Just sneaking in a comment in a hurry …

The actual cost of free software, unlike the cost of something like bandwidth, is not so obvious.

Let’s say that a certain percentage of programmers agree to participate in a generalized exchange such that everyone makes and gets software for free. This way, each programmer contributes code to some other software project besides their own. Everyone is happy and the system is balanced. However, when the number of end users for a given free software application (those who do not contribute any code to any project) mushrooms relative to the number of developers working on that application then so does the demand on the developers to satisfy an ever growing user base and the growing number of feature requests that come with it. When you implement financial donations by the end users (in place of contributing code) this system regains its balance, but without donations by end users (including massive corporations, e.g. Google, who are actually some of the biggest donors to free software, demographically speaking) there is no way to sustain the demands (in feature and design enhancements) of an ever growing user base. So it’s not a generalized exchange any more when the end users become the financial supporters. Case in point: Firefox. Google funds it in a major way, including having its lead developer work for Google (either still true or was true in the past,) which raises an interesting conflict of interest issue since Google is the biggest single donor in this case and they happen to have their own browser, but that’s besides the point.

The point is that a generalized exchange works as long as there is a balance between givers and takers (including the end users.) In other words, when a free software application becomes too popular then you have to have more developers working on it to meet the increased demands of a larger user base (in terms of feature requests, design enhancements, and just keeping a diverse base of users happy) and with larger number of developers and a very large user base you need an actual organization with project managers, testers, technical writers, etc, to the point where it becomes important that you get some financial donations.

There is more detail to this argument but I am extremely bandwidth starved atm.

I may add the above after further debate and refinement to the set of examples under

Marc

I totally agree with your suggestion, though it does not seem to have a lot of traction. However, I have tracked some initiatives in various parts of the world, and if you know of others, thanks for letting me know.

See for the links at http://p2pfoundation.net/Free_Software_Cooperatives

Here’s the material you can find there:

Active:

1. OSSICS, Kerala, India
2. OS Alliance, Austria, “Georg Pleger” ; Roland Alton-Scheidl ; Eric Poscher
3. WikiOcean, Pune, India, uses Weko/Reppo based governance system. Contact for info: [email protected]
4. SOLIS – Brazil, Júnior Mulinari
5. Gcoop – Argentina; [email protected]
6. Pong – Switzerland
7. Ikusnet – Spain

Other contacts:

1. Joice Käfer
2. Rama

Inactive?:

1. KunLabori Collaborative, Sweden (no longer active, according to Josef Davies-Coates, May 2008)

See also:

1. Turo Technology LLP, UK
2. The Open Co-op, UK
3. HostSharing eG – a german coop specialising on ISP Services

More Information

1. Spanish-language discussion list, maintained by Gcoop in Argentina: Cooperativismo y el Software Libre
2. Cooperativas de Software Livre

The development of the present economic crisis should make more visible at a social scale the need to overcome the dominant logic.”

In the context of the general conversation about corporate support of free software programming, I’ve often wondered why we don’t just have something structured more or less as a cooperative to hire and pay people for this work. The cooperative form is limited in many ways, but it is certainly less limited that normal corporate mechanisms if we’re talking about social production and distribution. Essentially this would only entail chartering a firm in which cooperative members each contribute a small amount of equity finance (either one time or yearly) that massed together provides sufficient capital for programmers. The overall business plan would need some tweaking, but if we want to move beyond resignation we should explore existing organizational and financial models for crowd-funding open source development, either through one firm or through a meshwork of them. Just a thought.