Open source manufacturing social organization
Steve Tuckner
Short time lurked, first time poster.
Since I have been following list (thanks Bryan for finding me), I have noticed a neglect of issues related to social organization. I think that most everyone on this list would like to be involved in some form of open source manufacturing, making real things for use or sale. To think about social organization, I think that you should think about what it would be like to be part of building an open source automobile. Now that is so far from where we are now as to maybe seem inconceivable, but I think it is helpful none the less.
To make an automobile, you would need thousands of people in all kinds of jobs. You would have to have large spaces in which to work to develop, assemble, and test these vehicles. You would need large inventories of parts and the financing to procure and store them. For such a large endeavor, you would need probably a majority of people to do this as a full time job.
To make this happen, we would need to attract people. Open source software attracts people for many reasons:
* they can start working immediately without asking permission
* they get recognition for what they contribute
* no one can tell them what to do
* they can observe the community in action and see if they want to join
* they get a sense of community
To attract people to our open source car organization, we could:
* be completely transparent - with all our designs, discussions, procedures, and accounting
This will allow people to peer inside and see what this organization does, how it is organized, and what it's culture is like. They can lurk; they can audit; they can see how power is organized to see if their future contributions would be recognized. They can follow the money trail to see that any money they contribute is not wasted or funneled to a crooked few.
* have an ownership structure as flat as possible so that people coming in will feel like their contributions will matter and won't be overruled by someone or some small group who is/are providing a majority of the capitol.
Here is the big difference between and open source software project and an open source manufacturing organization. To build a car you would need millions of dollars of capital. If that supply of capital is controlled by a few people, then it doesn't matter how your board is set up or elected, they will have to do what they big funders say (whatever they say publicly) because without that funding potential the future would be dark.
I would suggest that it be crowd funded with limits on how much and individual could contribute each year. Those limits could be absolute or relative to other contributors or some mix of the two.
* allow people to contribute immediately on task lists and allow them to work themselves into both a paying gig (if they so desire) and a share of the profits.
By using the mailing lists and whatever collaboration tools they are using, people can chip in right away and see how their contributions are received. Because building autos take place in a particular place, they can just show up and start contributing on site.
* allow franchising of he organization so that the production can be duplicated in places all over the world where it can be
modified to fit local conditions.
Since the making of things must be done out of real world materials in a particular place, it only makes sense to make the organization replicatible but adaptable to local conditions. This could result in organizations that use the shared knowledge to speed startup but then adapt to local conditions to better meet he needs of he local population and local resources available. This could combat the Walmartization of the world.
* Have a governing structure that allows anyone to be on the board and it's sub-organs. I suggest a lottery system for that with limited terms so that everyone feels that they can run tue organization, but in the end must return to their position as an ordinary contributor.
This kind of setup will encourage more participation because people will feel that they don't need to spend years climbing within the organization to have a significant voice in it's operation. This would allow a mix of merit based module ownership crossed with oversight by the average contributor to make sure that people don't end up creating their own kingdoms.
* Have education as a basic part of the organization so that people can join and together with their effort, can learn new skills.
Again thus will serve to attract new participants who may be in need of new skills.
Now this is all very pie in the sky and as I said very unlikely. But if we now think small and apply these same principles to small organizations (like a bicycle, or skateboard factory), then we can test out how well these ideas work and modify the principles accordingly.
If you know of examples of these things already in motion, then I would love to hear about them. Particularly, I am interested in working examples of open accounting organizations with a actual transactions on he books and/or integration with crowd-funding.
In an economy of 10-20% unemployment, open source manufacturing could offer hope to many people who could use their idle time to do something useful, learn new skills, maybe get paid and get a new community to boot.
Steve Tuckner
P.M.Lawrence
.
.
