Today, I’m bootstraping the eelo project with a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. During the past three weeks, I’ve released three articles to describe the project, what has already been done, and what is the vision. We want to build an exciting alternative to Google, Apple and to all proprietary services that are catcing our personal data and transform us into voluntary slaves.

Discourse on Voluntary servitude

The “voluntary servitude” concept is not new: in 1576, Etienne de La Boétie wrote an essay: in “Discourse on Voluntary servitude” he explained how people enter into servitude even without being forced to do so.

That’s exactly what is happening with the digital giants of the 21st century: nobody is forced to use their products, nobody is forced to accept their terms of use. But billions do. By passivity, par laziness, because the use is confortable. And users’ data is used by the giants to track us, to sell advertising, to sell software products, and sometimes even to contribute to mass-surveillance.

Freedom and action

I like freedom, and I wouldn’t want to force anybody to leave this servitude condition if it’s a personal choice. This would be a totalitarian attitude. But I think that we need to inform people, and that we have to provide credible and attractive alternatives to people who don’t accept this situation.

Voluntary servitude is not a fate: open source software is everywhere and is often the core of proprietary products that the digital giant provide “for free”.

Anyway, don’t see eelo as a tool for spys: we will inform people, we will provide all necessary tools and default apps. But people will be free to install any application of their choice, as an informed choice. We believe in education and soft transition, not in extreme radicality.

I’ve started to list, to explore, and to hack several pieces of the puzzle. eelo is going to put all these open source pieces into a consistent and desirable offer.

As the cost of storing data and the cost of internet transactions is tending to zero over time, I’m pretty confident we can provide all the digital stuff for free.

eelo is non-profit, in the public interest

eelo, as a non-profit profect in the public interest can be the begining of a profound change in our digital age.

Be one of the first participants to join the project, show your support, talk about eelo, get some people into the project, and support eelo on Kickstarter!

–Gaël (follow me on Twitter / on Mastodon)