He tells us in this podcast, the story, the intentions, the best and the worst of this adventure and the lessons to be learned.

By publishing this podcast, I hope we can take the best of his experience to continue to explore this issue that is more than ever relevant.
Bonus
More on co-funding

From Open Funding to Startin’blox, the issue of co-funding open source projects is central. Open Initiative was born at the height of crowdfunding. What lessons has this project taught us at Startin’blox? Where are we in the reflection process?
A new profession to invent

What Open Funding lacked and what we still lack at Startin’blox is probably the jobs we have to invent. In this extract, Sylvain briefly describes this profile.
Open source beyond digital

Open source goes far beyond digital, it’s a change in production mode that we believe in.

Music credit :

reNovation by airtone (c) copyright 2019 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/airtone/60674

The post The history of Open Funding appeared first on Startin'blox.

This article was first published on Open initiative’s blog in 2014. This is the third part, start by the first or the second part if you haven’t read them yet. 3# Building the open source economy: The rise of an industrial revolution.

The revolution is yours!

That theorical model looks great, but you might be wondering how you can get concretely involved in a project you find interesting. There are actually many ways to get involved. Let’s look at some of them.

The consumer phase

As the “1% rule” states, the vast majority of users in a community just consume the content generated by others. This makes sense, because when you first discover a community, you investigate it before eventually feeling able to contribute to it. So here are a few things you can do:

Just use it!

The more people that use the software, the stronger its community. It may be hard to realize in the consumption model that we live in, but Open Source projects are not made by them for me, but instead by us for everyone. So just trying it out is already joining the community.

Learn about it.

There are people behind that project. Who are they? Why do they do it? How do they organize? Learning about the project will make you a closer part of it, and will probably help you get the most out of it. You will discover new uses that you had never thought of, and maybe a rich community who will be able to help you.

The contributor phase

It’s only when people start feeling at home in the community that they start getting involved in it. They start by improving the content and helping others in the community.

Promote it and help others.

Show other people what they can do, and help them. Improve the tutorial or make a blog post about it. Remember, the bigger the community, the stronger it is. So every time someone joins in, you’ll get a better product yourself.

Give feedback and fix it.

You think it could be improved? You have new ideas? You want someone to fix this bug that has been bothering you? Just say it! All feedback and comment can be valuable. And don’t forget you can even correct the spelling mistakes you may run into. It may look like a tiny contribution, but that’s what the community is made of. And it will help you get used to the process, and eventually maybe make a bigger contribution.

Adapt it and translate it.

Communities share their work around the world. But the context is not the same everywhere. Translating the product in your language or adapting it to your local reality is very important as it enables the community to grow in new places and environments. This diversity is what makes open source strong, and every local flavor is a major help to the community.

The creator phase

People who contribute regularly may eventually feel empowered enough to actually create content of their own that they’ll give to the community.

Build a local team.

You can buy the tools to produce furniture or cars for your neighborhood and actually make a living out of it. You can also create a local user group to help local people use the software. This group will become a hub for the community and the incarnation of the community on which people will rely.

Create it.

Of course the best way to contribute is to actually create content that will be added to the ones the community already uses. A feature or a plug-in, a brand new design of an object the community didn’t have before. Once you have the skills and understand how the community works, add your own signature!

It’s important to note here that the number of creators isn’t fixed to 1%. In fact studies have shown that this number tends to increase over time for lasting projects, and the same applies to contributors. If people feel empowered and included, they will naturally tend to participate more and more, and move towards the center of the community. But the community needs to be built correctly, and particularly, the values need to be clear and agreed among the members, the interest people have to contribute should be clear and shared, getting involved should be very easy, if not trivial, and, most important of all, people should be respected and participation valued. People need to feel respect and belonging to get involved. Otherwise they’ll just leave and the community will disappear.

Of course, you don’t necessarily have the skills or the time to create your own content. But that shouldn’t stop you from participating! This is why we’ve created Open Funding, the co-funding platform of Free Software and Open Source content. You can contribute to the new feature you need by funding the creator who will work on it. You’re part of the open source community, so contribute and make the product your own!

by Sylvain Le Bon, June 15, 2014

#1 – An on going revolution


#2 – An new industrial model

The post 3# Building the open source economy appeared first on Startin'blox.

This article was first published on Open initiative’s blog in 2014. This is the second part, start by the first part if you haven’t read it yet. 2# Building the open source economy: The rise of an industrial revolution.

An new industrial model

So what makes it consistent? All of these projects share a common model:

Don’t protect the knowledge. Share it.

It’s probably the hardest thing to understand as we’re living in a society of strongly protected knowledge with patents, trademarks and copyright. But an open source model enables the rise of a community, and that may be worth much more than the copyright that you’re protecting. So you need to switch from “Don’t copy me!” to “Please copy what we do, use it in another market, improve it and try it in ways we haven’t”.