.
they are usually made now - but the whole point is to do things
differently. To see that it is practical to do things differently, we
only need to look at historical cases where that actually happened,
e.g. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_(automobile) and what
that links to. P.M.Lawrence.
open...@gmail.com
video that shows "how it works" here: [2]. The designs are open
sourced under a CC BY-NC-ND license [3] (which isn't actually very
open); for example on the tech specs page [4] you can download the
chassis design [5] as a .igs file [6] and there is an active community
of auto designers who "compete" to design future production models
[7]. Some things don't quite make sense yet. For example, despite
being licensed under a CC-NC-ND they say only 2000 cars of each design
will ever be made.
[1] http://www.local-motors.com/
[2] http://www.local-motors.com/howItWorks.php
[3] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/
[4] http://www.local-motors.com/rallyFighter.php?p=techSpecs
[5] http://www.local-motors.com/assets/rallyFighterChassis091009.IGS
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGES
[7] http://www.local-motors.com/forum.php
I'd be keen to work on a radically open (CC0), distributed automotive
project - but think that, for several reasons, electric race
motorcycles are probably a better place to start.
PY
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Massagran
t...@juii.net
On Wed 25 Aug 2010, Steve Tuckner wrote:
> [...] But if we now think small and apply these same principles to small
> organizations (like a bicycle, or skateboard factory), then we can test
> out how well these ideas work and modify the principles accordingly.
> If you know of examples of these things already in motion, then I would
> love to hear about them. Particularly, I am interested in working examples
> of open accounting organizations with a actual transactions on he books
> and/or integration with crowd-funding.
hm I could contribute some initial personal experiences. For a year now, I'm part of a small four-person business startup (about electronics remanufacturing), and while we're not an "open business" yet, we apply some of the principles internally:
We have "informal meritocracy" for decision making, that is, people ask those qualified in a certain area for an evaluation, then we discuss it and get to a consensus decision. Works well, but is only applicable to very small groups of course.
What's more interesting is, we have developed a custom time and money accounting software for us that can tell everybody at every time how much he is entitled to get of the company's gain, based on the one principle that "all time has equal worth". This even works much better than anticipated; socially, it has the effect that we never even talk about "who gets how many" (and not even think about quarrelling about it), as we have "software governance" for that, based on a principle that everybody had to back in order to join the company.
Currently, the software even makes it possible that everybody writes invoices and expenses money for the company, and the compensation software calculates that in. The data to enter is work time (using a time tracking software), income and expenses on behalf of the company. This needs a bunch of trust of course, but for us it works out.
Another aspect is that the time invested during the initial start-up phase, when the company hardly made any money, is valued the same as all later contributions; which kind of rewards the original contributors. The calculation is: at every moment, everybody's share of work time is the share of the company's total gain he's entitled to get. As the efficiency rises, so rises the hourly wage for all the work time, past, present and future.
so far,
Matthias
Paul D. Fernhout
> Another aspect is that the time invested during the initial start-up
> phase, when the company hardly made any money, is valued the same as all
> later contributions; which kind of rewards the original contributors. The
> calculation is: at every moment, everybody's share of work time is the
> share of the company's total gain he's entitled to get. As the efficiency
> rises, so rises the hourly wage for all the work time, past, present and
> future.
That's a really neat idea.
"Equity" is so often where social arrangements can break down in any common
enterprise. I mention that here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/sunrise-sustainable-technology-ventures.html
One thing not accounted for in that time model perhaps is "risk". Even
assuming everyone agrees to value all hours worked equally, the earlier
hours were probably more "risky" in terms of rewards than later ones. Still,
risks can change over time, as can other benefits. The early hours may have
been more risky, but they might have also been more fun or more exciting or
involved less social problems that can come with a bigger enterprise.
So, if it works for you, great.
Some stuff I just put together on motivation in the context of schooling,
but it can apply also to commercial work.
In general, the whole rewards thing may be problematical because they can
diminish "intrinsic motivation":
"Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's,
Praise, and Other Bribes"
http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm
Still, to counter Alfie Kohn's points, this psychologist (Steven Reiss)
suggests intrinsic motivation does not exist in such simple terms:
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/inmotiv.htm
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/whoami.htm
"After conducting studies involving more than 6,000 people, Reiss has found
that 16 basic desires guide nearly all meaningful behavior. The desires are
power, independence, curiosity, acceptance, order, saving, honor, idealism,
social contact, family, status, vengeance, romance, eating, physical
exercise, and tranquility."
