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Out in the Open: Occupy Wall Street Reincarnated as Open Source Software

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Image: Loomio

Benjamin Knight helped run the Occupy camp in Wellington, New Zealand.

It was 2011, when the globe was dotted with camps inspired by Occupy Wall Street, that iconic protest against economic and social inequality. As part of Occupy Wellington, Knight didnt just camp out on the street. He participated in the daily General Assembly meetings, an effort to reach a consensus on a variety of protest issues and ultimately make everyones voice heard.

He loved the process when it worked. Some discussions took hours or days without ever reaching a consensus. Worse, the ultimate decisions were sometimes made without input from the whole group. Everyone has to be together at one time and in one physical place, he says. A few voices could dominate the conversation, or a small group become dominate by waiting everyone else out.

With the right web software, he thought, it should be possible to give everyone in the group a voice.

He knew there had to be a better way. With the right web software, he thought, it should be possible to give everyone in the group a voice regardless of whether they were able to attend every single physical General Assembly or not. So he and a few other activists approached a New Zealand tech startup incubator called Enspiral. We basically turned up and asked them: Hey, youre a bunch of web developers. Can you make us a tool for making non-horizontal decisions? Knight remembers. And they said: Sure, we actually need something like this for ourselves.

The result was Loomio, an open source web application for making group decisions. It may sound like a niche application, but although the Occupy movement is largely a thing of the past, Loomio is still going strong. Its uses at non-profits and small businesses like San Franciscos Adobe Books and the Newtown Ethical Lending Trust in New Zealand. And earlier this month, the team raised over $100,000 in a crowdfunding campaign to help expand development of the platform.

There are plenty of tools for having discussions online, ranging from social networks to forums to idea management tools like Spigit or even Whitehouse.gov. But there are surprisingly few tools available for group decision making. Loomio is about participating in a process that leads to a clear course of action, not just talking for the sake of talking, Knight says. Whats more, its open source. That means you can run it on your own server without the help of anyone else, including the Loomio team and you can modify it as you see fit.

Image: Loomio

The Loomio interface is simple. At the top of the screen, youll find an explanation of the issue being discussed. The rest of the screen is then split into two columns: one side is for discussing the issue, as you would on a blog post, and the other is for voting on a specific way of addressing the issue.

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Out in the Open: Occupy Wall Street Reincarnated as Open Source Software

Scientists create open source plant seeds to battle corporate shop of horrors

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April 24, 2014, 9:03 AM The open source software development model has proven itself time and time again over the years. Now scientists at the Open Source Seed Initiative have actually taken that model and used it to create seeds for crops for the benefit of everyone. Yes, they have created the first open source seeds to be used in providing plants for food.

According to NPR:

A group of scientists and food activists is launching a Thursday to change the rules that govern seeds. They're releasing 29 new varieties of crops under a new "open source pledge" that's intended to safeguard the ability of farmers, gardeners and plant breeders to share those seeds freely.

It's inspired by the example of open source software, which is freely available for anyone to use but cannot legally be converted into anyone's proprietary product.

These days, seeds are intellectual property. Some are patented as inventions. You need permission from the patent holder to use them, and you're not supposed to harvest seeds for replanting the next year.

More at NPR

What a fantastic idea! I was aware of the issues of seed control and the creation of "franken-seeds" by large companies, and how that can negatively affect farmers and consumers. But it never occurred to me that someone would basically open source seeds to promote sharing and to protect everyone from narrow-minded and profit-driven corporations. Kudos to the folks that thought this one up.

Linux Foundation and companies announce Core Infrastructure Initiative The Linux Foundation and companies such as Amazon, Google, VMWare and others have joined together to provide funding for core open source projects in the wake of the Heartbleed bug.

According to The Linux Foundation:

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Scientists create open source plant seeds to battle corporate shop of horrors

ShmooCon 2014: History of Bletchley Park and How They Invented Cryptography and the Computer Age – Video

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ShmooCon 2014: History of Bletchley Park and How They Invented Cryptography and the Computer Age
For more information visit: http://bit.ly/shmooc14 To download the video visit: http://bit.ly/shmooc14_down Playlist Shmoocon 2014: http://bit.ly/shmooc14_pl Speaker: Benjamin Gatti In the...

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ShmooCon 2014: History of Bletchley Park and How They Invented Cryptography and the Computer Age - Video

‘Assange stakeout costs UK £6mn’

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Julian Assange gives a speech from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on August 19, 2012.

The Metropolitan Police, Britain's biggest police force, has spent almost 6 million ($10million) for policing the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been holed up, new figures show.

According to the statistics obtained by London-based LBC Radio on Friday, the daily cost of monitoring the South American countrys diplomatic mission stands at nearly 9,000 ($15,000).

Baroness Jenny Jones, deputy chair of the Police and Crime Committee at the London Assembly, said the huge cost is absolute madness and "ludicrous."

"I have been asking the Met questions about this because clearly at the moment the cost is falling on the London taxpayers as a net police cost, she added.

The Met police have been stationed outside the embassy in Knightsbridge, west London, every day and night over the past 22 months ready to arrest the Australian campaigner if he steps out of the building.

Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since June 2012 and secured political asylum from Quito after he lost a legal battle against extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over the sexual abuse allegations.

It is believed that Assanges extradition to Sweden is a cover for sending him to the US, where he is wanted over the release of thousands of classified US documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on his whistleblower website.

SSM/AB

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‘Assange stakeout costs UK £6mn’

Dogecoin Founder Speaks on the Future of Cryptocurrency

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Image: Mashable, Karissa Bell

By Karissa Bell2014-04-26 21:13:19 UTC

Dogecoin, the 139-day-old cryptocurrency, held its first conference in San Francisco Friday where hundreds of the currency's devotees turned out to show their support and, of course, "tip" anyone with a QR code handy.

Dogecoin founder Jackson Palmer gave the keynote during which he discussed the currency's unexpected journey from joke to reality and the future of the cryptocurrency that in just over four months has already become the most widely traded virtual currency in the world.

Palmer, who was involved in other cryptocurrency communities at the time, officially launched dogecoin in December of 2013. The currency was quickly embraced by the Reddit community who has collectively given out $150,000 in dogecoin "tips" to other Reddit users, Palmer said.

During his keynote, the dogecoin founder said that the viability of digital currencies shouldn't depend on its value in U.S. dollars. (Currently, 1 dogecoin is about $0.0005, according to BitInfoCharts.)

"Unfortunately, a lot of communities around cryptocurrency, that's all they care about," he said. "I don't wake up every day and wonder about what my paycheck is. You shouldn't wake up every day and worry about what Bitcoin is in U.S. dollars or what Dogecoin is in U.S. dollars."

He said the eventual success of the currency will depend on its widespread adoption by both consumers and businesses.

"The key to our success is to build merchant and user redemption," he said. "We need to encourage more small businesses and big businesses to start adopting dogecoin as a form of payment. We need to build demand for people that want to pay using dogecoin."

Palmer also talked at length about dogecoin's community and the charitable reputation the currency's users have already earned.

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Dogecoin Founder Speaks on the Future of Cryptocurrency


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