Invitation to Metagovernment project (open governance)
(I hope I am posting to the proper list; it is not my intention to
spam, but to ask for help and to pique your interest.)
As you are probably aware, the Debian community has received a lot of
interest for its development of a sophisticated governance mechanism.
It can also be said that the Debian project has been a significant
contributer to the philosophy of the open source movement.
If you have an interest in the combination of governance with the open
source movement, you are invited to investigate the Metagovernment
project.
http://www.metagovernment.org
Currently, our own project is organized as a simple adhocracy, so
anyone is invited to help in whatever way you are able. When we have
an alpha of our own software, we intend to use it as our own governing
principle (with appropriate reservations about its alpha state, of
course).
http://www.metagovernment.org/wiki/Metascore
We differ from Debian's organizational methodology in that we do not
intend to have any formal leadership structure. Also, since we intend
to operate *any* governmental mechanism, people operating within our
framework will not necessarily be collaborative: they may be violently
opposed to each others' mere existence. So in our software,
individuals may be able to distinguish themselves within a community,
but no individual is given authority or power over any other.
Yes, there are thousands of criticisms you could find with the
concepts we are working with, and there are thousands of things we
simply have not thought of yet. But if you think about the project for
a little while, you may realize that it is not only desirable... but
inevitable. Online governance of some kind is coming; and now is the
chance to make it open source.
And for every criticism and unthought-of-detail... we sure could use
your help! :)
P.S. I should also note that the Metagovernment project is not by any
means alone in these ideas. If you look at articles such as:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_governance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy
you may notice that there appears to be a growing interest in the
promise of direct democracy through the thoughtful use of new
technologies. If you don't join our project, please consider
contributing to another.
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