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Nithin Coca: The Platform Cooperative Japan Consortium (PCJ) is the first organization in Asia focused on promoting the idea of platform cooperatives — businesses that bring the structure of traditional cooperatives, including worker ownership and governance — to the digital world. PCJ was founded by Mathias Sager and is directly connected to the New York City-based Platform Cooperativism network (Shareable is a member of this cohort). Originally from Switzerland, Sager has spent several years living in Japan. Besides his work with PCJ, he is an independent researcher, social entrepreneur, and leadership and strategy adviser for Japanese and global organizations. He is also pursuing a master’s degree in psychology from the University of Liverpool in the U.K.

The consortium has members from Japanese academia, the country’s existing cooperative sector and civil society. In a short period, they have already organized several events with the goal of introducing the platform cooperative idea to Japan, and localizing it as a solution for the country’s economic and social challenges. We spoke with Sager to learn more about PCJ and the potential for platform cooperatives in Japan.

Mathias Sager (fourth from left) at Platform Cooperative Japan Consortium event. Photo courtesy of PCJ.

Nithin Coca, Shareable: What is Platform Cooperative Consortium doing to spread the platform co-op idea in Japan?

Mathias Sager, Platform Cooperative Japan Consortium: Our mission is to support the cooperative digital economy through research, experimentation, education, advocacy, documentation of best practices, technical assistance, the coordination of funding, and events.

Our web presence is helping us to reach potential PCJ stakeholders. Currently, we want to extend our online visibility in the social co-op Fediverse and on Mastodon in particular as a Twitter alternative, where there is already a lively user base in Japan as well. Part of our work is to actively contact organizations and individuals who could potentially be interested in the Platform Cooperativism concept and in becoming a member of the PCJ Consortium. As we did in the past regularly, we continue to organize PCJ public events at which we present the concept and discuss with the audience. Besides own events, we welcome guest speaking opportunities as, for example, at the J-Global Institute of Collaboration or at Nerd Nite. Also, other events such as Social Innovation Japan provide a good possibility to spread the word further.

Can you explain more about the challenges facing Japan that platform co-ops could address?

Japan’s economic growth rate in the past 10 years has been averaging in between 0-2 percent range, with negative 4 percent being the lowest in 2009, after the Lehman shock. Japan is hyper-aging and its population is declining due to low fertility. With this aging population and declining working-age population, economic researchers estimate Japan’s potential growth rate no more than 1 percent.

It is deeply worrying today that youth in Japan are often unable to find regular jobs after graduation. Platform co-ops should be able to help this lost generation and provide the many free part-timers fairer job opportunities. It is not the younger talents who are in decision power — due to seniority-based promotion systems, only 9 percent of Japanese managers are below the age of 40, compared to 62 percent in India and 76 percent in China. Hidden under the low unemployment rates are often precarious labor conditions. Working poor comprise an increasingly larger segment of the working population. For example, it could be a promising way to form freelancer-cooperatives who create or work for platform co-ops. Platform co-ops could also emerge from rural revitalization initiatives.

The private and public sector are struggling to address the challenges in personal care, especially for the increasing number of elderly. In Japanese culture, women are still widely encouraged to stay at home. Although women are also used to drive corporate profits, they are not sufficiently supported in their burden of child-rearing mothers at the same time though. Japan’s corporations, long heralded for their lifetime employment strategy, demand long office hours, which keeps fathers away from their families. However, Platform Cooperativism can be an answer to these issues by responding to the desire for more work-life harmony for all. … Cooperatives, and platform cooperatives, can help revitalize the Japanese economy.

Doesn’t Japan already have a large cooperative sector? Can platform co-ops build on that?

Japan is known for its mostly consumer cooperative tradition. Indeed, roughly one-third of Japanese households belong to co-ops. Cooperatives have long been an organizational solution to labor exploitation. Platform cooperatives strive to bring the concept of ownership to the digital economy, exploring not just employee ownership but also user data ownership. We can revitalize cooperative idea with platform cooperatives that will speak to a younger generation because they understand that something is wrong. … Millennials, in particular, may appreciate the opportunities for a better work-life balance. Cooperatives might be able to provide such a balance in addition to purpose and identification. Furthermore, cooperative governance can be designed to reward performance, therefore supporting personal growth in many ways.

What are your future plans and how do you hope to engage your target audiences?

When presenting Platform Cooperativism as a fairer user-worker-owned model of running online platforms, I often hear answers like “that’s a great idea, but it’s too difficult to realize.”

While grassroots efforts are essential, the cooperative way should also be supported top-down as a political priority. A cooperative economy can not only be profitable but by not passing excess profits to just a few it is also able to provide for welfare benefits and community development where often tax paid government efforts failed in demonstrating sufficiently sustainable effects.

The movement is relevant for any individual and organization that is valuing sustainable online platform solutions. Cooperative values ensure that the prosperity and decision-making can be shared between value creators working together for mutual benefit and the transition to a more equitable platform economy.

Platform co-ops could be of local scope but are inherently able to function cross-border in the world wide web to build global membership bases. A parallel development and step-by-step convergence of national and international segments may provide a Japan specific avenue to keep the politics local and open up to international users for global cooperation at the same time. I had the idea to coin the term of “sato-digital” as derived from satoyama or satoumi. Sato (里) means village and yama (山) means mountain. One definition is “the management of forests through local agricultural communities.” More recently, satoyama has been defined not only as mixed community forests, but also as entire landscapes that are used for agriculture. In that sense, Sato-digital could be translated into, suitable to the platform co-op concept — the management of a digital business through (respectively “by, of, and for”) the local digital community and the broader platform co-op ecosystem in Japan.

This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

Header image by Pawel Janiak via Unsplash

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Nithin Coca: Loconomics is a platform cooperative that allows service professionals working in areas like dog walking, home care, child care, massage therapy, and tutoring to connect and offer their services on a platform that they own. Founded by Joshua Danielson in 2012, Loconomics, which is based in San Francisco, California, aims to provide an alternative to investor-owned platforms such as Wagg (dog walking), Taskrabbit (gig work), or Handy (home cleaning). The company also just announced a collaboration with Doing What MATTERS for Jobs and the Economy, a program by California Community Colleges. The Loconomics platform will be used as part of a course on the gig economy, which will help bringing cooperative economic principles to students. We spoke with Danielson and Kyra Harrington, Loconomics’ Brand Marketing Manager, to learn more about Loconomics’ vision, their new partnership, and how a platform cooperative could empower service professionals and serve as a tool for economic empowerment.

Nithin Coca, Shareable: Where did the idea for Loconomics come from — and why did you feel it was necessary?

Joshua Danielson, Loconomics: In my 20s, I spent a lot of my money on services and I knew that the platforms, back then mostly temp agencies, often take 30-40 percent of people’s pay. Local services were something I believed in. The world’s full of products, while services are sustainable and personable. They enrich people’s lives in a way that products don’t. Ethos behind it is to do something that doesn’t increase wealth inequality. This is what many traditional businesses [with venture capital] end up doing.

