Paying for open content with open money

Paying for open content with open money

Posted Jul 28, 2002 12:59 UTC (Sun) by copsewood (subscriber, #199)
Parent article: On the future of LWN

If the open-source/free-software communities can revolutionise the way we do information and communications there may well be a better solution to this and many other financial problems: recognise that the way we do money is just as antiquated and outdated as the way we used to do information pre-Internet.

If LWN registers as a charity (a defined public educational purpose is sufficient and appropriate), funding this, and other open-source/free-software community sector charitable organisations using accounted pledges of goods and services becomes possible. In this event I pledge $150 worth of my services, e.g. Perl or Python programming or correspondence courses see here for further information to the first person who gives this $150 in plain old fashioned cash to LWN in exchange for this pledge, requesting my goods and services and showing me a receipt signed by LWN's published GPG key.

I can donate in this manner more easily if I have a few hours spare time than if, like most LWN readers, I am short of old-fashioned cash. LWN gets the cash it needs if anyone takes me up on this. The person who does will have access to half a day's worth of my programming, project consultancy or tutorial skills at the normal rate.

Of course as a one off this probably isn't very practical and doesn't help that much. But there are thousands of similar financial problems and opportunities out there within the community, which simply depend upon having an adequate means of keeping score . Providing a networked means of keeping score in a manner which can support this and dozens of other community projects, and in a way that can also provide myriad employment and exchange opportunities within the community, can hardly be outside the technical or organisational capacity of this community.

This leads to a rhetorical question: If the banks can create money out of nothing more than our obligation to repay when we borrow it from them, why should a community awash with creative ability and talent and advantages in being able to exchange these be unable to get on a train with spare seats because of a shortage of tickets ? Could you imagine a builder being unable to create a building because of a shortage of inches, metres or kilogrammes ? For those interested in the technical development of software architecture that supports the organisation of open networked forms of money please join the mrsdev list: subscribe mrsdev

to majordomo@copsewood.net

Richard Kay rich@copsewood.net

---

(Log in to post comments)