“I believe that my contribution to platform cooperativism is the knowledge that if you are building a platform, you need to use free software to build that platform on, so that you completely own the platform. It needs to be built with free software, using GPLv3 licensing, so that others may have access to the tools. If we don’t all have access to the tools to build platforms, we are not owning them. We are still under the dictates of a corporation that can remove features, add features, or just demand that we go in a certain direction. I believe it’s important for people to know how to form cooperatives, so I was on a panel and I described how my cooperative is structured. Every cooperative can be structured differently, but they all have the same tenet: one worker, one vote, and that’s our governance model. I belong to a cooperative named Agaric. We do web development, and we are able to advise people on ways to keep their platforms free and owned by them and by the community. It’s important that the community owns the tools and the means of access to build other tools, so I believe that my contribution to this conference is explaining why people need to have a free software foundation for their platform and not be owned by a proprietary corporation.”