We – Joshua and I – first met more than two years ago, and even then, Loconomics had been around for some time. Can you tell me about your progress, and the challenges you’ve faced in getting the platform cooperative set up?

Joshua Danielson: It’s taken much longer than expected, which is not atypical for any first-time entrepreneur. I started out neither having been a project manager nor having the technical expertise to move quickly. I’ve acquired a lot of those skills since then, and we’re able to execute things in a fraction of the time it used to take.

Loconomics started out as a benefit corporation, and our first round was a desktop version launched in 2012. It was bad timing. No one knew what a benefit corp was, nor did they care. It wasn’t true ownership, it wasn’t that differentiated from other platforms, and we didn’t have a mobile app. I began to wonder how this would look as a cooperative, but as most service professionals are freelancers, I didn’t know how that would work. I met Janelle Orsi with the Sustainable Economies Law Center, and she had been speaking out about the sharing economy/platform economy.

The conversion to a platform cooperative took a lot longer than expected because we wanted to do it right. The bylaws alone took over a year to write. Janelle has a lot of expertise and is in the cooperative movement. I let her lead, and I made sure to bring a healthy dose of business strategy to it, to ensure it was a sustainable platform, and we’d have staff that would want to work here.

What was the cooperative structure you ended up deciding on, and how does it work in practice?

Joshua Danielson: We officially converted in June 2014 to a California cooperative. We were a patronage based co-op at that point, with no shareholders. That means Loconomics is owned by workers and nobody else. We felt that keeping our focus on local services, and creating a platform that works for service professionals and clients has a lot potential to shift wealth inequality, so that gradually services can be booked without the middlemen.

Our revenue model is that service professionals will pay $20-40 for our ownership plans. With the $20 a month plan, they gain access to dividends, vote, can run for board, and get access to our sister platform where they can communicate, gain support, and have networking opportunities.

For $40, they also get access to scheduling software and new project management tools, in addition to being part of the cooperative. When there are profits leftover, they are entitled to dividends based on what they have paid into the platform. There are no commissions, and they elect the board, so they oversee the platform. Staff, like myself and Kyra, will be doing day to day activities — we are entrusted with the mission on their behalf. We’ve removed the traditional incentives and are self managed, have capped salaries, and  don’t have a bonus system. Staff elect one board member, two are nonprofit appointed, and six members are elected by service professionals. We get dividends based on how many hours we work, but this will roughly end up being the same as a service professional member who paid their dues.

So, can Shareable readers find services on the platform right now?

Kyra Harrington: Right now we’re focusing on recruiting on service professionals. Just over the last year, we’ve found there are a lot of challenges they are coming up against. They are often by themselves and face challenges on their own. That’s why we’re trying to build community through our sister platform — Loconomomics.coop — where service professionals can congregate. There are a lot of professional advantages they get from joining coop.

Service professionals have created nearly 600 listings on the site so far — and as we transition out of beta and going to do a full push this winter to onboard new members.

Service professionals can be a huge category. Any specific fields or sectors you are focusing your outreach on?

Joshua Danielson: Currently we’re focused on handful of services that include self-care professionals, such as massage therapists, acupuncture, cleaning professionals, handymen, and also dog walkers, pet sitters, child care, and tutors. Existing platforms for dog walking and cleaning take commissions up to 40 percent. They also proved that service professionals are looking at these platforms to get services booked, so that shows demand.

Kyra Harrington: When you start talking about co-ops, people often have not heard about it. To focus our messaging, we’re focusing on what’s in it for them as a service professional. Our focus is on tangible benefits: software, marketing, community, and no commissions. No one is getting rich of your back. And we’re a platform co-op, so you have a voice in our future.

Joshua Danielson: Most platform workers don’t feel like they’re being taken advantage of. Not many people have done the math. We want to have the numbers to say that, for example, dog walkers on Loconomics earn X more than on Wagg. That works better than telling them they are being taken advantage of.

That definitely sounds like a stronger message. So, what are your goals further ahead — where do you hope to see Loconomics in the near and medium term?

Joshua Danielson: First goal is to reach financial sustainability, and that we can achieve with 2,000 member service professionals. That would give resources to hire staff, and ability to scale and build partnerships across the world. Scaling helps everybody through increased bargaining power and network effects.

Kyra Harrington: It’s about helping each other versus fighting each other for business. The co-op element allows members to get to know each other — and you are more likely to refer your clients to others via a trusted referral network. Loconomics also allows members to market their services collectively versus paying a platform to compete against each other.

Joshua Danielson: The power of the marketplace is that you can book different services with Loconomics. You might first find your dog walker, but when you are also looking for a massage, you can find that on Loconomics too. It’s another value proposition to any service professional: They’re likely to get clients from other professionals. Our cooperative business model lends itself to members helping each other in ways that other platforms cannot.

It may have taken longer than I thought it would, but we’re excited to get to that point. The financials back it up, and there’s a place for Loconomics in the market. We need to reach a critical mass to get the ball rolling faster, so we’d love for people to check us out and refer professionals who could benefit from the power of a co-op. We’re committed to reducing wealth inequality, and we feel ownership is the way to do that — ownership over the tools you use and the way that you access work.

Nithin Coca: I’d also love to hear more about your new partnership with California Community Colleges?

Joshua Danielson: Under the Doing What Matters for Jobs and the Economy Small Business Sector program, twenty-four colleges are participating in a Self-employment Pathways in the Gig Economy project starting February 2018. Students will create job listings as part of this program, and Loconomics will assist them in finding work opportunities, tracking their earnings, and supporting them in transitioning into the independent workforce as small business owners. This group of students is going to be introduced to cooperative platform ownership as an alternative to traditional gig economy platforms.

This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. Header image courtesy of Loconomics. 

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Nithin Coca: In 2009, the world hit a watershed moment. For the first time in human history, a majority of people were living not in rural areas, but in cities. Since then, the growth in cities has only accelerated, and the United Nations estimates that 66 percent of the world’s population will live in urban areas by 2050.

A new report, “Rethinking the City,” by the Ireland based Complexity Labs, an online platform for research and content on complex systems, argues that we’re undergoing a period of urban transformation that requires us to develop new, technological systems for managing, organizing, and designing urban environments. Their findings are summarized in this video.

Cities, by their very nature, are incredibly complex. Change often happens faster than officials can react — leading to problems like informal settlements, inadequate services, or high rent and gentrification.

In fact, cities might not even be the right framework to think about urban areas anymore. In February of 2016, Parag Khanna’s TED Talk on megacities showed how the growth connectivity meant that clusters of cities were bound together. In many parts of the world, however, there is little coordination across megacities and regions due to our outdated institutions.

