers.

Right now, I am paying for all the servers out of my pocket. I can afford that for now, but for the future, if we reach one million users, as is our goal in the next two or three years, we may need more servers than we have now.

Actually, the name LibreTaxi is inspired by LibreOffice, which is a free and open source replacement for Microsoft Office, and they are our model. They are a nonprofit that takes donations, and they’ve grown to 75 million users, and they expect it to be 200 million users by 2020.

Another thing we are considering is to add Blockchain technology to LibreTaxi. Not sure how this will be implemented, as Blockchain is something very new, and we are very early in this game, but, for example, we could enable payments via Bitcoin.

Have the recent, seemingly non-stop headlines about Uber brought more attention, or more users, to LibreTaxi?

Partially, the success, so far, of LibreTaxi was possible because of these events that happened to Uber. But only partially, because LibreTaxi is not the same as Uber. I am working on this application alone, by myself, so it’s not possible to build a shiny app, with all these features like Uber.

How many users do you have? Can Shareable readers download LibreTaxi and expect to find rides (or riders) easily?

It is very [easy] to install the application — just need to install Telegram, and then you can find LibreTaxi, or you can go to our website and follow the instructions.

As for finding rides, we have little bit more than 20,000 users worldwide at the moment, a good number for a two-month-old project. If you look for a ride in areas like Taiwan, or Iran, or Moscow, I think it is possible to find a ride. But if you are looking in other cities, maybe you’ll find a ride, or maybe you won’t.

Even if you can’t find a ride, I hope your readers will be interested in this application because they can use it for their own communities, their own small cities, and even for their own buildings. For example, I live in a complex with 100 apartments, and I’ve listed an advertisement on the wall, where people usually walk by. Now, sometimes I give rides to my neighbors, so you can use this application right now and even try it in your building, or family.

What’s the next step for LibreTaxi, and how do you plan to grow in the future? Do you have a financial plan to ensure both a better product, and sustainability?

Our plan for this year is to add more languages. We’ve already translated the application to 17 languages, and the website is translated to 12 languages. By adding more languages, we hope to reach more people in these countries.

The next step is for us to listen to people about what they need, expect, and see in the application. We want to deliver features they would like to see. Right now, LibreTaxi is something very fresh and it has minimal functionality.

Users are the key to our growth. That’s why we ask, if they like this application, please spread the news — share it in Facebook, public chat channels, etc. It is very important because we do not have any budget for promoting LibreTaxi.

I’m constantly looking for feedback, connections, so if anyone is interested in talking to me, they can find my email on GitHub. Feel free to reach out and tell me about your community, about transportation problems you have, and I’ll try to help you and learn something new from you.

Header photo of traffic in Bangkok, Thailand, by Connor Williams via unsplash

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