Simple KDS for Clover is a free kitchen display system designed to easily integrate with Clover POS systems and turn any Android tablet into a powerful, one-touch KDS station

Simple KDS

A survey was conducted in 2019 among the restaurants who had opted for app-based online delivery for the first time or listed with on-demand food app startups. Majority of restaurants said that people nowadays are showing little interest in coming to restaurants and prefer online delivery most of the time. Needless to say that this attitude resulted in increase in sales as reported by 60% of restaurants. Some restaurants also raised reservations about the increased commission charged by the startups. Finally, restaurants want delivery startups to revise the charges, improve delivery time, and properly assign delivery agents. With the evolution of new technologies, it is possible to bring an enhanced version of food ordering apps for the year 2020. Also, one should not overlook the delivery person apps when enhancing the app solution. Even with some shortcomings, the on-demand food ordering market will grow at a staggering rate every year because of its potential to spread even in tier 2 & 3 areas. Kitchen display system(KDS) KDC is an information display screen present in the kitchen backend area. This device is used to get information regarding orders straight from the restaurant admin panel. In order to reduce the communication gap and fasten the delivery process KDC is of much use. Of late many restaurants are not aware of this amazing simple tech. The latest KDC system comes with a new set functionalities; KDC can get inputs from both sides; inventory details will be displayed so as to decide on the menu. Overall efficiency will increase irrespective of the type of restaurant business model. More ways to increase profits Increasing the commission per order will frustrate the restaurants as I said above. And at one point when the increase in sales failed to offset the rising cost, they opt out of the service. Instead, there are more ways to make money in the future. Try microtransactions for any new offering to earn more. For example, customization of food by the user can be charged a little extra; some fee shall be sent to the restaurant. Another great idea to make more money is to give optional insurance to every order. The logic is to deliver free if the time is breached. If you do the calculation, you will end up with a net profit even if two orders are delivered free out of 10. There are many such innovative ideas to earn more without affecting the core customer base. 5G network push Latency is the time taken to exchange data packets between two devices; Lesser latency, more is the network speed. 5G is said to have the lowest latency and it is expected to be made mainstream in 2020. This can substantially improve the speed at which delivery agents are assigned and orders are approved by the restaurants. Real-time features like estimated time of arrival(ETA) and time for food pick up will become accurate and refresh sooner so that the time lag is a thing of yesterday. Not to mention that 5G is 10 times faster than the current network technology. Hybrid cloud approach Cloud computing is a boon to online food ordering and businesses that handle large data. Since lots and lots of users data are involved in this service, a better way to store it is in the cloud. Cheap cloud data made it possible for many small food app startups to flourish. Now, hybrid cloud technology has come to the fore. They are an enhanced version of the present system. More emphasis is given on security and data safety. Also, fluctuations in data transfer are effortlessly taken care of. Scalability is another business factor that arises while expanding the service. Using  hybrid cloud it is easy to scale the business with efficiency. Even traditional restaurants shall take the first step by adopting hybrid cloud technology before completely moving to an online delivery format. Advanced food ordering The customer can be freely allowed to order food for a particular date and time. This is called scheduled ordering. There can be also an option for recurring orders; customers choose the start and end date, menu details, address, and time; between that date, the user will get the order delivered. To ease the user experience, three touch food ordering can be introduced; in the drop-down list, food outlet and menu are selected; payment is done and ETA will be displayed. As simple as possible. Users who are new to using food ordering apps shall benefit from the three touch food ordering. Targeting millennials Millennials don’t mind spending on good food; their spending pattern is also increasing day by day. To cover them and sustain for long, use machine learning techniques to find the tastes and menus liked by millennials; share this data with restaurants to prepare them frequently to attract young users. Data regarding this can be gathered from the food ordering pattern accumulated over a period of time. Wrapping up! With a better food ordering app like ubereats clone, you will have an edge over others in 2020. Advanced technologies are at your disposal now and you have to understand and make innovative use of it. Bring inclusive improvement covering both customers and delivery agents. Not to mention that the attrition rate of delivery agents is on the rise.

