🐌 Slow Software for a Burning World 🔥

A reflection on Bonfire’s journey to 1.0 and an open invitation to shape what comes next. #

As we approach the release of Bonfire 1.0, this isn’t your typical launch announcement. Instead, it’s a moment to reflect on how we’ve built Bonfire, a roadmap of values, methods, and intentions – and an invitation to define what comes next.

You can follow Bonfire on the fediverse for updates on the release, including highlights of unique features we’ll share over the next few days.

In a world of “move fast and break things,” we’ve chosen a different tempo — one rooted in care, deep listening, and collective stewardship. Slow software means building for long-term resilience and meaningful participation, rather than chasing novelty, speed, or scale.

🏦 Profit over people: at what cost? #

The Silicon Valley model delivers quick but unaccountable decisions. Rules are one-sided, power is hoarded, and systems operate behind closed doors. The casualties are many:

Trust: Algorithms bred to addict or manipulate rather than to inform or empower.
Consent: Secrecy quietly eroding autonomy. Invisible hands reshaping our lives without consent.
Community: Platforms optimising for engagement, making division and hatred profitable.
Attention: Human focus becomes data—extracted like oil to fuel the surveillance economy.
Labour: Care work like content moderation rendered invisible, workers treated as expendable.
Environment: Scale trumping sustainability at every turn.

As power concentrates, democracy withers and authoritarianism thrives. Algorithms tuned for "engagement" amplify fear, outrage, and division—because that’s what keeps us clicking. In the end, the tools meant to connect us are weaponized to divide us.

We've witnessed the damage when tech scales without care. What could we build instead?

🐌 Caracol: a different outlook #

Bonfire draws inspiration from the caracol (snail), a Zapatista symbol of slow, collective movement. The caracol is a spiral, with no top or center—only a shared heart. It stands for governance from the edges, listening before action, autonomy over hierarchy, and the conviction that how we build matters more than what we build.

These aren't lofty ideals—they're the backbone of Bonfire's design: a system built for flexibility, diversity, and overlapping needs. You don’t just use Bonfire—you shape it. It’s not one tool; it’s a terrain. A toolkit. Imagine digital spaces growing organically, communities determining how they connect, and tools that can be picked up, transformed, or set aside as needed. The caracol reminds us: meaningful progress comes from how we move, who we move with, and what kind of world we forge together.

✊ Governance: foundations of Bonfire #

The way we build is part of what we create. Inspired by sociocracy—a method of collaborative governance based on circles, consent, and distributed authority, and by Bookchin’s municipal confederations, the Zapatistas, and Rojava, governance in Bonfire runs deep:

Everything is modular—down to the core: All features are provided by separate extensions, meaning the “core app” contains no code but just configuration. There also isn’t a single core; instead, there exists different “flavours” of Bonfire: sets of config and extensions adapted to various use cases or communities.
Communities govern “flavours”: Bonfire's modularity serves a political purpose—inviting communities to discuss, configure, and collectively govern every aspect of their experience.
Shining a light on the power of defaults: Whenever a choice about how something should work in Bonfire is unclear, we make it configurable. Code establishes an initial default, but flavours can override it, communities can set instance-wide settings, and individuals make final decisions in their own account or profiles.
Custom roles: Moving beyond binary admin/user hierarchies, communities and individuals define and assign roles with precisely calibrated permissions—distributing power and responsibility to match their unique contexts.
Circles and boundaries: Creating flexible "circles" (like "colleagues" or "book club") and "boundaries" (granular permission sets) to control exactly who can see, interact with, or collaborate on anything—putting people in charge of their online relationships.
Tools that prioritise real people and relationships over speed and simplicity. We make no assumptions about the “average” user, social needs are complex and overlapping, there are no no one-size-fits-all solutions. We center needs often marginalized or overlooked—making them foundational so everyone benefits from greater flexibility and control.