That is just one study though (Kohn cites hundreds), and not necessarily a
definitive one, but it still has some ring of truth to me.
Even in my reading of Alfie Kohn, I came to see at least three separate
"intrinsic" motivations -- the work itself (the sense of "flow" in creating
a computer program or a symphony), the work-related end result (a nicely
painted house), and the working environment (like a pleasant office place to
be around chatting with interesting people, even if the work itself, say
stuffing envelopes, may otherwise feel meaningless). These are all different
from external rewards entirely unrelated to the task doled out by a
trainer, but they begin to get at Steven Reiss' paradigm (where something of
like saving or revenge or social contact might be an intrinsic outcome of an
effort like keeping a ball of string, or spraying someone with a garden hose
or driving a long way to go to a party).
The truth may well be in the middle, perhaps that all sorts of things
motivate people, but some are more related directly to the action, and some
more have to do with someone else training or controlling the individual
socially through doling out "rewards" and "recognition" which only have a
connection because the trainer has decided that.
Someone else trying to sort through this:
http://neurons.wordpress.com/2007/08/
===
Although, in the long term, I think motivation won't be a big issue as
automation will make anyone who *is* motivated a lot more productive (to
provide for anyone who is not). And I feel most healthy people want to do
useful or meaningful stuff -- it's just part of health.
These books on business suggests thinking of money as a tool:
"Seven Laws of Money (Shambhala Pocket Classics)"
http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Money-Shambhala-Pocket-Classics/dp/1570622779
"Honest Business: A Superior Strategy for Starting and Managing Your Own
Business"
http://www.amazon.com/Honest-Business-Michael-Phillips/dp/0394748301
The second book makes the case for "open books", and not just for employees,
but the general public. They cite the Whole Earth Catalog as an example, as
they printed their key information in the back of every issue. And when they
were doing not so well, some people stepped in to help them. They suggest
ever honest business keep its books open and make them available to all
suppliers and customers. That is a very different model than most commercial
organizations use, with so much secrecy.
From a comment on that book (which has a summary of the key points):
http://www.amazon.com/review/R16M04BWW7ZKV6
"15. Management is a system of communication. Small business need figures
that can relate the present condition of the business and are capable of
allocating deployment of key resources to anticipate future developments.
Management commitment to openness is demonstrated through open books,
employee participation, capital from friends and institutionalizing access
to outsiders."
So, it may be interesting to think about how "open books" fits in with "open
manufacturing".
Note however that the advice there, while good, is about how to have a
thriving business within the current socio-economic framework. It's not
about how to change the whole framework (like to a mix of a gift economy, a
basic income, local subsistence, democratic planning, etc.) so in that sense
it's advice may be misleading. For example, what if there is a mostly
unrecognized need out there you see but no one is willing to pay for it yet?
Or, what if the need is there but the expectation now is that it will be met
for "free"? Still, of the business books I've read, I feel following the
advice in that "Honest Business" book as far as it goes will probably make
most small businesses a "success" that focus on repeatedly meeting the needs
of well-identified customers with money.
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
====
The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of
abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity.
Kevin Carson
> Steve Tuckner wrote:
The specific design of the conventional automobiles marketed in the
U.S. reflects the common use of technologies not suited to small-scale
production, but I don't believe large-scale production is necessary
for automobiles as such. For example, conventional auto design uses
sheet metal body parts molded with a stamping press, but a car could
be designed otherwise. And even assuming the use of IC engines,
engine blocks have grown much -- much -- larger than is actually
necessary, not only to accommodate heavier vehicles but to provide
largely superfluous horsepower for marketing purposes.