Future of On-Demand Food Ordering App in 2020 

Three months ago we stopped using ENV files as the default export option in the Doppler CLI. This change led to a number of benefits including supporting multi-line variables and a deterministic schema. Before going too deep on the technical choices we made, let's first go over what ENV files are and how they're used. This article originally appeared on doppler.com and was written by CEO and founder, Brian Vallelunga. What are ENV files? ENV files are plain text files that store variables and secrets that you would not want hardcoded in your codebase. These variables could be a port number or a database url, and may change depending on where your code is deployed. For example, when developing locally you may use port 3000, but when deployed to Heroku your application will need to use the port it's dynamically assigned. An example ENV file when developing locally could look something like this with the schema of : KEY=VALUE PORT= DATABASE_URL= AWS_KEY= BUGSNAG_API_KEY= INTERCOM_KEY= MAILGUN_KEY= NEW_RELIC_LICENSE_KEY= NEW_RELIC_LOG= SALESFORCE_TOKEN= STRIPE_KEY= "3000" "psql://postgres@localhost/db_name" "rfiunb34fu93n49iufgn3o2o0ini2ef" "33dasdk34bsf23f35871as0fa27" "ndeiovnkofrnij30490398u39RIBF39IOENIOWF3ENWKEWENVIO" "fdjnbvjoenvlmswsdnjoelfv" "b583d4eab955872122843a067faca9db5d4202af" "stdout" "feojkvndfjkovnskfn3eni32one" "sk_test_ejidsfnvoiuebnfvoi3enjkdNCJSB" Having the file is not enough though, you would also need a tool like to parse the file and inject those variables into the environment. foreman Benefits So what are some of the benefits of using an ENV file? Well these files live on your local machine which means you do not need a network connection to fetch your secrets. The schema is also quite simple so it's easy go into a file and add a new variable. Lastly, everyone knows this format so there is a ton of support by the open source community for parsers and managers. Downsides From our time working with ENV files and adding support for various use cases, we have found that there isn't a standardized schema all libraries use. For example, take a look at the sample ENV file below: PORT = 3030 Notice that this ENV file that contains a spaces between the and the . If we were to use bash to inject the variable into the environment with the command we would get an error. KEY VALUE source source spaces.env # >> bash: PORT: command not found Now if we use another tool like we would see it parse without an error. This is because each library is deciding the schema of a ENV file instead of strictly following an open standard. These inconsistencies causes other problems to arise as well, such as parsing multi-line secrets. In this example a variable uses encoded newlines through : foreman \n