Fedinventory

Fedinventory is a concept for software to create a crowdsourced library of materials and equipment that is available for community use, in a way that minimizes financial/extractive friction for the sake of maximizing reuse/repurposing (in order to minimize discarding, whether for recycling or landfill-disposal).

Side note: While "federation" is not a key aspect of the concept itself, it is a key aspect of how we want to design community software moving forward. We will assume that each instance of the software should support at least a relatively small (<100) number of users, and can share data with other instances in a manner similar to how federated social networks operate (complete with ability to limit access to/from other instances that are deemed problematic).

Summary

The software allows users to:

• enter their personal inventory items into a database
• assign topic tags and semantic data to each item
  • e.g. CPU: make, model, speed; yarn: brand, colorway, material, length; clothing: size, make, design, condition, materials
• assign semantic data to tags
• add text or photos to each item or tag
• track item location in a tree structure
• indicate the status of each item
• request available items from any given user
• track the movement and changing status of items, either while being transported from one user to another or simply when stock is rearranged

Ways to think of this:

• an online store for mostly-free stuff
• a thrift store, but with no central location