ara t. howard
founder
didn't theorize about cooperative software ownership. built and operated one.
ara howard has shipped 102 rubygems with 481 million+ total downloads, won the ruby hero award, founded a B-Corp certified worker-owned cooperative, and open-sourced its legal bylaws so anyone could follow. destroysass is the productization of everything he learned doing it the hard way first.
technical credibility
the open source record speaks for itself:
102 published rubygems
481M+ total downloads
infrastructure-grade open source used by millions of developers worldwide. open4 (138M), systemu (102M), require_all (86M), macaddr (71M).
ruby hero award
railsconf 2014
recognized for sustained, prolific contribution to the ruby ecosystem. ~150 gems at the time of the award.
188 public github repos
516 followers
decades of open source work spanning systems programming, web infrastructure, scientific computing, and developer tooling.
CIRES / NOAA
scientific computing
built data pipelines and distributed systems at the cooperative institute for research in environmental sciences. unix, systems programming, and computational science before devops was a word.
the cooperative experience
this is the part that matters most. most people who talk about cooperative software ownership have never actually operated a cooperative. ara has.
founded dojo4
a software consultancy in boulder, colorado (2009) that became a worker-owned limited cooperative association (LCA). not a marketing label — a real legal entity with real cooperative governance.
B-Corp certified
dojo4 was certified by B Lab and voted Best for the World (workers category) multiple years running. verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, legal accountability.
LLC → LCA conversion
converted dojo4 from a standard LLC to a limited cooperative association — the exact same legal structure destroysass proposes for every cell. filed the articles. wrote the operating agreement. lived the governance. this isn't theory.
open-sourced the bylaws
published dojo4's LCA bylaws, cooperative conversion documents, and policy templates on github (dojo4/policy). the legal templates for destroysass cells aren't hypothetical — they're based on documents ara already wrote, used, and published for anyone to fork.
social impact clients
dojo4 built technology for greenpeace, girl effect, UNICEF, and other organizations where the work matters more than the margin. the ethos isn't new.
why this combination is rare
most people who advocate for cooperative software fall into one of two camps:
technologists
can build the platform but have never operated a cooperative, filed an LCA, or dealt with the legal and financial plumbing of collective ownership.
cooperative advocates
understand the legal model and the mission but can't build the technology themselves.
ara is in neither camp. he's in both. 481 million gem downloads and a real LCA with open-sourced bylaws. the “coop-in-a-box” automation destroysass is building for cells is a productization of his own experience converting a company to cooperative ownership.
the through-line
scientific computing at CIRES/NOAA taught him how to build systems. 102 rubygems taught him how to ship. dojo4 taught him how cooperatives actually work — the filings, the governance, the arguments, the operating agreements, the lawyer calls.
destroysass is the thesis: AI collapsed the cost of building software but not the cost of maintaining it. small businesses need collective ownership, not more subscriptions. the legal structure exists (LCAs). the governance tooling exists (DAOs). the development model exists (cooperative contracting under SLAs). someone just needs to wire it all together.
that someone should probably be the person who already did it once.
links
the bottom line: ara didn't read about cooperative ownership in a book. he filed the articles, wrote the operating agreement, ran the governance, open-sourced the bylaws, and shipped infrastructure used by hundreds of millions. destroysass is what happens when someone who's done it before decides to make it possible for everyone else.