Complexity Labs argues that the dominant system for managing cities — an industrial era centralization and bureaucracy — is not able to scale to the challenges of rapid urbanization. At the same time, the decisions cities and megacities make today will impact the global economy and environment well into the future.

One of the structural changes that the report authors call for a shift towards distributed systems and peer-to-peer interaction, arguing that technology and online platforms for coordination will allow for distributed scale in ways that was not possible before.

We see this happening already around the world as Sharing Cities in which both formal and informal networks allow residents to share resources, knowledge, and take part in local governance, are developing innovative ways to address urban challenges. For example, in Berlin, Germany, food sharing is connecting farmers, foragers, and residents to reduce waste and build community across the city. In Gothenburg, Sweden, the digital ridesharing platform Skjutsgruppen has 70,000 members sharing vehicles and rides via a nonprofit network. Other places have started involving citizens directly in policymaking — Taiwan created ride-share policies after receiving input from residents. In the U.S., people in Oakland and Boston are taking part in participatory budgeting projects. Shareable’s new book, “Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons” has a number of case studies and policies of similar initiatives around the globe.

As more and more people move to cities, and put stresses on existing institutions, the future of megacities depends on the growth of genuine Sharing Cities, platforms, and a more collaborative economy. It’s time to rethink cities — and rethink how sharing can scale through the use of technology.

Header image of Tokyo by Steven Diaz via Unsplash

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Nithin Coca: The first “Ruche,” or Food Assembly, took place in La Fauga, France, near the city of Toulouse, in September 2011 and took off from there. It was a space where consumers could meet food producers and pick up produce that they had previously ordered online. Since then, it has grown into a robust network of independently operated farmers’ markets organized via an online platform. The timing for the launch of Food Assembly was ideal. In France, campaigns against genetically modified food had been simmering for years, and along with a drought and other challenges affecting French farmers, there was a strong desire for new, sustainable alternatives. “I believe we arrived at the right time to market, there was a lot of media coverage of agricultural crisis [in France], and there was a need from consumers and producers to find the right solution,” Melissa Martinay, a spokesperson for Food Assembly in Paris, France, says.

What made Food Assembly stand out from other similar projects was that it incorporated the concerns of not just consumers in its platform but also of farmers from the very start. “Other initiatives, they didn’t necessarily focus on supporting the farmers first, and this was something that appealed a lot to both farmers, and consumers,” Martinay says. In order to maintain that cooperative spirit, in November 2012, Food Assembly obtained a Collaborative and Social Certification (ESS, économie sociale et solidaire) from the French government, the same designation used by most cooperatives. Since then, it has also gotten a B-Corp certification. The organization’s growth has been substantial, and today, there are over 900 Assemblies, connecting farmers, producers, and consumers, taking place every week, across Europe.

In a modern, urban consumer economy, the gaps between farmers, food producers, and consumers is wide. In Europe, where about 74 percent of the population lives in cities and rarely gets a chance to visit farms, bridging that gap can be challenging. The places where most people get food — grocery stores, restaurants, cafes — are often several degrees removed from farmers and other food producers.

There’s a negative financial impact as well. Because farmers are so far away from consumers, they have to rely on middlemen, such as chain supermarkets, to reach consumers. Every link on the chain between farmers, food producers, and consumers is a loss in profit for farmers who only get 15-25 percent of what any product is sold for in most supermarkets, according to Food Assembly.

Addressing this problem and creating a more equitable, community-driven food sharing economy was the initial goal of Food Assembly, which was founded as “La Ruche qui dit Oui!” (The hive that says yes!) in 2010, by Guilhem Chéron, Marc-David Choukroun, and Mounir Mahjoubi. The goal was to reduce the number of intermediaries between consumers and food producers. From the get-go, the organization had a technical component, utilizing a web platform as the key tool to connect members and farmer-producers. “We’re both a web start-up and social enterprise,” Martinay says. “We define ourselves as part of the collaborative economy with a social component.”

Each “Assembly” is independently operated, but with plenty of support from both Food Assembly staff, and other Assemblies. You have to be a member of an Assembly to participate, though there is no membership fee. Once you join, you get access to an updated, online catalog of local food products, which you order and pay for through the website. Members then pick up their food at an in-person Assembly, held at a set time in a local venue. This allows members to  not only meet their neighbors, but also the people behind the food they are eating. Key to each Assembly is the host, who works with the Food Assembly network to create the weekly catalog of all the local food products available from producers, and arrange logistics with the venue. It is an important role, and one that is not run by volunteers – hosts are paid a portion of sales, to value the time and effort they put into making the network work.

In fact, everyone gains in the process. For consumers, it’s access to fresh, seasonal foods all grown or produced within 150 miles or 250 kilometers, depending on the country. For farmers and food producers, it’s a bigger cut for their labor, as over 80 percent of the price paid by members goes straight to them — a far higher percentage than they receive from supermarkets. The remainder goes to the host and to Food Assembly itself, to maintain the web platform, provide support, and expand the network.

Growing from a single Assembly in 2011, to over 900 in 2017, makes Food Assembly one of the most successful examples of a sharing economy platform scaling rapidly while maintaining its core values. It was not easy, however, as it encountered several challenges on the way.

For each Assembly to work, you need a mix of the right people: a dedicated host, and certain number of farmers-producers and members. Getting that balance can be a challenge, especially in a certain regions.

“In some regions, there is synergy — it works well, it inspires people, and it spreads,” Martinay says. In other places, not so much. For example, Food Assembly found it especially difficult to expand in London due to a scarcity of producers willing to enter the city to distribute their produce.

“The logistics for producers [in London] is hard,” Martinay says. “They are not [willing to] spend so many hours and effort to transport goods. The distance between their farms and the consumers is a lot.” They are now testing a new model where they allow farmers and producers to drop off goods at an easier location for a slightly higher fee — an optional service, but one that might help bring more producers to Assemblies in cities like London.

Going global was also difficult. Food Assembly grew fast in France, due to timing, complementary logistics, and a dedicated community. In other countries, however, growth has been slower from the get-go. Martinay believes this was due to not fully understanding cross-border and regional differences.

“We underestimated the cost of localizing a project,” Martinay says. “But now we’ve put the right resources in the new countries.” And it’s paying off, as there are now more than  100 Assemblies in the U.K., Belgium, and Germany.

In the end,what matters most to success and growth is not analysis or ample resources, but the people who form the core of each community. They are the ones who set up, organize, and maintain each Assembly. “Put people first,” Martinay says. “We can do a lot of market studies to grow the network, but in the end a platform like ours really relies on people.”

It can be a tough balance, especially when it comes to the host of each community. “It is a challenge to identify the right person, and empower them properly, without being forced to control them too much.” This means that not every Assembly is run to the standards that they would like — but it’s a necessary tradeoff to maintain a truly diverse, open, and welcoming network.