CERT= "-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----\nMIIEogIBAAKCAQEA6ONkkK5eT0wUIjV4CyeO5yQ4AMmCTUyfahKq3gOto4UVhtHE\nlw6GnZwbvRUSwpqGi1X8iTo1GKjcYBVNvRf6Hw5zk9wGTImwNBAlEF7K1aYnelMk\nqDLJ7T0vHAVEvAq2Wz24SljMWgdv9d83KOvuTjZE04H7YlBS4w3OeRu7D2+kgkAr\nR3fqCNEUOvafikwqThHV27xSMaj7uvvm+eMv9ztNb8VauSnZ9zPXtLOPSNy7HGQr\n9S3rqwg7Hif9yLQ2iWVa9R6ACc2I9oK27Olq8AvyHsIz4gktBqLpV3rfBc5muReG\nBO+kdsSpCxpQBQ1W4gU8gTi7Qgr9+bEeaN2bfwIDAQABAoIBAG+J2PRiTtDzwwDP\nUvskqxCRDDF0UW/sLr2Cy0shv9v9NV4owVsHnfmGdtKMcTu6/o1lVVn0AtIYrdNm\n4KCcBzMwnLJIQswNddK5mMbKX6MLvQSdJYVZLdTt5M4qx8y35La2TLlu5hCIV1sO\n2UBEHxJec4BJVLi1d70/M5BVc7Xj/ImqPgHtJhNv5gaej3s/vS1j5YmtCHwGnwbY\ndqVLiY9NgHKO3EOFa0vJplxwR0sIj0WumtkLLwjAfEmt0ivZ3D1fJ9hCFrfpJYwf\nzq9Nv1RL0Jry4SfnWTpXKPlF4N+ateXkNhrZILRg8xmOJSQduYt0wo2KxkAbgxtf\nSidoWIECgYEA+/Ggv0LsqxwmsiR991BA2aurYlJwzEFHL/YUc/j+317yj+vdpOmE\nCCV3mAa9tAgMf+BJvQS1RGS2bnnVe5CcjuoEJ1gQ3LdU9LA1H14880TjMsuxEKkB\nVLHkhiS1yG4lo01H8Aml2EAn1Hz84BazubxMy8vWu6xqm6wT0LIxuI8CgYEA7KM6\ndBtrkWSbj1lpLR8zeLhQkcQP94biLcrH0xEONpphNdTy2DW/Ne6qQWQ9y171iMvU\nOOq+3AcyNf/hZxhRAcTN5Qb3qGUqZn4tRXuVzhKd3CQ5Ijiq7EAfSUI+NBKGPChL\ndX7unhIgJVgcuuo/qg6J5vOV+FGGpm5Zbu9zBhECgYBBcAruYnWSI+exEWVeXQva\n/YmwKfV+N95DiMjbLmsUnVanJv4UnUpby096vxV6szR76kd8vsJOF1KC80YNqAvh\n2splZaxLh5qbS0Eg+pseHGBeiyVcTGk6FFJkvRgyDNndxm7O29KljlRKDoSnt33K\n2iugKzuE102BTXqAFChx5QKBgEyJeuWE3OTYwou54o/KkK5SBxUuce+ge9VNyhXV\nZWB5zElKCAWwVJkQCZc+4dG+c/H74zdJjdPCrBXVHkVnEwRccC/MchvQJMejtebM\nUyak1NQYDzanV3k0QCpEt7PF7g7VBZsKJAmSWT1a42f9Tfwl2aqOTIpVbBS2ikyc\nO/rRAoGARmMBi0jfi1m3DpRt35QyCWJXd8YNGxsaB1cc/NorBPOX5cIP3YGn1b6F\n6kS0HEz1SOpENczi+C5hJiyldVIkek9sjoW7+6030HZlb0U2nnTFCTNfjhcD2+Xa\nNxB4RWiMLTgeDmGICV4U+1qIFLyiuZxabLxw0q5O2kkyGGKlpeQ=\N-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----\n" This newline is treated differently depending on which tool you use. Using the bash command the in the string would not be converted to newline characters. On the other hand, using Python's most popular ENV library will convert the to newlines automatically. Now let's look at the inverse: source \n dotenv \n CERT= "-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----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-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----" In this example, we have the same cert but with newline characters. Surprisingly the bash command respects the newline character but the Node library does not. More interestingly is how the Node library breaks. It parses the value as and disregards all the other lines. I also find it funny that because it is a multi-line variable the quote detection algorithm broke, which can be seen by the first character being a quotation mark. If the quote detection algorithm was working correctly, you would see the value be stripped of it's quotation marks at the beginning and end of the string. source dotenv "-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY----- Alternatives After realizing ENV files are problematic, we started looking at alternatives. We wanted something that has a universally accepted schema with no room for interpretation and a large community for support. The two data formats we focused on were and . YAML JSON Let's start off with YAML. One of the primary advantages of YAML is that it is incredibly easy to read and write. It uses indentation and nesting as a way to designate structure. Let's look at a sample YAML file: PORT: DATABASE_URL: AWS_KEY: CERT: |
