[Imc-alternatives] e: sharing manifesto

[Aaron Kreider]

I am thinking of something more practical. More tuned in with existing social movements. Example - how will sharing help us stop the US war and occupation of Iraq?  I'd like some examples of groups and people who have endorsed these principles.

For instance, I got the Student Environmental Action Coalition to open source/copy-left all its materials (code and publishings) around seven years ago.  It's not a big organization, but it's an example of what you can do.  On a personal note, I've published online most of what I've written that was any good since late high school, and have open sourced all my good computer programs as well.

A lot of organizations make very little to zero money from their publications - to the extent that they can gain financially (by membership/donor income) if they open up their publishing and that allows them to gain in membership.  I also think that people will buy more of your books if you release them free as pdfs (not just excerpts, but entire books), since most people don't read entire books on the computer.  That is a hypothesis that might need to some proof, and it might be less likely in the future if things like Kindle (Amazon's book reading device) take off.  Book publishing has large economies of scale in terms of printing costs - printing 2000 books costs only a little more ($100-$200?) than printing 1000.  And the cost of writing is the same.  So if you are able to sell more books, you can both reduce the average price and increase your earnings.  Whether the hypothesis about increased earnings due to open sourcing entire books is right, organizations that only do a small amount of publishing, and rely upon membership and foundation income, can afford to take the risk and experiment.

One possible support model would be for individuals who support this manifesto to donate money to organizations who adopted its principles.  Perhaps you could have fundraising "clubs" - so it'd be explicit that they are getting money from supporters of these principles.

Aaron


>Kia ora
>
>Aaron, have you read the Libre Manifesto?
>http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/files/nodes/1121/1121.pdf
>
>Is the sort of thing you had in mind? Or something more practical and less poetic?
>
>RnB
>Strypes