There are now 900 assemblies across Europe, but this is just the start. The main goal going forward for Food Assembly is to grow  that number so more consumers, farmers, and food producers have access to each other and gradually build communities in more and more regions. The key to doing this will require a better understanding of how the platform is creates value. It’s a challenge as Food Assembly focuses on community and connections, not purely finances. Food Assembly knows about how much value is gained through the exchange of food — but that’s only part of the story.

“It’s hard… we have a lot of anecdotes and stories to tell about producers, but not aggregated data,” Martinay says. “We can monitor how much [producers] sell through the network, whether this this allowed them to hire an extra worker on the farm, but to what extent has participating opened up perspectives on what to grow or transport… I’m not sure we will ever be able to collect this kind of information, but it is a big part of the impact.”

One of the goals for this year is to incorporate survey tools and other means for members, hosts, and producers to provide feedback. This would help Food Assembly understand how they can assist them in  gaining more value from participating. The rapid growth of Food Assemblies across Europe shows the desire for a more cooperative food system, in which consumers and farmers are more closely connected, and can work together to create a more equitable, sustainable economy. It also shows that sharing can be scaled, if people are central to the network, and the incentives are setup to create positive outcomes for all participants.

This piece was originally published in “The Sharing World” by the Sharing Economy Association of Japan. All images courtesy of Food Assembly

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Nithin Coca: For Socorro Aguirre Cruz, a home care worker in Staten Island, New York, with nearly 50 years of cleaning experience, many of the challenges faced by gig workers today have been part of her life for decades. Work has been precarious for her long before the emergence of massive, venture capitalist-funded gig platforms that began disrupting — and in some cases destroying — a number of industries.

“It was hard to find work, especially not speaking English,” Cruz says. “I was badly paid for a lot of work, and sometimes I didn’t get paid at all. They took advantage of my situation as an immigrant here.”

As the gig economy grows, more and more stories of worker exploitation are coming to the fore. And as reports of shady labor practices at Uber, Lyft, Taskrabbit, Postmates, and Amazon Mechanical Turk show, these issues run rampant across all sectors of the gig economy. In the home services industry, the platform Handy has made a name for itself, connecting people with pre-screened professional cleaners, fixers, and other professionals. Within three years of its founding, however, the company already faced lawsuits for allegedly underpaying workers and making them pay severe fees for minor transgressions.

To counter poor labor practices, gig workers and entrepreneurs are now taking matters into their own hands by launching their own digital platforms for various services. Called “platform cooperatives,” these businesses bring the structure of traditional cooperatives, including worker ownership and governance, to the digital world.

This June, Cruz and five others formed Brightly Cleaning, a worker-owned cooperative, with support from two social service organizations based in New York City, New York: The La Colmena Staten Island Community Job Center and the Center for Family Life. Brightly Cleaning soon became one of the first members of the new platform cooperative Up & Go.

Socorro Aguirre Cruz, worker-owner of Brightly Cleaning of Staten Island. Photo courtesy of The Center for Family Life

“We’re getting a lot of jobs,” Cruz says. “This work means we can grow more as a co-op, and help other co-ops grow too. It’s like a tree that keeps extending its branches.”

While platform cooperatives have the potential to stand against the tide of exploitative, venture-backed companies, funding is a challenge. For venture capitalists, there’s no incentive to invest in businesses that will not eventually be sold to other investors for a return. For most banks, making loans to new technology businesses is too risky.

But Up & Go and an array of other emerging platform cooperatives are finding innovative, diverse solutions to become financially-viable businesses in the long term. Together, they are charting the way forward for the creation of a far more equitable digital business sector; one that could restore the promise of a sharing economy based on the true sharing of wealth and power — and not the exploitation of workers for profit.

Grants from Foundations 

Up & Go received multiple grants — one from the Robin Hood Foundation, a nonprofit based in New York City, New York, that focuses on fighting poverty, and another from the citizenship initiatives program of the multinational British Bank Barclays. The impetus for launching Up & Go came from our understanding of the marketing challenges facing worker coops – along with the Robin Hood Foundation’s research and focus on the impact of the digital gig economy on low-income workers, says Sylvia Morse, Up & Go’s project coordinator.

“What are the opportunities to create platforms that are more worker focused? That was how the idea was born,” Morse says. The Robin Hood Foundation, which is known for its innovative methods in tackling poverty in the New York City area, was willing to invest in a project like a platform cooperative.

“We were of the opinion that the folks that benefit the least in the world from being ‘on demand’ are the ones that Robin Hood wants to help the most — those sitting on the bottom rung of the economic ladder,” Steven Lee, managing director for income security at the Robin Hood Foundation, says. “[We] came up with this [idea] of creating a tech platform that would source work from consumers around New York City and match those consumers with the low-income worker population.”

Up & Go is jointly owned by three cooperatives that receive 95 percent of the payment from every booking — a far higher figure than any privately owned platform. The remaining five percent goes towards the development and management of the platform.

“We believe that with this initial investment and with the model of having a portion of the booking going back into the platform, and with the worker-owned businesses making an investment, Up & Go can be financially sustainable,” Morse says. The key focus now will be making sure more consumers are aware of the platform, refining the user experience, and bringing more worker-owned cooperatives onboard, she says.

Given the rapid growth of gig work, finding alternatives to business as usual models that focus solely on the bottom line is becoming essential to protect workers. Earlier this year, the Oxford Internet Institute, a multidisciplinary research center, based in Oxford, England, released the Online Labour Index. The Index showed that the online gig economy grew by 26 percent globally in 2016. It shows no signs of slowing down. [Disclosure: I was interviewed about my experiences as a freelancer for the Institute’s study.]

A snapshot of the global gig work marketplace, by the Oxford Internet Institute

Data from Intuit, based in Mountain View, California, and Emergent Research, located in Lafayette, California, expects a doubling of on-demand workers in the U.S. by 2021. While gig work offers a number of benefits, including flexible work hours and diverse income streams, it can also lead to exploitation. Low wages, unsteady work, and lack of benefits are just a few of the many documented impacts of gig work and the rise of on-demand platforms. Platform cooperatives seek to counter this trend by putting power, ownership, and profits in the hands of workers.

The concept of platform cooperatives has been around since at least 2014. It takes inspiration from the cooperative sector, which has played a key role in the global economy for decades. Like traditional worker cooperatives, platform cooperatives follow a core set of democratic and collective values. Member-owners of Up & Go like Cruz vote on major decisions and share in the profits.

This kind of shared ownership and profits is what makes funding a sometimes insurmountable hurdle for platform cooperatives. “Tech investors still expect outsized control and return for what they perceive to be as the risk,” says Jason Weiner, an attorney specializing in sharing economy law, social and regenerative enterprise, employee-ownership and cooperatives. “A platform co-op could look at least as risky, and offer less liquidity, so investors tend to balk on the terms that platform co-ops are offering.”

