A Brewing Storm

We all have subscriptions to many free service providers on the internet: Google, Yahoo, Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the list goes on. And we enjoy them. And we appreciate the fortunate circumstances which allow us to use these services at no cost.

However, as more and more of our real life has an online component (i.e. a component in the virtual world), we grow to expect more control over our data and the services we use.

• Freedom: Have you ever wanted to switch services, but you couldn't because you had too much data stuck in that system, and you didn't want to start over?
• Integration: Have you ever wanted to have your accounts synchronized and the features of the service providers integrated? (But you knew it would never happen because your service providers are competitors.)

This has recently come to a head with the incident of Facebook banning Robert Scoble because he sought to export his own social network.

• Who Owns Your Social Data? You Do, Sort of
  

A Declaration of Computing Independence

• Data Portability: We should be free to control the data we have put online, regardless of what service we have entered it into. We should be free to switch service providers and take our data with us.
• Service Choice: All of the core services that we use should have Free Software alternatives that allow us, if we have the skills and the resources, to host them ourselves and modify them as we see fit.
• The User's Interest: There should be an existing service which is governed by a non-profit charter and organized for the public good, with the users' interests rather than shareholders' interests at its heart.
• Seamless Integration: We should expect that our virtual lives are fully integrated to serve us, not segregated into islands of functionality provided by competing commercial interests whose purposes are at odds with each other and sometimes with the user.

The SharedUniverse Project Launches

In order to address these issues, the SharedUniverse Project has launched at www.shareduniverse.net. The spirit is of cooperation with existing no-cost service providers, existing free software projects, and users, to create and/or integrate an increasingly complete stack of virtual world services.

For more information, please visit http://www.shareduniverse.net.