WhatOpenAutonomy

What is OpenAutonomy?

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OpenAutonomy is a platform for distributed social networking and connecting services across different sites.

High-level concepts

• Identity - every user is an identity. Identities create applications. Identities are connected to each other through trust.
• Application - an application is something you use, directly. An application is created by an identity. Applications can consume or provide capabilities. Example applications are Details, Social, or Storage.
• Trust - each identity maintains a trust list of other identities and optional trust groups made up of identities in the list. An application can ask its creator identity to determine how to act when other identities try to use it. Another example of how trust lists are used is Social: It uses the trust list to determine which other users to show in your social feed.
• Capability - applications interact with each other in terms of capabilities. An application can provide a capability by advertising it through its creator identity. An application can find other capabilities by asking its creator identity or another identity for applications which provide those capabilities.

This means:

• There is no centre of the internet. All users can interact across the internet, no matter what server hosts their identity.
• There is no limit to what can be accomplished with OpenAutonomy. All extensions to the system are made by the applications, through their capabilities. The identities and other applications do not need to have accommodations for capabilities they don't directly use.
• You have complete control. If you want to personally host and control your identity and your applications, you can do so and not sacrifice your ability to interact with other users, elsewhere.