The very thing that makes platform cooperatives attractive to workers — shared control and ownership — is a turnoff to many investors. “The capital required to launch a platform co-op is as much as a traditional lean tech startup,” Weiner says. “There is a mismatch between supply of capital and demand of capital.”

Cooperative Banks and Credit Unions

Take La’zooz, an Israeli ride-hailing platform cooperative that got ample media coverage as an ethical alternative to large, venture-funded ride-hailing giants. Like many early-stage platform cooperatives, La’zooz was unable to access funding to get off the ground.

“No funds [meant] no real capacity to push development and to build a product that could be an alternative to giant startups backed with millions/billions of dollars by VCs,” says Eitan Katchka, co-founder of La’zooz, who is currently working for Commuterz, an Israel-based mobility platform.

When Uber entered the market, it was hailed for disrupting the taxi industry. But before its entrance, the taxi industry sought a profit out of necessity. If it failed to make money, it would go bankrupt. But as Vox reported this year, Uber has never made a profit in its history. Why? Because it’s able to burn through billions of venture capital dollars in a quest to grow as fast as possible. Because platform cooperatives lack this kind of funding, experts point to a need for other institutions to step in.

“We have yet to see a significant, institutional financing in this new wave of platform cooperative ideas,” says Nathan Schneider, a scholar in residence of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. “That absence is glaring.”

Schneider says cooperative banks and credit unions — the institutions that invest in traditional cooperatives — could be potential sources of credit for platform cooperatives. “People who have been interested in cooperative development and investment see cooperatives as small businesses in local communities,” Schneider says. “They tend to be not oriented into investing in the tech industry, which requires a specific tool set.” Schneider says he hopes that as awareness of platform cooperatives grows, this barrier can be overcome.

“It’s great that there are a diversity of projects trying to address financing … some more traditional, some more exploring new territory,” says Schneider. “The way we created [early cooperative] economies was from the grassroots and we have to reinvent what that looks like online.”

One funding model that is already showing promise for platform cooperatives is crowdfunding. Before the advent of crowdfunding websites, traditional cooperatives like cooperative grocery stores, cafes, and bakeries, often sought financial support from community members. “Platform co-ops could be the key that unlocks crowdfunding model,” Schneider says. “So far, in non-cooperative spaces, [equity crowdfunding] has been slow to get moving.”

Equity Crowdfunding 

Some platform cooperatives are turning to equity crowdfunding , which combines shared ownership with crowdfunding. One of the first examples of a platform cooperative using the equity crowdfunding model is Resonate, a music-streaming service based in Ireland that is in beta, but currently accepting new members to join and test the service.

“We are not ready for mass consumption, but once we get through that process of really getting things much more stable and user friendly, then we’ll be able to do more aggressive marketing campaigns,” says Peter Harris, the founder of Resonate.

Resonate co-founder Peter Harris. Image courtesy of Resonate

Harris has high hopes for Resonate. The service benefits musicians and labels — who get more revenue for songs than on existing corporate platforms like Apple Music and Spotify — as well as listeners, who can own a song after a certain number of plays. Resonate’s model means that it is co-owned by musicians, labels, and listeners. All get voting rights and a share of future dividends.

Resonate was the first project for Seedbloom, self-described as a “a seeding, equity crowdfunding, and governance platform for co-ops and ethically driven enterprises.” Victor Matekole, the founder of Seedbloom, comes from a corporate background, where he saw first-hand the problems of exploitative financing.

“Seedbloom really came out of a strong desire to fix our economy,” Matekole says. “Platform cooperatives were something that I came through by working with Resonate, and I saw it a solution for… how to direct capital out of the financial world and towards projects that are oriented towards financial and social justice.”

Seedbloom and Resonate launched their equity crowdfunding campaign in 2016. While the campaign only reached 20 percent of its goal of raising 50,000 euros, it was enough to launch the platform. Today, Resonate is live, and for five euros, users can become a member of the cooperative, with full voting rights. Once the app is out of beta mode, they also earn dividends. Two hours of listening a day for a month would cost around approximately two to four euros, with nearly all of that going to musicians themselves.

Snapshot of artists on Resonate

One of the standout — and financially viable — platform cooperatives out there is Stocksy United, a stock photo platform cooperative based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, founded by Bruce Livingstone and Brianna Wettlaufer [Stocky is a sponsor of Shareable]. Photographers may seem like they have little in common with home care workers, but they share similar challenges. Photographers are also dependent on companies like Getty Images for work, and often face challenges in getting paid.

That’s why in 2012, Livingstone and Wettlaufer decided to form Stocksy. Unlike other platform cooperatives, Stocksy received a start-up loan for one million dollars from one of its founders. What followed shows the potential of a well-designed platform cooperative.

“With that money we were able to employee key staff to have the building blocks for a strong tech company, from senior marketing to backend systems development,” says Nuno Silva, Stocksy’s vice president of product and one of its founding members. “Within eight months of being in business we were cash positive and in the black, already in the process of paying back the loan.”

In fact, by mid 2016, Stocky’s members were able to pay off the loan entirely. Today, Stocksy has nearly 1,000 contributing artists, and an annual revenue of $10.7 million in 2016. The platform cooperative model is what made it all possible.

“A platform co-op provides the foundation to run an ethical, sustainable business that’s made stronger by its member-shareholders,” says Silva. “It’s a model we hope more entrepreneurs will consider as an option and as a means to benefit the many and not just a select few.”

But not all platform cooperatives can get a large loan from a member, access foundational grants, or turn to equity crowdfunding options. That’s why many in the community are looking at alternative methods for raising capital that could spur even more growth in platform cooperatives.

Blockchain and Alternative Currencies

One model that people are exploring is the use of blockchain and alternate currencies. The blockchain is an open, distributed ledger that records transactions between parties transparently. One of the most well-known of the blockchain-based currencies is Bitcoin. Bitcoin is just one of many virtual currencies in existence.

Blockchain, as a technology, has many functions and can be used in many diverse ways. Resonate, for example, plans to use a blockchain to keep track of how often songs are streamed as a way to openly distribute revenues and assign ownership of songs to listeners. But the real potential lies in how this technology can be encoded with cooperative values, creating the potential for digital, cooperative currencies.

“In this different kind of economy we have to rethink what is money, what is the relationship of money, and how it is used as a form of exchange,” says Boyd Cohen, joint professor at the EADA Business School and the Universitat de Vic in Barcelona, Spain. “Cryptocurrency changes a lot of things in these equations, and opens up opportunities for new business models and ways of thinking about platform co-ops.”

In fact, 2017 has seen a massive spike in the amount of funds raised by what are called Initial Coin Offerings. While, the Initial Coin Offering market is incredibly speculative and prone to the same types of financial abuses as traditional markets, some advocates see potential in redirecting this technology.

“It’s important that people from the blockchain community work with people in the sharing and co-op movement, so that the things we are designing have the values of the co-op movement hard-coded into its DNA,” says Jamie Burke, the founder of Outlier Ventures, a London, United Kingdom-based investment firm with deep knowledge of cryptocurrencies.