🛡️ Guarding the commons #

Values alone aren’t enough—many well-intentioned projects eventually drift, burn out, or sell out. Bonfire is federated at every level—protocol, code, and governance—so its purpose and values can’t be quietly eroded or easily overturned. This technical and political design aims to resist capture, prevent enshittification, and safeguard community autonomy for the long term.

Here's how Bonfire can resist capture:

AGPL licensing: All code is AGPL, ensuring all modifications remain open and accessible, preventing capture by Big Tech or cloud services.
Multi-layered modularity and forkability: Everything is an extension—identity, moderation, groups. People can fork just an extension or a flavour–which encourages forking by lowering the maintainance effort.
Community-governed flavours: Communities decide what's included and how it evolves.
Zero VC funding or ads: Bonfire will remain free of venture capital and advertisement. No dark patterns. No pivoting away from responsibility or ethics.

We're also experimenting with:

Sociocratic circles: Self-organizing groups stewarding specific extensions or flavours, making decisions by consent. We're expanding this approach, creating pathways for communities to shape and protect their own digital spaces.
New models for participatory funding and resource allocation.

The commons survive only when they can regrow anywhere. We design for resilience, adaptability, and collective stewardship.

🌐 Federation: autonomy through connection #

Bonfire federates (i.e., interconnects with other independent platforms) with Mastodon and the wider fediverse, but federation is more than a technical protocol — it embodies our commitment to autonomy and collaboration:

Each community governs itself while connecting with others, maintaining distinct cultures, rules, and practices.
Federation isn't for scaling one model, but for interconnecting many. No central power dictates decisions—only connected, independent nodes working in concert.
Offboarding and freedom to migrate: Users should never be locked into platforms by their data or social connections.

We're building many interconnected worlds, not one massive platform.

Bonfire is a commons–a place to gather, co-create, and build networks that last–beyond products to be sold or services that use, abuse, or extract from you.

Bonfire’s values, goals, and processes are shaped by the people and communities who choose to participate. As a starting point, we uphold principles rooted in care, consent, and collective stewardship.

Whether you're a community organiser, activist, builder or simply curious, join us:

Join the conversation: Take part in our public discussion spaces. Share your experiences, needs, and questions.
Help shape governance: Participate in forming circles to govern specific extensions or Bonfire flavours, and share responsibility, decide by consent, and ensure Bonfire evolves with real community needs.
Propose features or co-design new extensions: Bring your ideas for how Bonfire can serve new purposes, or create new "flavours" and tools.
Contribute feedback: Help us spot issues, propose adaptations, or challenge assumptions so Bonfire can serve more people, more justly.
Help shape the culture: Share learnings from your own communities, organize workshops, or experiment with governance models.

Built for the long haul. By people, for people.

🏕️ Campground: a living laboratory #

Our test instance, the campground, is open as a local-only space for co-design and experimentation. Here, you can:

Experience what digital spaces built on consent, care, and mutual aid feel like.
Collaborate to co-design and test features — making Bonfire safer, more resilient, accessible, and truly centered on people and communities.

This isn’t a product launch—we’re not looking for users but for active participants: people and groups who want to shape, critique, and experiment together — whether that’s on the campground, through their own Bonfire instances, or by joining others to co-create new digital spaces.

✨ Let’s build what lasts, together #

If these ideas resonate, we invite you to reflect, dialogue, reach out, and co-create. Bonfire lives as a conversation in motion, beyond its code. The world needs many interconnected spaces built on care, autonomy, and collective power — not yet another app chasing scale.

We hope these principles can ignite new approaches to digital community-building. The future is ours to build — intentionally, collectively, and with care. Join us in shaping what comes next.

This post was written by the Bonfire maintainers' circle and shaped by feedback from the advisory circle. Join the conversation on Matrix, comment on this post on the fediverse or on the campground, or email us at team@bonfire.cafe.

Credit for the art goes to Tomás, a Zapatista artist in a community near San Cristobal.