What if we had a protocol that could quantify and validate such contributions—not in money, but in trust, transparency, and long-term social value?
Could such a structure change how engineers are valued, or is reputation still bound to institutions and capital?
Curious to hear your thoughts. Has anyone tried designing or experimenting with such systems?
No-one worth their salt in public service is there for the accolades, or money. They do it because they give a shit about the community / country / culture / cause they’re part of.
There are exceptions for sure - big project are a proven way to jump your career back to private - but the people I most respect are thinking long term and working relentlessly towards that.
In that domain technology isn’t the endgame, it’s impacts and effects are. If you want to support that, help them build tools, grow communities and attract others with a similar drive. Or if they are moving back to private because they need the money that provides, actually interview them, even if what they can put on a CV is thin on detail.
Tech doesn’t need to revolve around capital, whether that’s social or financial.
We’ve supported people in poverty without seeking any profit. But in this capitalist society, acts of care that can’t be turned into money—so-called “invisible labor”—are often treated as worthless. Even those who received the support sometimes saw it that way. Kindness taken for granted often returned only as sadness.
That’s why we believe care and service deserve fair recognition. Don’t you think this could be possible—if we had an economic (or social) system that isn’t based on capitalism?
By the way, is SourceCred still active? It looks like the Twitter and GitHub repos have been quiet for a while. Is your acquaintance still working on it?
You contributed, yet were later excluded. That’s exactly what our protocol is most carefully designed to prevent.
In our system: - Contributions are always recorded — not ignored. - Every action builds "prestige", a cumulative trust score. - Governance rights (like proposing or deciding future work) are based only on contribution history — not status or popularity. - And crucially, governance cannot be used to exclude others. It is designed solely to guide future contributions, not suppress participation.
So even if someone has more authority, it’s only to help steer future work — never to silence or reject others.
We’re trying to build a structure where trust grows from contribution, not control.
If you’re willing — what part of your experience felt most unfair? And what hurt you the most?
Please tell us. We truly want to understand — so no one else has to go through that.
But the problem with many of these systems is they might be too democratic. Discourse, by the same creators as SO, also breaks from the very same problem - someone who is not part of the community suddenly becomes the community despot. The structure sounds similar to what you propose; anyone who makes contributions can govern.
I think you have to think through how scoring is done and managed. There are systems that work, like the Nobel Prize and Academy Awards, but those only work to recognize top people, not large groups of people.
Even when our own lives were financially stable, we couldn’t shake a lingering sense of emptiness. We couldn’t clearly see who our work was truly supporting, or how it was improving anyone’s life. Many client projects were focused on short-term profits, and at times, we found ourselves building systems that aggressively monetized even poor users, only to discard them when no longer profitable. It never felt like we were contributing to genuine human well-being.
Don’t engineers carry skills — and intentions — that deserve far more recognition than they receive? Have you ever asked yourself how your abilities should be used, and for what purpose? We keep asking: if not capitalism, could there be a different kind of future?