  -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
  MIIEogIBAAKCAQEA6ONkkK5eT0wUIjV4CyeO5yQ4AMmCTUyfahKq3gOto4UVhtHE
  lw6GnZwbvRUSwpqGi1X8iTo1GKjcYBVNvRf6Hw5zk9wGTImwNBAlEF7K1aYnelMk
  qDLJ7T0vHAVEvAq2Wz24SljMWgdv9d83KOvuTjZE04H7YlBS4w3OeRu7D2+kgkAr
  R3fqCNEUOvafikwqThHV27xSMaj7uvvm+eMv9ztNb8VauSnZ9zPXtLOPSNy7HGQr S3rqwg7Hif9yLQ2iWVa9R6ACc2I9oK27Olq8AvyHsIz4gktBqLpV3rfBc5muReG
  BO+kdsSpCxpQBQ1W4gU8gTi7Qgr9+bEeaN2bfwIDAQABAoIBAG+J2PRiTtDzwwDP
  UvskqxCRDDF0UW/sLr2Cy0shv9v9NV4owVsHnfmGdtKMcTu6/o1lVVn0AtIYrdNm KCcBzMwnLJIQswNddK5mMbKX6MLvQSdJYVZLdTt5M4qx8y35La2TLlu5hCIV1sO UBEHxJec4BJVLi1d70/M5BVc7Xj/ImqPgHtJhNv5gaej3s/vS1j5YmtCHwGnwbY
  dqVLiY9NgHKO3EOFa0vJplxwR0sIj0WumtkLLwjAfEmt0ivZ3D1fJ9hCFrfpJYwf
  zq9Nv1RL0Jry4SfnWTpXKPlF4N+ateXkNhrZILRg8xmOJSQduYt0wo2KxkAbgxtf
  SidoWIECgYEA+/Ggv0LsqxwmsiR991BA2aurYlJwzEFHL/YUc/j+ yj+vdpOmE
  CCV3mAa9tAgMf+BJvQS1RGS2bnnVe5CcjuoEJ1gQ3LdU9LA1H14880TjMsuxEKkB
  VLHkhiS1yG4lo01H8Aml2EAn1Hz84BazubxMy8vWu6xqm6wT0LIxuI8CgYEA7KM6
  dBtrkWSbj1lpLR8zeLhQkcQP94biLcrH0xEONpphNdTy2DW/Ne6qQWQ9y171iMvU
  OOq+ AcyNf/hZxhRAcTN5Qb3qGUqZn4tRXuVzhKd3CQ5Ijiq7EAfSUI+NBKGPChL
  dX7unhIgJVgcuuo/qg6J5vOV+FGGpm5Zbu9zBhECgYBBcAruYnWSI+exEWVeXQva
  /YmwKfV+N95DiMjbLmsUnVanJv4UnUpby096vxV6szR76kd8vsJOF1KC80YNqAvh splZaxLh5qbS0Eg+pseHGBeiyVcTGk6FFJkvRgyDNndxm7O29KljlRKDoSnt33K iugKzuE102BTXqAFChx5QKBgEyJeuWE3OTYwou54o/KkK5SBxUuce+ge9VNyhXV
  ZWB5zElKCAWwVJkQCZc+ dG+c/H74zdJjdPCrBXVHkVnEwRccC/MchvQJMejtebM
  Uyak1NQYDzanV3k0QCpEt7PF7g7VBZsKJAmSWT1a42f9Tfwl2aqOTIpVbBS2ikyc
  O/rRAoGARmMBi0jfi1m3DpRt35QyCWJXd8YNGxsaB1cc/NorBPOX5cIP3YGn1b6F kS0HEz1SOpENczi+C5hJiyldVIkek9sjoW7+ HZlb0U2nnTFCTNfjhcD2+Xa
  NxB4RWiMLTgeDmGICV4U+ qIFLyiuZxabLxw0q5O2kkyGGKlpeQ=
  -----END RSA PRIVATE KEY----- 3000 "psql://postgres@localhost/db_name" "rfiunb34fu93n49iufgn3o2o0ini2ef" 9 4 2 317 3 2 2 4 6 6030 1 At first glance, the syntax looks very similar to the ENV format but when we look closer we see subtle differences. The YAML syntax uses colons instead of equal signs and has native support for multi-line strings. The one downside when using multi-line secrets is that indentation really matters. The fabled debates of how many spaces equals a tab come into play. With developers each having their own style, it can make YAML files prone to parsing errors when sharing. JSON on the other hand has a wildly different syntax then YAML. Wikipedia has an accurate description of the language: JavaScript Object Notation is an open standard file format, and data interchange format, that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs and array data types (or any other serializable value). Let's take a look at the same config of variables in JSON format: { : , : , : , : } "PORT" "3000" "DATABASE_URL" "psql://postgres@localhost/db_name" "AWS_KEY" "rfiunb34fu93n49iufgn3o2o0ini2ef" "CERT" "-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----\nMIIEogIBAAKCAQEA6ONkkK5eT0wUIjV4CyeO5yQ4AMmCTUyfahKq3gOto4UVhtHE\nlw6GnZwbvRUSwpqGi1X8iTo1GKjcYBVNvRf6Hw5zk9wGTImwNBAlEF7K1aYnelMk\nqDLJ7T0vHAVEvAq2Wz24SljMWgdv9d83KOvuTjZE04H7YlBS4w3OeRu7D2+kgkAr\nR3fqCNEUOvafikwqThHV27xSMaj7uvvm+eMv9ztNb8VauSnZ9zPXtLOPSNy7HGQr\n9S3rqwg7Hif9yLQ2iWVa9R6ACc2I9oK27Olq8AvyHsIz4gktBqLpV3rfBc5muReG\nBO+kdsSpCxpQBQ1W4gU8gTi7Qgr9+bEeaN2bfwIDAQABAoIBAG+J2PRiTtDzwwDP\nUvskqxCRDDF0UW/sLr2Cy0shv9v9NV4owVsHnfmGdtKMcTu6/o1lVVn0AtIYrdNm\n4KCcBzMwnLJIQswNddK5mMbKX6MLvQSdJYVZLdTt5M4qx8y35La2TLlu5hCIV1sO\n2UBEHxJec4BJVLi1d70/M5BVc7Xj/ImqPgHtJhNv5gaej3s/vS1j5YmtCHwGnwbY\ndqVLiY9NgHKO3EOFa0vJplxwR0sIj0WumtkLLwjAfEmt0ivZ3D1fJ9hCFrfpJYwf\nzq9Nv1RL0Jry4SfnWTpXKPlF4N+ateXkNhrZILRg8xmOJSQduYt0wo2KxkAbgxtf\nSidoWIECgYEA+/Ggv0LsqxwmsiR991BA2aurYlJwzEFHL/YUc/j+317yj+vdpOmE\nCCV3mAa9tAgMf+BJvQS1RGS2bnnVe5CcjuoEJ1gQ3LdU9LA1H14880TjMsuxEKkB\nVLHkhiS1yG4lo01H8Aml2EAn1Hz84BazubxMy8vWu6xqm6wT0LIxuI8CgYEA7KM6\ndBtrkWSbj1lpLR8zeLhQkcQP94biLcrH0xEONpphNdTy2DW/Ne6qQWQ9y171iMvU\nOOq+3AcyNf/hZxhRAcTN5Qb3qGUqZn4tRXuVzhKd3CQ5Ijiq7EAfSUI+NBKGPChL\ndX7unhIgJVgcuuo/qg6J5vOV+FGGpm5Zbu9zBhECgYBBcAruYnWSI+exEWVeXQva\n/YmwKfV+N95DiMjbLmsUnVanJv4UnUpby096vxV6szR76kd8vsJOF1KC80YNqAvh\n2splZaxLh5qbS0Eg+pseHGBeiyVcTGk6FFJkvRgyDNndxm7O29KljlRKDoSnt33K\n2iugKzuE102BTXqAFChx5QKBgEyJeuWE3OTYwou54o/KkK5SBxUuce+ge9VNyhXV\nZWB5zElKCAWwVJkQCZc+4dG+c/H74zdJjdPCrBXVHkVnEwRccC/MchvQJMejtebM\nUyak1NQYDzanV3k0QCpEt7PF7g7VBZsKJAmSWT1a42f9Tfwl2aqOTIpVbBS2ikyc\nO/rRAoGARmMBi0jfi1m3DpRt35QyCWJXd8YNGxsaB1cc/NorBPOX5cIP3YGn1b6F\n6kS0HEz1SOpENczi+C5hJiyldVIkek9sjoW7+6030HZlb0U2nnTFCTNfjhcD2+Xa\nNxB4RWiMLTgeDmGICV4U+1qIFLyiuZxabLxw0q5O2kkyGGKlpeQ=\n-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----\n" One of the main beauties of JSON is that it is strictly enforced and there is only one way of accomplishing each task. For example, when we look at the variable , we can see the value is wrapped in quotes to state it is a string. Unlike YAML, which will guess if the line should be cast to a string or number, JSON only has one way of notating strings and numbers. One other stark difference between YAML and JSON is how they handle multi-line variables. In JSON we can see it uses the encoded newline characters which we think is a safer bet than trusting humans with indentation. PORT \n Choosing JSON We ended up going with JSON because it has a far stricter schema and has strong native support in most languages. After making the switch, we saw our customers' issues with parsing downloaded config files flat line. Since the creates a fallback of your secrets by default when running your application, we decided to go one step further by enabling encryption by default. Doppler CLI We strongly believe that you are always going to be worse off having secrets on disk, but if you are going to, it is imperative that they are encrypted.

