Loomio
Tue 25 Apr 2017 11:34AM

Commons harmonization, interoperability, standards

SG Simon Grant Public Seen by 144

Several people here understand that interoperability, harmonization or standardization are vital aspects of commons collaboration, both in general, and in particular in the building of IT infrastructure. We invite ourselves and other interested people to tell us about their knowledge, experience and opinions about how to the commons can be helped towards better interoperability; and to work collaboratively together, first, to explore what agreements we can come to about actions that would be helpful; and second, where possible, to coordinate taking those actions.

There are cultural and behavioural dimensions to standardization, as there are to "commoning". We are open to exploring and sharing ideas on the attitudes, values, knowledge, skills and competence of people who wish to collaborate constructively on harmonization or standardization of the commons, and how to embody those values in our processes, which need to be transparent and open.

We welcome people with less experience of standardization, to ask questions about how these topics fit in with commons transition; about what has worked or could work; and to contribute their ideas around these topics.

SG

Simon Grant Tue 25 Apr 2017 11:45AM

One way to start this thread would be for the people who have participated under the "IT infrastructure" thread to summarise their own thoughts...

BH

Bob Haugen Tue 25 Apr 2017 11:59AM

https://www.valueflo.ws/ is working on vocabulary and protocols for economic networks.

Some of the participants have previously worked on standards projects in UN/CEFACT, W3C, and ISO. The vocabulary itself borrows heavily from the REA (Resource, Event, Agent) model, which is also the ISO Accounting and Economic Ontology

You can see our status here: https://www.valueflo.ws/introduction/status.html
Short version: release 0.1.

The model behind the vocabulary is being actively used by http://www.sensorica.co/ and https://freedomcoop.eu/ . A new software infrastructure project based on the model and (maybe) vocabulary is in motion at http://rea-project.readthedocs.io/en/latest/intro.html

All of those projects welcome new participants.

DS

Danyl Strype Mon 1 May 2017 7:49AM

Just out of curiosity, is anyone from the CommunityForge team involved in #ValueFlows work? They are one of the few (the only?) web platforms for local currency exchanges that use only free code.

BH

Bob Haugen Mon 1 May 2017 11:33AM

@matthewslater stops in and comments now and then. For example, in this thread:
https://github.com/valueflows/valueflows/issues/143#issuecomment-283838779

The rest of the VF team wants to support mutual credit as Matthew envisions it, and the Mutual Aid Networks, one of our collaborating organizations, use CommuniftyForge software.

DS

Danyl Strype Tue 2 May 2017 4:42AM

What about the folks from OpenCollective? I'm just listening to Pia Mancini from OC (and DemocracyOS and the NetParty) interviewed by @douglasrushkoff on the Team Human podcast. BTW Sorry if these questions are kind of hijacking the commons harmonization discussion. If there is a better place to ask questions about the ValueFlows development project, please link me.

BH

Bob Haugen Tue 2 May 2017 10:36AM

Are you asking about what groups have been involved in ValueFlows? OpenCollective has not been involved at all. The whole effort spun off from the Enspiral Open Apps Ecosystem. @lynnfoster and I bring learnings from some food networks, Sensorica, the Guerilla Translators (not much involvement, but we learned about translation workflows from them), the Driftless Herbal Network, and FairCoop and FreedomCoop. @elfpavlik has worked with many different groups, including food networks in Europe and the Vientos network in Mexico. @stevebosserman has worked with time banks and local business ecosystems in the US midwest. Transformaps has been involved a bit via @jonrichter. Likewise the Mutual Aid Networks. GoPacifia in Argentina might use the vocab in a new software project.

I might have forgotten somebody, but those are the main groups that come to mind.

@gregorycassel keeps communing (or commoning) with VF and we hope to interconnect with his evolving agreement-based org and P2P digital networking models.

I wouldn't say @matthewslater has been involved, but he does stop in and answer questions about mutual credit.

[edit] Almost forgot, we did some use cases with @danhassan of the Robin Hood group.

[another edit] Lynn reminds me of @paulmackay of circular economy projects, and says I should mention Kalin Maldzhanski who doesn't come in as a rep of any particular group, but who is doing a lot of that hard work...