Henry Ford's main advance was not the mass-production assembly line,
but the introduction of interchangeable parts (made possible by early
adoption of machine tools capable of cutting hardened steel). Most of
his reduction in labor-time per car resulted, not from the assembly
line, but from the elimination of fitters made possible by parts
produced to a standard gauge. This could have been adapted to
general-purpose machinery with rapid switchovers and production in
small batches, as well as to the mass-production model.
--
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html
Steve T
> No. That is only the case when you make cars the same sort of way that
> they are usually made now - but the whole point is to do things
> differently. To see that it is practical to do things differently, we
> only need to look at historical cases where that actually happened,
> that links to. P.M.Lawrence.
I am not sure what is so different (from the Wikipedia page about
Trojan autos) about the production of automobiles by Trojan. Without
knowing what you mean by doing things differently it is hard to
comment on this. Possibilities include: a completely automated plant
to construct vehicles; a kit design such that each individual person
would build up their own vehicle (with the help of community; a group
of people builds up cars at a central place with inventory and open
share ownership of said inventory and space where the vehicles are
constructed.
I am all for doing things differently than how we do them now. Also,
the automobile building organization is simply an example of how to
apply principles, not necessarily the thing that I am most interested
in.
Steve
Steve T
On Aug 28, 10:09 am, "p...@openmotox.com" <openmo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Local Motors [1] is an open source automotive manufacturer.
me of a t-shirt company (Threadless.com) and John Fluevog Shoes
(http://www.fluevog.com/files_2/os-1.html) where users submit designs
and the companies may produce them. Local Motors does seem to let you
produce them, but in a very cookie cutter kind of way. They do site
micro-factories around the country and that is cool. There is a
continuum of openness from totally closed to totally open and every
movement in the direction of openness is a victory. Thanks for the
tip :-).
> I'd be keen to work on a radically open (CC0), distributed automotive
> project - but think that, for several reasons, electric race
> motorcycles are probably a better place to start.
>
> PY
happy just to see a totally open safety pin manufacturing company. ;-)
Steve
P.S. I think that a totally open organization might be most successful
at the start in a non-profit charity of some sort. There would be no
profit pressure and open books might make more people willing to
donate.
Steve T
> orhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkgoNnKCA4s
was not up so it is hard to evaluate.
Very DIY but it is open.
> About the social organization of such a venture,
>
> I agree with being transparent, promoting education, seeking crowdfunding
> (but many other avenues could be left open for financing).
> I agree
> with encouraging local development (perhaps franchising is not the right
> word, ... as it seems to restrict the freedom.
chosen.
> Someone else should be able
> to build, brand, market what they make with the modified design without a
> franchise)
>
> About the lottery governing structure ... hum, ... that's a tough call. You
> can find political and business structures from all flavours that work or
> don't. One I love is Plato's "pay less the higher up, more responsible and
> skilled, ... so that people only do it if they are trully motivated" ... but
> then again, not all will agree. Perhaps voting (à la Apache) and rewarding
> those who do most of the work with a heavier say (as happens in many
> free-software projects) can be two cornerstones.
>
> Cheers,
> Alvaro
>
threw it in. Its really about balancing power so that new people who
join don't feel like they have to wait years to have an impact. Also,
the idea that you are in charge for a while and then out of official
power positions means that you will look for methods of governing that
will be good for you when you are out of power.
But of course, many governing structures would work just fine.
Steve
Steve T
> hm I could contribute some initial personal experiences. For a year now, I'm part of a small four-person business startup (about >
>
> Currently, the software even makes it possible that everybody writes invoices and expenses money for the company, and the compensation software calculates that in. The data to enter is work time (using a time tracking software), income and expenses on behalf of the company. This needs a bunch of trust of course, but for us it works out.
>
> Another aspect is that the time invested during the initial start-up phase, when the company hardly made any money, is valued the same as all later contributions; which kind of rewards the original contributors. The calculation is: at every moment, everybody's share of work time is the share of the company's total gain he's entitled to get. As the efficiency rises, so rises the hourly wage for all the work time, past, present and future.