Burke and Cohen are working with three start-ups to launch a meta platform cooperative token in the coming months. The idea behind creating a platform cooperative-specific currency or token is that it would create self-reinforcing ecosystems of financial and technical resources for emerging platform cooperatives.

One organization exemplifying this kind of self-reinforcing system is Purpose Ventures, based in Berlin, Germany. The group has created a fund that invests only in what it calls “steward-owned companies,” a term that includes, but is not exclusive to platform cooperatives. The organization doesn’t take ownership of its investments, which are all evergreen and focused on long-term, sustainable growth instead of short-term capital accumulation.

“We are totally interested in also investing in them and helping [platform co-ops],” says Armin Steuernagel, co-founder of Purpose Ventures. “We’ve invested in several platforms that are thinking of going in that direction.”

Similarly, next year Seedbloom is planning to launch 6fund, named after the six cooperative principles. 6fund is aimed at supplementing Seedbloom’s existing equity crowdfunding model by providing platform cooperatives access to long-term, sustainable capital sources.

“How can we take some of the funding that comes through, and take portions of that money and constantly circulate it through new projects,” says Seedbloom’s Matekole. “There is a desire and need for a vehicle in which large cooperatives can actually invest and spread risk of investment across projects.”

Seedbloom hopes to make 6Fund a viable product for pension funds and other institutions to invest in, tapping into an even greater capital resources for platform cooperatives.

“You’re not going to see the crazy returns like the high-tech startups,” says Matekole. “But what I hope that we see from platform co-ops are investments that are stable, and in the end … more ethical.”

Support from Unions

Unions are also increasingly playing an important role in supporting platform cooperatives, since labor rights are essential to both. In California, United Health Workers West — a 150,000-member strong union — helped nurses launch the NursesCan Cooperative, a platform cooperative for licensed vocational nurses to provide on-demand care options for health care providers.

While United Healthcare Workers West did not directly invest in the cooperative, it did play an important role in helping provide legal support and building connections with potential employers. United Healthcare Workers West hopes this model is replicated around the U.S.

NursesCan Cooperative’s members. Photo courtesy of UHW-West

“There are deep and powerful connection between democratic workplaces and what unions organize around,” says Ra Criscitiello, research coordinator at United Healthcare Workers West. “I hope that both unions and workers co-ops can start to see the value in partnering more.”

The platform cooperative movement has grown in leaps and bounds in the past few years. The network and support that aspiring platform cooperatives have today is greater than ever before. In the meantime, venture capitalist money is not as plentiful as it was just a few years ago, which could stem the tide of venture-backed start-ups, creating an opening for platform cooperatives to enter the market.

While there still aren’t many functional platform cooperative alternatives to various gig economy platforms, change is in the air. Up & Go, Resonate, Stocksy, and NursesCan show that platform cooperatives are making their way into many sectors of the economy, from home care to health care.

Cruz and her colleagues at Brightly Cleaning Cooperative hope that the opportunities they’ve gotten by joining Up & Go can help other gig workers facing exploitative practices. “We are so lucky to be part of Up & Go,” Cruz says. “It’s a backbone that supports us and protects us. We really want to provide this opportunity to other workers as well.”

Header image of Up & Go’s launch event courtesy of The Center for Family Life.

The post How Innovative Funding Models Could Usher in a New Era of Worker-Owned Platform Cooperatives appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Nithin Coca: With all the controversy engulfing the global ride-hailing giant Uber, there is more attention on alternative platforms that meet people’s transportation needs and don’t have the company’s ethical baggage. One of the newest and most promising alternatives is LibreTaxi, founded by Roman Pushkin, a San Francisco-based developer and architect with a decade of experience in the technology sector.

LibreTaxi is a completely open-source project, meaning that developers can take the source code and adapt it for local uses. Since it was launched in Dec. 2016, the app, which can be used to find rides across the globe, has grown to 20,000 users. The highest use so far is in Taiwan, Iran, and Russia.

Currently, it is a simple app that can be downloaded and used on the messaging platform Telegram. Through its easy-to-use bot, riders and drivers are directly connected and negotiate prices independently of LibreTaxi, and pay fares in cash. We talked with Pushkin about LibreTaxi, its origins, and how it fits into the larger, ride-hailing and ride-sharing ecosystem.

Nithin Coca: Where did the idea for LibreTaxi originate from? Why did you decide to make it an open-source project?

Roman Pushkin: The idea came from where I was born, in Russia, in a village located far from any big city. There, there were no services like Uber. There was just this list, a piece of paper with phone numbers, and when people were looking for a ride, they were just calling by each number from this list. It was not very convenient, so we tried to improve it with computers. Initially we used Skype chat for this purpose. It worked, but it was not very convenient either – when someone needs a ride you have to scan through all of the messages — where you go, your location, etc.

Public chat is not solving this problems efficiency — it works, but not that great. So I started looking for a way to create application for this purpose. The aim was to create something like Uber, but open source, and free for everyone. Hence, LibreTaxi. LibreTaxi was originally created for rural areas – but also works in cities too.

LibreTaxi is open source because people from India, North and South America, China, from Russia, from any part of the world should be able to use it and customize it.

How is LibreTaxi different from Uber and Lyft?

There are three main differences. The first thing — LibreTaxi is free for drivers. Second,  anyone can register, and anyone can become a driver in just one minute. And the third difference, there’s no built in payment system, so passengers have to pay drivers with cash.

Actually, the aim of LibreTaxi is not to compete with Uber directly. If someone tries to build an application to compete with Uber, this battle is lost already. They spend a lot of money on app development and promotion in different countries.

LibreTaxi is different, and its target is different audiences. For example, in many Latino Communities across the U.S., there are people who are not eligible to work in the U.S., so they can’t drive for Uber. Also, in those communities, many people have outdated vehicles, which are more than 10 years old, so Uber won’t accept you as a driver. There’s no such problem with LibreTaxi. It will be much easier to use LibreTaxi inside that community, to give rides to people you already know. LibreTaxi has the same concept as Uber, but in reality, it is completely different.

We’re targeting different people, people who already know who their passengers are, who their drivers are, and we hope that LibreTaxi can help their own community.

What is your growth strategy going forward? How can you achieve financial stability while also meeting user needs?

Right now, I am working on this only when I have time, in evenings, weekends, but I am planning to work on this full-time. For this, LibreTaxi needs to be more organized.

The very first thing is that we are planning to do create a nonprofit organization for LibreTaxi, because I want people to know that this service is absolutely free, and will stay that way. We are not going to charge drivers and cut their earnings like Uber does. Second thing is that the nonprofit can help us make this application more user friendly, safer, and help us polish some rough edges. Our financial model will be based on donations. We’re not looking to make a lot of money, and we’re not going to be a middleman between passengers and drivers.