Make a network based on open standards.

No need for one company to rule everyone. People will be able to join as they like and do things you would never have thought of. Open Standards are essential as they are what ensure you can use your improvements with other people’s together.

Adopt a horizontal governance that is open to contribution.

As there is no hierarchy between the entities of the network, there will be no boss deciding what is to be done. Decisions need therefore to be made on a consensus basis so that everybody in the community feels empowered.

Produce locally and customize.

That’s what open source is about. A new group can emerge anywhere to use what you’ve designed for their own needs, and adapt it to their reality. You could download your next piece of furniture, for example, cut the pieces in a workshop close to your home, and adapt it to your own living room. Forget about boring everyone-has-the-same furniture!

So at this point you might be wondering why you should consider this instead of a good old proprietary control model.

The real question is actually this:

How long can these proprietary models survive, each in their own silo, while communities gather to build something common?

It’s not about giving up the project, but about growing the community by empowering people and enabling diversity. In other words, it is not a threat, it is an opportunity.

But yet some critical success factors need to be kept in mind in order to get that community actually growing. The community needs to be taken into account to set the right governance, organize the right communication, set the right standards, and document them so others can join. And most importantly, encourage the initiatives so that people feel empowered.

So whatever you do, whatever the domain you’re in, you should consider it, because it is the world of tomorrow.

by Sylvain Le Bon, June 15, 2014

#1 – An on going revolution


#3 – The revolution is yours !

The post 2# Building the open source economy appeared first on Startin'blox.

This article was first published on Open initiative’s blog in 2014. 1# Building the open source economy.

An ongoing revolution

You might have heard about Wikispeed, the open source car project started by Joe Justice in Seattle. You may think that “open source car” is a paradoxical idea. Actually, it makes a lot of sense.

They publish an open source design for a car that they build themselves with standard materials that can be found in any hardware store. The idea is that anyone with an Internet access, including you, can download the design, make their own car out of it, test it, improve the design, and republish it. That’s how hundreds of people have already participated.

If you think it’s a bunch of nuts in their garage in a complete insanity, you should think again. They’ve built a car that goes from 0 to 100 km/h in 5 seconds and tops at 240 km/h. Its fuel consumption is as low as 1,5 L/100km. And they’re working on the C3, which should be comfortable and cost less than 10 000 $. Plus you can build it locally, even yourself if you feel like it, and adapt it to your needs.

But they’re not alone. OSVehicle designs Tabby, an open source car that can be built in 42 min, for less than 4000€. Opendesk designs open source furniture, that you can cut out in any wood workshop close to you, and then assemble like a flat-pack from Ikea. Wikihouse makes open source wood houses that you can cut out and build like a lego house. Openknit makes an open source knitting machine, on which you can make clothes that you download. Think about the 3D printers, think about all the creative commons contents.

Is it really credible, you may ask. The experience we have so far is with software. Free software has existed for more than 30 years now. In the beginning, it all looked like a bunch of nuts in their basements. Crazy people with a crazy idealistic vision. But it proved to be super efficient. No one doubts today that Linux is a very strong technical basis for an operating system. Apache is the most used web server software. Firefox has deposed Internet Explorer as the most used browser. And a countless number of other applications prove everyday how strong that model can be.

So it is not a bunch of nuts in their garage. It is a consistent movement, hitting all domains, and changing the way we work. A lot of questions still need to be answered, but there is no doubt it will impact our society in a long lasting way. And it is happening. Today.

by Sylvain Le Bon, June 15, 2014

#2 – An new industrial model


#3 – The revolution is yours !

The post 1# Building the open source economy appeared first on Startin'blox.

This article was first published on Open initiative’s blog in 2014. This is the third part, start by the first part or the second one if you haven’t read them yet. 3# The Collaborative Economy Disrupting the Software Industry

The software industry to date has thrived by reproducing the manufacturing model it was created in. But now with the power of distributed peer-to-peer networks it could benefit from new, more efficient and fairer alternatives.

Decentralize to form a strong, global network

But maybe we should actually ask why we need that money in the first place. This is even relevant when you think that all other functions in an Internet start-up are very scalable. Making a web platform requires very little work. Testing and fixing it is so easy. Hosting costs are negligible. And most functions can be automated. So the web can connect distant people who have no relation to the company to do business in a distributed way. Then why sould communication and sales be done in a highly centralized, hierarchical way?

There may be an alternative. The same way Internet start-ups compete with traditional businesses by externalizing their main service, they can grow by externalizing their sales/communication/community management function to a distributed network of local connectors managing their own community of users. You end up with a “glocal” community, a network of networks. Each single community is a small start-up of its own, managed by a connector. It is linked to the global network on which it relies for the platform development, and coordination. But it can live its own life, grow to any size one likes and have its own animation and culture.

