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Catalyzing worker co-ops & the solidarity economy

How Stewarding the Digital Commons Keeps Your Software Secure, Stable and Innovative

When possible, we write and use what is called "contributed code." This is code that has been written in a generalizable way so that others can also benefit from it. Often, a tool already exists to solve a problem. Other times a tool might get a project 90% of the way there. Some might decide to meet their unique case by building something from scratch. We, however, prefer to build upon existing solutions.

For example, when we built the ability for Portside to cross-post their articles to Twitter, we did that by improving the Social Post Twitter module - a tool anyone running a Drupal site can use as well. We could have written that as custom code, only for Portside to use. However, we took the time to contribute this back to the community.

Contributing code to the Digital Commons is not just a kind thing to do; it helps strengthen the software we rely on. As mentioned above, now the Social Post Twitter module is available for others to audit and make improvements to. While custom code is maintained by whoever initially wrote it, contributing code back to the commons opens that software up to maintenance and improvement from a wider community. The more sites using that software, the more attention and care it receives.

Read the rest at Agaric

 

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