Right now, I am paying for all the servers out of my pocket. I can afford that for now, but for the future, if we reach one million users, as is our goal in the next two or three years, we may need more servers than we have now.

Actually, the name LibreTaxi is inspired by LibreOffice, which is a free and open source replacement for Microsoft Office, and they are our model. They are a nonprofit that takes donations, and they’ve grown to 75 million users, and they expect it to be 200 million users by 2020.

Another thing we are considering is to add Blockchain technology to LibreTaxi. Not sure how this will be implemented, as Blockchain is something very new, and we are very early in this game, but, for example, we could enable payments via Bitcoin.

Have the recent, seemingly non-stop headlines about Uber brought more attention, or more users, to LibreTaxi?

Partially, the success, so far, of LibreTaxi was possible because of these events that happened to Uber. But only partially, because LibreTaxi is not the same as Uber. I am working on this application alone, by myself, so it’s not possible to build a shiny app, with all these features like Uber.

How many users do you have? Can Shareable readers download LibreTaxi and expect to find rides (or riders) easily?

It is very [easy] to install the application — just need to install Telegram, and then you can find LibreTaxi, or you can go to our website and follow the instructions.

As for finding rides, we have little bit more than 20,000 users worldwide at the moment, a good number for a two-month-old project. If you look for a ride in areas like Taiwan, or Iran, or Moscow, I think it is possible to find a ride. But if you are looking in other cities, maybe you’ll find a ride, or maybe you won’t.

Even if you can’t find a ride, I hope your readers will be interested in this application because they can use it for their own communities, their own small cities, and even for their own buildings. For example, I live in a complex with 100 apartments, and I’ve listed an advertisement on the wall, where people usually walk by. Now, sometimes I give rides to my neighbors, so you can use this application right now and even try it in your building, or family.

What’s the next step for LibreTaxi, and how do you plan to grow in the future? Do you have a financial plan to ensure both a better product, and sustainability?

Our plan for this year is to add more languages. We’ve already translated the application to 17 languages, and the website is translated to 12 languages. By adding more languages, we hope to reach more people in these countries.

The next step is for us to listen to people about what they need, expect, and see in the application. We want to deliver features they would like to see. Right now, LibreTaxi is something very fresh and it has minimal functionality.

Users are the key to our growth. That’s why we ask, if they like this application, please spread the news — share it in Facebook, public chat channels, etc. It is very important because we do not have any budget for promoting LibreTaxi.

I’m constantly looking for feedback, connections, so if anyone is interested in talking to me, they can find my email on GitHub. Feel free to reach out and tell me about your community, about transportation problems you have, and I’ll try to help you and learn something new from you.

Header photo of traffic in Bangkok, Thailand, by Connor Williams via unsplash

The post LibreTaxi’s Roman Pushkin on Why He Made a Free, Open-Source Alternative to Uber and Lyft appeared first on P2P Foundation.

In the years since, Taiwan has seen dramatic changes. Policymakers have been using open-source tools, including Pol.is, to crowdsource feedback for policies on ride-hailing apps, among other things. Another social movement, driven by the same tools and decentralized organizing methods as the Sunflower Movement, resulted in the country deciding to shut down all of its nuclear power plants by 2025.

With the election of President Tsai Ing-wen last year — a social progressive who vowed a “new era” of democracy — Taiwan has become a leader in tech policy and transparency. In fact, one of the leaders of the digital movement, Audrey Tang, was appointed head of a new council on digital policy, and describes herself as a “hacker minister.”

At the forefront of Taiwan’s digital movement is the unique, open-source community called g0v. Initially they came to prominence for creating alternative versions of Taiwanese Government websites, replacing the .gov with a .g0v and making data about ministries, budgets, and finances more transparent to Taiwanese citizens.

We had an offline and online discussion with several members of the g0v community to learn more about how they operate, their unique projects, and how they plan to help other communities across Asia and the world better build powerful, digital-driven social movements.

Note: Chihao Yo, Yun-Chen Chien, and two other members of g0v participated in this conversation, but emphasized that they do not, themselves speak for, or represent g0v, keeping in line with the values of the community. More on this below.

Can you tell us a bit about how g0v operates — your governance structure, how decisions are made, and how you communicate within your network?

First of all, g0v does not have a “governance” structure. We consider ourselves as a community rather than an organization. Like other open-source tech communities, we believe everyone is equal to participate in the community. We welcome every citizen to join any projects since all our projects are all open online, including codes, documents, videos, and images, etc.

So how does it work? Online, we throw up our projects ideas, discuss thoughts, and look for collaboration in our Facebook group, our Slack group, our IRC channel, our hackpad workspace and our GitHub repository. Offline, we host at least one hackathon every two months, around 120 participants each time, and also host two international summits to connect to the global civic tech hackers.

We are a multi-centered community, which means anyone can initiate any projects and host hackathons on any topics in any forms. We believe in openness and collaboration. Every Facebook fan page posts will be reviewed by the community before released. Any lecture invitation will be send to a Google group, and the lecture slides will be open licensed.

This is to address this, and all the questions raised in this pad, that principle #0 of the g0v community is that no one is or represents the g0v community. I personally believe that this principle is key in keeping this community open and egalitarian.

What would you consider some of your biggest, or more meaningful achievements?

G0v’s “being here” for the past years and its evolution is very meaningful to me and, hopefully, the larger Taiwanese society. I think it has restored faith in people about their capacity to adapt and bring about change by empowering them to self-organize and “make things happen.”

What are some of the most exciting, or most promising, projects that you are working on right now?

chihao: I’m working on a project called “dipSpace.” It is an open-source content management system for contemporary journalism. Some other exciting g0v projects include No More Silence, Laweasyread, Taiglme. You can see them all here: http://g0v.tw/en-US/project-from-registry.html.

Though g0v is probably leading in innovations, it seems like other organizations with similar goals are emerging elsewhere in Asia. Can you tell me if, and how you’re working with activists and hackers in other countries?

The g0v community has a good relationship with civic hackers around the globe, not limited in Asia, for example, Code for America and mysociety in the U.K. g0v also participates in Open Government Partnership in Paris in 2016, sharing civic tech tools and experience in open government. There are also always foreign participants in our hackathon.

Speaking of Asia, g0v summits have invited speakers from South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Myanmar etc. g0v.news also aims to cover more civic tech stories in Asia in both English and Chinese, for example, fellowships in Japan and Pakistan and joint website to dismiss President Park [Geun-hye] in South Korea.

Other ongoing projects include cyber-security workshops for NGO workers in Asia, one long-stay staff from Malaysia, and the Civic Tech Fest in September.

Are there any lessons g0v can offer the platform co-op movement in terms of collaboratively organizing/mobilizing large groups of people?