This model has the relevance of a small local group, but the strength of a global network.

If the Internet is to make all business models distributed, there is no reason why there should still be hierarchical armies of sales persons to sell those distributed services. It means giving up some money, and also some revenue. There are probably many obstacles on that path, difficulties that we don’t foresee. But it looks like it might be worth giving a try. And we will.

By Sylvain Le Bon

1# – Free software, shared price


2# – The Funding Dilemma

The post The Collaborative Economy #3 appeared first on Startin'blox.

This article was first published on Open initiative’s blog in 2014. This is the second part, start by the first part if you haven’t read it yet. #2 The Collaborative Economy Disrupting the Software Industry

The software industry to date has thrived by reproducing the manufacturing model it was created in. But now with the power of distributed peer-to-peer networks it could benefit from new, more efficient and fairer alternatives.

The Funding Dilemma

This is a different way. That’s why we created a crowdfunding platform tailored for free software. But as any other platform of that kind, it needs to reach a certain size to be sustainable.

All platforms of the so-called collaborative economy gather people so that they can do business together. But because of the network effect, the more people gather, the more value the platform has. And until the platform reaches a certain size, it needs extra effort to live. And after that size the bigger the network, the greater the value. That’s why so many platforms raise millions. So that they can communicate about it and make it grow.

But then you need to pay back the investors, which means that the platform needs to take some of the value made by the users. You end up with users working together, paying for the platform to grow, in order to pay the investors. From that moment on, the platform finds itself in a conflict between the interests of its users and those of its investors, which can lead to tensions. This issue has been raised a lot recently under different aspects, for instance in the analysis by Janelle Orsi of the recent lawsuit against Lyft, as well as discussions on who owns the sharing economy platforms and on the impact of the sharing economy on social conditions.

So how can we solve this conflict between the interests of the users and the shareholders? Just make the users your shareholders! And offering users a chance to invest in a platform they rely on for their own revenue is not only a way to prevent conflicts, it is also a good way to improve users commitment. Plus if you get a large number of users to join, it can bring the platform a good quantity of cash! For the users, it is a way to secure the platform that brings them their income, to make sure it doesn’t turn against them, and provide cash if a dividend is paid.

After all, we make the platforms for our users. It’s reasonable they should get involved in building them, and become part of them. It’s more sustainable and fair, and more collaborative.

By Sylvain Le Bon

1# -Free software, shared price


#3 – Decentralize to form a strong, global network

The post The Collaborative Economy #2 appeared first on Startin'blox.

This article was first published on Open initiative’s blog in 2014. It’s talking about The Collaborative Economy disrupting the Software industy.

The software industry to date has thrived by reproducing the manufacturing model it was created in. But now with the power of distributed peer-to-peer networks it could benefit from new, more efficient and fairer alternatives.

Open Initiative arose from the need to make software differently. To make software that works. To stick to the real needs. To share to go faster. Because that’s not how the industry works currently. The software industry was built in an industrial culture. Large investments, strong intellectual property protection, long development cycles, and standardized products with mass sales. And in fact, that made sense for heavy industry, but it still made some sense, for distribution issues, in the early IT world.

But the Internet came and disrupted all of this. Software is specific because it has no replication cost. With virtually no distribution costs, there is no need for a long cycle anymore. You can make your prototype, test it, distribute it, upgrade it and fix it again. All of this with no heavy cost. No production line to build, no shipment to organize, no stocks to manage. And yet, we still think of IT companies the same way we think of industrial companies.

Free software, shared price

There is another way. If you invest a lot in a product to get it done, it is crucial to protect it strongly so that you can get good return on your investment. But if your investment is small, it can be better to let others use it, so that you can profit from their work as well as they profit from yours. That’s what open-source software is about. So free software is not only more transparent and fair, it is also more efficient, because it creates an ecosystem on which you can base your work to create quickly very powerful software.

But that’s not all. As software can be updated easily, it’s better to test it as often as possible. Free software makes it even easier because you get a community that can test your software quick and often. So, less risk, less investment, more efficiency, more fairness. That sounds like a good deal right? That’s what we mean by “make software differently”. That’s why Open Initiative came to life.

And you say: if it’s free software, how do you make a living? Well, as Stallman said, it is free as in “free speech”, not as in “free beer”. Free software developers need to earn money, as everybody else. And that’s why we created Open Funding. Free software brings value to everybody. So the price should be shared between everybody. And crowdfunding is about sharing the effort of funding, when free software is about sharing the effort of development. It just makes sense. So, fund it by the crowd, make it in small steps, let users test and validate, and make it open source. 

By Sylvain Le Bon

2# – The Funding Dilemma


3# – Decentralize to form a strong, global network

The post The Collaborative Economy #1 appeared first on Startin'blox.