---
title: 'Snowdrift.coop: 5 years of a work-in-progress'
osem_url: https://osem.seagl.org/conferences/seagl2017/program/proposals/384
beginning: '2017-10-07T13:00:00.000-07:00'
end: '2017-10-07T13:20:00.000-07:00'
presenters:
- name: Aaron Wolf
  affiliation: Snowdrift.coop
  osem_url: https://osem.seagl.org/users/54
  gravatar_id: b32ae4ca7b2465cc5b642eed9c285b06
  biography: |-
    Aaron teaches private music lessons (in Oregon City and Portland prior to covid, now online via Jitsi Meet) and is otherwise an activist and advocate for Free Culture and Free Software.

    He is co-founder of the in-progress fundraising platform Snowdrift.coop, which aims to support widespread community patronage of freely-licensed creative works.
---

In 2012, an optimistic programmer convinced his friend to *do* something about his complaints and ideas around economic injustice and market-failures in free/libre/open (FLO) culture and software. Five years later, Snowdrift.coop has a concrete vision, a global community of volunteers, and a valuable collection of writings and research about sustainable funding for FLO projects.

Still, Snowdrift.coop needs further work to reach a full launch. Through that story, this talk will summarize the challenges in building a cooperative, ethical web platform and reflect on the relevant changes (both good and bad) in the overall FLO ecosystem over the past five years.