>
> so far,
> Matthias
sourcing this software? Is it web based? One thing to encourage open
source manufacturing would be to set up an osmforge.org that could do
the open source accounting, inventory management and other common
business functions arranged to support OSM orgs.
Steve
open...@gmail.com
or sexy enough to attract a community.
;-)
Massagran
>> (but many other avenues could be left open for financing).
>Other avenues. Such as?
* Venture capital (of course if it agrees with the Open Hardware principles, just like it now does for some FOSS projects),
* Consulting (as in implementing some of the nerdy open source solutions for large companies, and then funding the Open Source part that reverts to the community with it)
* Advertising
* Sales of the occasional OSH cash-cow
* as mentionned crowd-funding
* Mixed development/NGO money
to mention a few ...
About the lottery governing structure, when you work for a large corporation (as I do) you probably couldn't be bothered to
take the executive or governing roles. There's lots of politics, pressure ... and lots of useless beating around the bush.
If I got the lucky number, I would want out of there quick! :) [then again, if it starts as a lottery from day 1 the dynamics may be quite different]
Alvaro
--
Steve T
Steve T
> >Other avenues. Such as?
>
> For instance,
>
> * Venture capital (of course if it agrees with the Open Hardware principles,
> just like it now does for some FOSS projects),
> * Consulting (as in implementing some of the nerdy open source solutions for
> large companies, and then funding the Open Source part that reverts to the
> community with it)
> * Advertising
> * Sales of the occasional OSH cash-cow
> * as mentionned crowd-funding
> * Mixed development/NGO money
>
> to mention a few ...
>
> About the lottery governing structure, when you work for a large corporation
> (as I do) you probably couldn't be bothered to
> take the executive or governing roles. There's lots of politics, pressure
> ... and lots of useless beating around the bush.
> If I got the lucky number, I would want out of there quick! :) [then again,
> if it starts as a lottery from day 1 the dynamics may be quite different]
>
> Alvaro
>
However, since you commented on it...
<soapbox>
I have been involved in multiple non-profits over the years and what I
have seen is that the people that migrate to the board tend to be
people who will put up with the politics so that they can feel
important. They then drive others out who just want to get things done
because those people don't want to put up with the crap. Why do we put
up with political crap at our workplaces? Because we are paid to. I
would suggest that a successful lottery system would be:
1. Powerful positions picked by lottery
2. There would be an education/mentoring component to make sure the
lottery pick would have the skills necessary to assume the position
3. These positions would be compensated somehow
4. These positions would be for a limited time period
The result (I would hope) would be that people would consider the fact
that they are only in power for a short period of time, so that they
would think of when they would no longer be in power and govern
accordingly. A more cynical (but perhaps just as legitimate) view
might be that it gives more people a chance to be corrupt and abuse
their power in turn.
As they we all learned in Kindergarten, if we have something valuable,
then we need to share it.
</soapbox>
t...@juii.net
Steve wrote:
> One thing to encourage open source manufacturing would be to set up an
> osmforge.org that could do the open source accounting, inventory management
> and other common business functions arranged to support OSM orgs.
Yea, I'd love to see such a thing. It could even integrate with Bryan's SKDB for comfortable design publishing and incorporating the designs of others. And it could support distributed manufacturing by allowing one-click orders of products, which are then automatically split into orders that go to different open source manufacturers.
>> [...] we have developed a custom time and money accounting software for us
>> that can tell everybody at every time how much he is entitled to get of the
>> company's gain, based on the one principle that "all time has equal worth". [...]
> This sounds awesome! Any chance that you would be interested in open
> sourcing this software? Is it web based?
>
> Steve
Open sourcing this software is unfortunately not possible, as it is tightly integrated with other parts of (web-based) custom software that we use to run this business.
There is, however, the prototype of the time/money compensation software that we used for some months as a proof-of-concept. It is just a spreadsheet, and web based in the sense that you can import it to Google Docs and use it there (we did that). Note that after import to Google Docs you will need to adapt some formats ... their OOo import is not perfect yet.