What are ENV Files? - Pros, Cons, Alternatives

Alongside whatever else mothers and sons talk about, I have begun receiving regular updates on the governance of my mother’s neighborhood garden club. They make me jealous. The club has survived from the heyday of suburban housewives—which my mother, as a retired government employee, never was. She is currently her club’s president. She describes the debates, the subtexts, the meetings, and what they’ve achieved through it all. As she does, my mind drifts to my own recent encounters with governance: running a 500-person email discussion group, lurking among , or reporting on contemporary social movements. No online group I’ve been part of can hold a candle to the simple and effective rule-set that has governed the garden club since the 1960s. Few online groups will last so long. open-source software communities The club’s bylaws occupy eight pages in an annually printed, 38-page  handbook, which also has chapters on “hospitality” and “flower  arranging.” The structure should be familiar: articles, sections, and enumerated subsections. The language is formal, with lots of “shall” statements and capitalized terms. The club members don’t normally talk this way with each other. But when they have decisions to make or conflicts among them, they can flip to those pages and find a path forward. Most neighborhood garden clubs have something similar. Most online communities do not. The Internet has been plagued by a phenomenon I call “ ”: a bias, both cultural and technical, for generating absolutist fiefdoms. Think about it: When was the last time you participated in an election for a Facebook Group, or sat on a jury for a GitHub project? Implicit feudalism is how platforms nudge users to practice (and tolerate) nearly all-powerful admins, moderators, and “ .” implicit feudalism benevolent dictators for life From email lists to Subreddits, the feudal norms are so pervasive that we don’t even notice them. Admins punish other users for transgressions with the tactics of dictatorships, like censorship and exile. Ordinary users have no means of holding admins themselves accountable, short of asking for interventions from whatever corporation owns the platform. Yes, users can leave and choose another group, but often that is not as easy as it sounds, if the people they need to interact with are all there. Admins are free to make decisions capriciously and with no consultation. We treat this as acceptable. I have experienced implicit feudalism as a hand tied behind my back. In my stints as a community administrator, I have tried to use my power to encourage democracy, and it’s very hard. Neither the features of our tools nor the norms we expect do much to equip us for this. What makes a decision legitimate? How much consultation with users is enough? Where traces of online democracy do exist, like in or the , it has emerged through extensive planning and custom software. The default is feudal. Wikipedia Debian operating system There are historical reasons for this. Many of the earliest online communities were on . These were often hosted on computers in the homes of their admins, then called “sysops.” Joining a community was like being a guest in the sysop’s home. If users displeased them too much, sysops could simply pull the plug. BBSes, or bulletin-board services Over the years, the feudal habits persisted. After America Online got in trouble with labor laws for paying its community moderators with small discounts, feudal powers became the expected compensation for the work of moderation. Feudalism also meshed well with the access-control policies of computer file systems. It became acceptable in corporate governance as well; investors now permit such regimes as Mark Zuckerberg’s unilateral control over Facebook through a tiered share structure. What other authoritarianism will the habits of implicit feudalism teach us to tolerate? The Internet has so far forgotten the bias for democracy that long reigned among offline clubs, public companies, and other associations. How can the Internet catch up to my mother’s garden club—or, even better, enable a new renaissance in creative self-governance? One step in the right direction is the , a code of conduct for open-source communities that has normalized the idea that there should be any rules at all. But the Contributor Covenant doesn’t specify who has the power to enforce it and how they make their decisions. Meanwhile, blockchain projects like and have developed toolsets for community governance, but too often they rely on users grasping the peculiarities of crypto-economics. When the longtime benevolent dictator of the Python programming language resigned in 2018, an intensive process —one not so different from what a garden club might have. This kind of “ ” shows that we need not be locked in online feudalism forever. Contributor Covenant Aragon Colony resulted in a simple elected board exit to community The Internet can enable much more than just a return to regimes of bylaws and boards. I long for a time when communities can pick and as easily as using an app store, or create plugins of their own. That way, communities of all sorts could benefit from each other’s innovations, mixing and matching and discovering better ways of working together. Rather than relying on formal bylaws full of shalls and subsections, we could develop for describing our communities more accessibly and intuitively. choose from among governance plugins visual interfaces The point isn’t to replace implicit feudalism with some other rigid default. I think what we really need is —lots of options available for different sorts of use cases. For instance, in the Linux ecosystem, there is the benevolent dictatorship of the kernel, which feeds the constitutional democracy of Debian, which feeds the corporate dictatorship of Ubuntu. Ubuntu’s relative agility depends on Debian’s democratic stability. Our software and our norms should enable all of the above, and much more. institutional diversity If you’re interesting in probing implicit feudalism and the alternatives to it, I have been writing a series of research articles full of resources for further reading. Each introduces a relevant concept: “ ,” “ ,” “ ,” “ ,” and “ .” My , as part of the broader , will be learning by doing. We’re eager for new collaborators. implicit feudalism effective voice modular politics governable spaces vanguard stacks Media Enterprise Design Lab Metagovernance Project How do you think we could do better than implicit feudalism? I would love to hear from you. Image licensed CC0 via PxHere .

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