I am aware that other groups are working on similar or intersecting projects. We'd love to collaborate, but as you noted above, this stuff is hard work and we are not doing a lot of outreach right now. Trying to get more of the vocab nailed down so it might be usable for the new software project I mentioned above.

In terms of existing standards orgs, we plan to publish our work in W3C, and have ongoing conversations with people in ISO.

VBR

Vinicius Braz Rocha Tue 25 Apr 2017 6:16PM

" There are cultural and behavioural dimensions to standardization, as there are to "commoning". We are open to exploring and sharing ideas on the attitudes, values, knowledge, skills and competence of people who wish to collaborate constructively on harmonization or standardization of the commons, and how to embody those values in our processes, which need to be transparent and open. "

yep, count on me too Simon !

very little time utimately for loomio forum discussions, but this topic indeed needs to be nurtured with a lot of conversations and experiences =) !

GC

Greg Cassel Tue 25 Apr 2017 9:45PM

I don't have time to comprehensively review my experience of the IT infrastructure thread, but I'll share a few thoughts.

One of the main challenges has been whether to work with existing standards bodies or not. That's not a simple yes/no question, however, because there's a difference between collaborating on one project and coordinating two or more projects. Some of us, including me, see room for developing new standards while coordinating or harmonizing with existing standards bodies.

Anyway, these issues are all close to my core work in social technology. For instance, my Agreement-Based Organization can be described as a prototype standard for the generation of consent-based agreements, potentially including other standards. It should be noted, however, that Agreement-Based Organization is mainly intended for use by mutually accountable teammates, especially in the case of ambitious agreements. Such consent-based teamwork typically occurs only in small groups which work closely together, including--sometimes-- gatherings of other groups' appointed leaders. Ultimately, I hope to help reduce such hierarchical social process and the IMO excessively crude, lengthy delegation (or even surrender) of each person's decision-making agency.

DS

Danyl Strype Mon 1 May 2017 6:11AM

I think its worth pointing out right from the get-go that without the standards work of the people working within bodies like the IETF and W3C, we couldn't be having this conversation here. Unlike some of the older standards organisations (eg ISO, IEEE), the organisations for internet standards (of which web standards are a major subset) tend to develop standards in an open source manner, with documentation of proposed standards freely available from the first draft (RFC or "Request For Comment"). This makes Internet standards living documents evolved through shared governance, rather than dry pronouncements at the end of secretive, top down processes, which makes them a sort of commons.

The second things I want to point out is that like a lot of open source development, a lot of standards work is done by volunteers, and it can be a gruelling, under-appreciated job. Amelia Bellamy-Royds' experience working on version 2 of the SVG standards is a good example. Again, without people doing similar ongoing work on core internet and web standards, we couldn't have this conversation, just as we couldn't without the ongoing work on the free code libraries and components that Loomio builds on. Standards, and the protocols they standardize are essential, shared infrastructure, even more so in open networks like the internet and the web.

If we - both as end users of the net and as developers/ sysadmins/ webweavers - engage as constructively as we can with open standardization efforts, one day there may be people saying the same about our pioneering work. Otherwise, despite our best intentions, we are building walled gardens, and eventually the open network will hack around us and leave us behind.

GC

Greg Cassel Tue 2 May 2017 12:24PM

If we - both as end users of the net and as developers/ sysadmins/ webweavers - engage as constructively as we can with open standardization efforts, one day there may be people saying the same about our pioneering work.

You may be generally right, but the concept of engaging "as constructively as we can" with existing efforts is subject to widely varying interpretation.

If possible, I'd engage deeply (quite time consuming!) with all efforts to create for global social technology commons. As is, I'm deeply called to work on some things which others don't seem to be working on at all. It will be purely "on me" to demonstrate to others whether such time is well-spent-- and, to hopefully connect more and more dots in the future.

The only walled gardens I'm personally trying to create are the ones where I maintain personal agency regarding works which list me as an author or editor. However, such work is openly licensed for free distribution and modification.

I appreciate the perspective you've given here, for the sake of any readers who may actually be trying or hoping to capitalize on walled garden efforts.

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