I just open sourced that little thing here:
http://ma.juii.net/personal/publications (item no. 7)
Ah, and Paul Fernhout contributed the thought that "risk" is not accounted for in the above mentioned software (besides an interesting discussion of intrinsic motivation etc. ...). That is exactly right ... we also got that after several months of using the concept, which Paul came up with in a minute. Yet, the problem is that we did not yet find a nice mathematical calculation of risk, or risk-compensating distribution formula, so that people would not be able to quarrel about that. The last idea so far is to use the current (of the last week or so) hourly gain of the company as an inverse proxy for risk.
Matthias
Paul D. Fernhout
> Ah, and Paul Fernhout contributed the thought that "risk" is not
> accounted for in the above mentioned software (besides an interesting
> discussion of intrinsic motivation etc. ...). That is exactly right ...
> we also got that after several months of using the concept, which Paul
> came up with in a minute. Yet, the problem is that we did not yet find a
> nice mathematical calculation of risk, or risk-compensating distribution
> formula, so that people would not be able to quarrel about that. The last
> idea so far is to use the current (of the last week or so) hourly gain of
> the company as an inverse proxy for risk.
Well, I did add that "risk" can be compensated by "fun". :-)
As I see it, a central issue to any of these new ventures is dealing with at
least three different paradigms:
* a historic paradigm of both communalism and individualism negotiated
through cultural norms and human cleverness and sociability in the face of
hard and risky work, such as outlined here as one example (the Iroquois):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Iroquois
and could also perhaps be reflected in modern ideas like a "balanced job
complex":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_job_complex
* the current capitalist paradigm that says the the most "badass" person
(meaning, depending on the situation, the most skilled, mean, manipulative,
strong, informed, rich, or whatever) gets the lion's share of the wealth
from any enterprise through scarcity dynamics of economics (or just some
kind of social Darwinism of legalized theft from the commons). Related:
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/47
(That ideology is tempered in reality somewhat by the historic paradigm
connected to how humans tend to socialize from maybe a million years or more
of evolution as a social species, as well as by our hopes for the future, as
well as by government as a collective enterprise putting limits on
corporations in various ways since a government of the People, by the
People, for the People, in theory, is more "badass" than any individual or
company.)
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=badass
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm
* a future post-scarcity paradigm that suggests technology and social
organization has reached (or is soon to reach) the point where not much
needs to be done as "work" (because machines or volunteers do so much) and
so anything that is done can be play and everyone's true needs and
reasonable wants are easily met from a hyperproductive commons;
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://www.reprap.org
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Individuals forming volutary adhoc groups on GitHub (or SourceForge or a
mailing list just a lot of the internet itself) may represent this to a high
degree.
So, it's hard to come up with a solution for an enterprise that somehow
deals with all those three very different paradigms of the past, present,
and the future in the context of a society that is (ideally) transitioning
*back* from a scarcity paradigm to an abundance paradigm (but using advanced
technology and having a complex society, so it is not going back to
"primitivism" in that sense -- even if such "primitives" might have been
happier and more socially sophisticated than many people today). See also my
comment today here to a blog post:
http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2010/09/01/good-question-who-were-the-first-modern-humans-and-what-did-they-do-the-aurignacians/
I wonder if we may see new "open manufacturing" enterprises gravitating
towards one of those three paradigms as a corporate culture, but then maybe
adding an item or two from the others? It's hard to deal with times of rapid
change.
And even within the open source and open manufacturing realms, thinking
"open manufacturing" is a good thing does not mean everyone buys into a
"post-scarcity" ideal, or would agree on how to reach one from where we are
even if everyone did.