Be open. Release early, release often. Troll hugging. We don’t organize people. We just encourage everyone to take actions. We create the atmosphere and platform that everybody can contribute something by clear and open documentation on project process, what kind of help the project needs. g0v’s motto is, “Don’t ask why nobody did this, admit you are the nobody first.” When you start to do something good and influential, people will join you. If they feel accepted and accomplishment, they will continue to contribute their knowledge and passion. After all, we are all citizens believing in using technology to better democracy and society.

Cross-posted from Shareable.

All photos courtesy of g0v

The post Meet g0v, the Open-source, Digital Community Transforming Democracy in Taiwan appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Nithin Coca: We know about open-source software and hardware, but can the concept – decentralized development and open collaboration for the common good – be expanded to address other global challenges? The nonprofit OpenSourceSeeds based in the German town of Marburg has just launched a licensing process for open-source seeds, to create a new repository of genetic material that can be accessed by farmers around the world, in perpetuity.

We spoke with one of the leaders of this initiative, Dr. Johannes Kotschi, to learn more about exactly how the open source model was adapted for seeds, and why this initiative is so important in an era of increasing global concentration of power in the agriculture industry.

Can you tell me a bit about the open-source seeds movement in Germany as well as around the globe? How big is it, is it growing, and who are the members?

Open Source Seeds (OSS) is a newly created organization, and we had our launch on the 26th of April in Berlin. We launched with a tomato called Sunviva. A tomato is quite a good symbol – everybody likes tomatoes, and everyone can grow a tomato. From all over in Germany we got requests from gardeners, plant breeders, from open-source activists for our open source tomato.

We are an offspring of AGRECOL, [which] is about 30 years old and focuses on sustainable and organic agriculture – mainly in the developing world. Within AGRECOL we started working on open source seeds about five years ago – first as a small working group.

There is a similar initiative in the United States – the Open Source Seeds Initiative, based in Wisconsin – but they are not licensing, they are giving a pledge to varieties. We have different strategies, we, OSS, pursue the legal strategy, and they pursue the ethical strategy, but we are working closely together.

How did the idea for creating open-source seed licensing emerge? Can you tell me about the process that led to the first licensed, open-source seeds? Were there any roadblocks or challenges you had to deal with?

We were inspired by persons – Elinor Ostrom, an American sociologist who received the Nobel Prize for Economics for her finding that commons can be used in a sustainable way. Refuted the idea of the Tragedy of the Commons – in which common resources overused by the public and thus have to private property, the famous hypothesis given by a scientist, [Garrett] Hardin.

She said no, there are clear rules to managing the commons – they are managed sustainably, and she defined seven principals. The other inspiration was a computer scientist Richard Stallman…who created the open source idea, and the general public license.

Our idea was to develop a similar something, like a Creative Commons license, but seeds do not fall under copyright, seeds fall under seed laws. So we had to find another legal area to design a license.

So we defined a license agreement that falls under German Civil Law, as a contract that is pre-written for use by a single party, not individually negotiated. We do not violate seed laws, they exist, our license is supplementary to the seed laws – and this license protects seeds against patents, and against plant variety protection.

The license, in a sense, has the main principals of a creative commons license. The whole process took us roughly a year, mainly due to the fact that we had little funds, mainly had to rely on pro-bono contributions from lawyers.

Why is having a special license with definable rights so important to protecting seeds and promoting diversity in global agriculture?

Our license is quite radical. It says that if a seed is licensed, this seed, and all further developments and modifications [of that seed] fall under this license. So this means you start a chain of contracts – if the person who has got the seed is giving further developments of this seed to a third person, he becomes a licenser, which means he or she is licensing a new variety

In theory, this can be indefinite. There is no way back to private domain. [Our license] does not allow any seed company to take the seed, use it for breeding, and put a patent on it.You can work with is, you can earn your money with it, but you have no exclusivity.

This is important because we are living in a time of not only privatization of genetic resources, but the monopolization of genetic resources. Big companies, they are interested in producing few varieties and extending and distributing these varieties for large acreages – the larger the acreage, the larger their return through royalties.

But what we need is diversity in production, diversity in genetic resources, and we need diversity in breeders. It is a danger if you are depending on a few companies – because they tend towards uniformity, their energy for creating innovation is decreasing because competition is getting less and less. They are also producing variety that do not respond to the needs we have. For example, these big seed companies do not provide what is needed for adaptation to climate change.

Monsanto and Bayer, for example, you will have a concentration of a company which has dominating position in producing pesticides and herbicides, and dominating the seed sector – they will link these two businesses together. They will produce seeds that correspondent with sales of agrochemicals. But in agriculture we need less pesticides, more agroecology. We need genetic resources and plants that fight pest and diseases by resistance, not by chemicals.

Can you tell me a bit about what it means if a farmer uses an open-source seed rather than a private, or corporate alternative?

License, first all of all says, there is no limitation to the use of this seed by the farmer. The only limitation is to refrain from privatization. Commercial seeds have become extremely costly, but the other point which is more important, the characteristics of a variety are not fully meeting the needs farmers have today.

And this applies, in particular, to small farmers in the world who are not able to pay the high costs of seeds for seeds from the big companies, or who may not need the varieties which are offered.

How can open source licenses for seeds help stem, or shift, the growing concentration of power in a few large mega-corporations?

Our initiative is a small initiative which shows an alternative to the existing system, which aims to establish a second column of publicly owned seeds, in coexistence with private seed sector. I hope that over time that this column will grow and be a real alternative for farmers and ultimately, also consumers. To have a choice about what you grow, and what you eat. If you go on observing the market concentration, you are getting more and more dependent on what is dictated by the private sector.

Of course, in the first step, OSS has mainly a political impact. We are not yet in a position to say we have a fully fledged public domain on seeds. There is not yet a real choice – this choice may develop, but at present we are just starting, and showing this as a mutual alternative to the existing system.

How do you plan to expand the number of open-source seeds? What is your strategy going forward to engage those working in all facets of the agriculture sector?

We are now in the first stage of putting the idea into practice. This includes working together with plant breeders, regulating seed transfers from plant breeders to seed producers, and from producers to traders while ensuring that the chain of contracts is not violated. These are practical and legal questions, not so difficult to answer, but it has to be done.

Our big challenge will be to extend the idea. But it will be an important task to get breeders to provide newly developed varieties to our initiative – and we hope that this will grow the number of open source licensed varieties, satisfactorily.

Our license has stimulated initiatives in other sectors – there is for instance – the World Beekeeping Association – they have on their annual meeting decided to use our open source license and adapting it for bees, and doing open source licensing for bees. Another initiative is thinking about open source licensing of microorganisms, and there’s a third one which explores possibilities of using open source licensing for animal genetic resources – farm animals.

Lastly, we need people to help us spread the idea. As we are a nonprofit organization, we are happy to receive donations, and as far as the breeding community is concerned – we are interested in requests from plant breeders to license their newly developed breeds. Our license is under German law, but it is valid in most countries.

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