A Call to Western Socialists
-----------------------------

Prepared by: Paul Edwards
Location: Ligao, Albay, Philippines
Site: pdos.org


TO THE PERSON WHO BELIEVES IN THE COMMONS

You already know what is wrong.

Microsoft owns the infrastructure that the world depends on.
Billions of people run software they did not choose, cannot
modify, cannot inspect, and cannot escape. The code that runs
schools, hospitals, governments, and homes belongs to a
corporation whose first obligation is to its shareholders.

You have been saying this for years. You are right.

You know what collective ownership should look like. You know
that the means of production -- including the digital
infrastructure of the 21st century -- should belong to the
people who use it, not to the people who extracted profit
from locking it down.

You are right about that too.

What you may not know is that the framework already exists.


THE FRAMEWORK

For thirty years, one person has been building it.

For thirty years, one person has been driving it -- writing
roughly 70% of the codebase, sustaining the project through
decades when no one else was watching. But the other 30%
matters. Contributors from around the world have added
pieces that the project could not have had without them.
Every contribution was absorbed, valued, and built upon.

That is what a commons does. It takes what people bring
and makes it permanent. No one can take it back. No
corporation can acquire it. The work of every contributor
lives in the public domain forever, owned by no one,
available to everyone.

Not a corporation. Not a government. Not a foundation with
venture backing and a board of directors. A small community
of people who believed the same things you believe and
decided to build instead of wait.

The result: PDOS. The Public Domain Operating System.

Public domain means no license. No license means no
corporation owns it. No corporation owns it means no
shareholder can revoke it, sell it, or lock it behind a
paywall. It belongs to no one -- which means it belongs
to everyone. Forever. Irrevocably.

This is what collective ownership of digital infrastructure
actually looks like in practice. Not a theory. Not a
manifesto. A working operating system, freely available,
built from scratch, given away without condition.

The foundation is there. The framework is ready.
What it needs now is the people who believe what they say
they believe.

That is you.


WHAT MICROSOFT FEARS

Microsoft does not fear protest. Protests have been happening
for decades and the monopoly is still standing.

Microsoft does not fear regulation. Regulators move slowly,
capture happens, and the monopoly adapts.

What Microsoft cannot survive is a viable alternative that
nobody owns. An operating system that cannot be bought,
cannot be sued into submission, cannot be out-licensed,
cannot be acquired. One that exists in the public domain
permanently and can be freely forked, improved, and deployed
by anyone on earth.

That alternative exists. It is called PDOS.

The question is whether the people who claim to want it
will help build it.


WHAT IS NEEDED

Not heroism. Not full-time commitment. Not technical genius.

The commons needs what every commons needs: people who show up.

Developers who can contribute code. Documenters who can write
clearly. Translators who can make the work accessible across
languages. Advocates who can tell three people this exists.
Organisers who can build the non-profits and cooperatives that
run on top of this foundation. People who can donate enough
to fund a developer for a month.

The global south needs software it can afford. Schools need
tools they can own. Hospitals need infrastructure that no
corporation can revoke. The people capitalism has actually
failed -- not the comfortable Western critic, but the people
he claims to be fighting for -- need this commons to exist
and to work.

You can make that happen.

Not alone. Together. Which is, after all, what you have
always believed in.


THE OPPORTUNITY

Here is what becomes possible if the people who believe in
collective ownership actually participate in building it:

A public domain operating system, running in clinics across
the developing world, owned by no corporation, maintained by
a community of contributors who believe in the mission.

Non-profits funded by genuine monetary contribution from
people who put their resources where their values are --
paying developers to build the tools the world needs and
cannot afford to license from Microsoft.

Socialist-run hospitals, community schools, cooperative
businesses -- all running on a technical foundation that
cannot be bought out, cannot be licensed away, cannot be
held hostage by a corporation's pricing decision.

A Microsoft alternative built not by venture capital but
by the voluntary effort of people who genuinely believe
in the commons.

This is not a fantasy. It is an engineering problem with
a known solution and an existing foundation. What it
requires is the human element: the people who show up.


THE MOMENT

The window is open.

Artificial intelligence is transforming software development.
The tools available to contributors today are more powerful
than anything available in the thirty years this project
has been running. The opportunity to accelerate the work,
to close the gap, to build the viable alternative -- that
opportunity is larger now than it has ever been.

The monopoly is still standing. The commons is still free.
The spark is still there, waiting for the people who will
turn it into a fire.

You have been waiting for a framework. Here it is.
You have been waiting for a foundation. Here it is.
You have been waiting for an opportunity to do something
real instead of something rhetorical.

Here it is.


WHAT TO DO

Visit pdos.org. Read the code. Find what you can contribute.

If you are a developer: contribute code.
If you are a writer: contribute documentation.
If you are a translator: make it accessible.
If you are an organiser: build the non-profit on top of it.
If you are none of those: tell someone who is.

The revolution you have been talking about is a construction
project. The tools are free. The foundation is ready.

The only thing missing is you.

Note: You don't have to share these politics to contribute.
The commons doesn't ask why you showed up. It only asks that
you do.

pdos.org