Open manufacturing for some might just be a means to an end of profit, as a
current topic of interest in our society. Decades ago, the Heath company
(HeathKit) sold kits to put together your own radios and so on, just to
satisfy a DIY itch. I don't know what their thoughts were about these larger
issues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathkit
And even if people do buy into a post-scarcity paradigm, we're still in
transition, so people wanting to do some bigger things in the real world
still need to scrounge ration units (aka dollars) to pay the rent, pay for
products, pay for lawyers who worry about patents and copyrights and
trademarks and legal agreements (even if just from an open perspective), and
so on. And in our current society a well run business can still do a lot of
good (like MakerBot Industries or ShopBot Tools are trying to make lots of
tools that empower others while still not losing money, or maybe even making
a bunch of money for the founders). So, it is hard to plot a course
sometimes... And then their are unknowns, including what others are doing
that will effect the profitability of any firm... It's not easy to think
through all this. :-) And, even in the process of building better tools to
think through all this, we become different people...
"BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: Douglas C. Engelbart "
http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/dce-bio.htm
John Griessen
a custom time and money accounting software for us
>>> that can tell everybody at every time how much he is entitled to get of the
>>> company's gain, based on the one principle that "all time has equal worth". [...]
>
>> This sounds awesome! Any chance that you would be interested in open
>> sourcing this software? Is it web based?
>>
>> Steve
>
> Open sourcing this software is unfortunately not possible, as it is tightly integrated with
Then Eureka is the project to work with, since it is open.
Steve T wrote:
> Again, the lottery structure is not a necessity but my own pet idea.
> However, since you commented on it...
>
> <soapbox>
> I have been involved in multiple non-profits over the years and what I
> have seen is that the people that migrate to the board tend to be
> people who will put up with the politics so that they can feel
> important. They then drive others out who just want to get things done
I've seen this happen also. Like your idea of lottery and short terms of
duty at command. The likelihood that
sometimes people with less organization skill would be at the command position
for a while suggests you make a steady effort at creating organization tools
that lessen the load of being organized. The organization tools can be code, but
also and necessary is training in more manual methods plus thought processes
or organizing forward motion for everyone in the group. OSM groups need to
have more resilient unspecialized people than corps -- they have flat organization
of power, so they need flatter distribution of abilities.
John G
Josef Davies-Coates
As a way of "weighting" the value of different tasks (perhaps to take into account risk etc.) I quite like auction methods described in http://peereconomy.org
Re: open organizations is quite a nice site:
http://www.open-organizations.org/
In the UK there are numerous legal structures that could enable the kind of open flat organisation outlined at the beginning of this thread.
One is LLPs (Limited Liability Partnerships), governed by a Member Agreement that can be anything the Members agree. This is what the small co-op I founded United Diversity currently is.
Another favourite (I'm working on rules for one now) is the Industrial Provident Society. This is particularly suited to crowd funding stuff as IPSs are exempt from certain parts of financial regulation. The are by law one member one vote, regardless of the amount of shares owned and no one person can invest more than £20,000. All members have the right to stand for and elect the board.
One new set of Model Rules, the "Multistakeholder Cooperative" or "Somerset Rules" are the first to enable non-user members, i.e. people whose only relationship with the co-op is that of an investor to have a share of the vote, but it is limited to a maximum of 25% of the vote.
More info about LLPs and IPSs here:
http://uniteddiversity.com/replicate/legal-structures/
I'm currently working on setting up a co-op using the multistakerholder rules, with a few amendments and additions mostly lifted from other model rules. The purpose of the co-op is to make it easier for people to set-up as an IPS and administer a community share issue, and on-going member engagement, online.
Also relevant to this discussion is the One Click Orgs stuff.
http://www.oneclickor.gs/
Their beta system is just for Unincorporated Associations but there are moves to also enable Companies Limited by Guarantee (what most standard "Non-Profits" are registered as) to use the system, specifically for use by the London Hackspace:
http://london.hackspace.org.uk/
http://www.oneclickor.gs/2010/04/28/one-click-orgs-announces-project/
Josef.
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Josef Davies-Coates
07974 88 88 95
http://uniteddiversity.com
Together We Have Everything