this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2026
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442
OccupySaaS - "They laid us off. We're rebuilding their SaaS" (occupysaas.com)
submitted 1 day ago by new_otters_raft@piefed.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world
41 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I saw some discussion about this elsewhere. Here is how the project describes itself:

OccupySaaS is a protest movement in code: laid-off developers building clean-room, open-source, drop-in replacements for the SaaS giants. First up: ZeroAuthy (Auth0) and SalesCompel (Salesforce).

In 2011, Occupy Wall Street asked who the economy was really working for. In 2026 we're asking the same question about the cloud. The tools every company runs on are now toll booths — and the people who built them were shown the door.

Two towers occupied.

Identity and CRM: the two subscriptions almost every company pays for and almost nobody loves. ZeroAuthy has shipped its first release candidate, SalesCompel is still early, and both welcome contributors today.

Who's next?

Every category on this board is a monthly invoice somewhere. The movement picks the next target in public — bring a spec, a use case, or a grudge.

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[–] buzz@piefed.world 15 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I’m surprised more software hasn’t gone that way (democratic, employee-owned companies).

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 1 points 7 minutes ago

Well, the problem is that anyone with the gumption to make that works could also make a fortune in a for profit company. Very few have ever said “I have enough” and sacrificed their next billion for this ideal. And the ones who have were already a couple billion in and could well afford it.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

One obstacle may be the libertarian, individualistic worldview many developers have been steeped in. But it seems like an industry where workers' cooperatives would be relatively easy to set up, since there are no major infrastructure costs. The hard part would be making a living until you had paying customers, since there would be no investor pumping money in, hoping to make a profit on their investment. I don't really know how you'd get around that, but there must be a way. Maybe bank loans?

[–] SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works 3 points 15 hours ago

A co-op can get local contracts that are adjacent to the core product in development. It slows development down but keeps people showing up, and sometimes it helps hone the product.