Musicians Algorithmically Generate Every Possible Melody, Release Them to Public Domain Samantha—Cole

Damien Riehl and Noah Rubin generated and saved every possible melody to a hard drive, then turned it back around to the commons.

Vice
Musicians Algorithmically Generate Every Possible Melody, Release Them to Public Domain

Samantha Cole

Daniel Oberhaus — Meet the Anarchists Making Their Own Medicine

“So yeah, we are encouraging people to break the law,” Laufer added. “If you're going to die and you're being denied the medicine that can save you, would you rather break the law and live, or be a good upstanding citizen and a corpse?”

Power to the people!

Motherboard
Meet the Anarchists Making Their Own Medicine

Daniel Oberhaus
ht Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism

Diane Coyle — Free innovation

I polished off Eric von Hippel’s Free Innovation on my Washington trip. It’s an interesting, short book looking at the viability and character of innovation by individuals – alone or co-operating in communities. It is free in two senses: the work involved is not paid; and the innovations – or at least their design – is not charged for, although it may subsequently be commercialised by the inventors or by other businesses. The viability of free innovation has been greatly extended by digital technology and the internet: there is more accessible useful information, it is easier and cheaper to co-ordinate among a group. The diffusion of innovations is also easier, although rarely as extensive as when a commercial business takes them up and markets them. In fact, von Hippel argues that there are some strong complementarities between free innovation and commercial vendors, as the latter can bring the scale economies of production and marketing, while the former can enhance the use case, the complementary know-how, that increase the value of whatever it is....

The Enlightened Economist
Free innovation
Diane Coyle | freelance economist and a former advisor to the UK Treasury. She is a member of the UK Competition Commission and is acting Chairman of the BBC Trust, the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation

Scott Adams — Free College (online)

Interesting proposal. 

Open source is the way to go, but other things are needed to make it work — interaction and official accredition. 

The buzz work these days is "platform."

Scott Adams Blog
Free College (online)

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert®

Source — The People and Tech Behind the Panama Papers – Interview with Mar Cabra, ICIJ Data & Research

If you are into the nuts and bolts.

Source
The People and Tech Behind the Panama Papers
Interview with Mar Cabra, head of the Data & Research Unit at ICIJ

Michel Bauwens — 10 Open Source Policies for a Commons-Based Society

Michel Bauwens is the founder of the P2P Foundation and former advisor to the goverment of Ecuador for a project to “remake the roots of Ecuador’s economy, setting off a transition into a society of free and open knowledge.” With a team of researchers and through a partipatory process involving local civic actors and global commoners, the FLOK project produced a generic transition plan to a commons society with more than 15 specific policy and legislative plans.

Mira Luna culled from Bauwens his top recommendations of government policies to encourage open source development and the commons. While government policy usually sides with proprietary knowledge in the public sector, there is a huge opportunity to use goverments as a ally, supporter and guardian of the commons. To learn more and get involved, check out the P2P Foundation, OpenSource.com, Open Mind and the Open Source Initiative.…

Shareable
10 Open Source Policies for a Commons-Based SocietyMichel Bauwens

Glynn Moody — The FLOK Society Project: Making The Good Life Possible Through Good Knowledge

One of the most striking and important developments in the world of technology over the last two decades or so has been the rise of an alternative mode of production that is open, collaborative and global. This began in the world of software, with Richard Stallman's GNU project, but has now been extended to the realms of text, data, science and hardware, among others. The free sharing of information to form a kind of digital commons, which lies at the heart of these projects, has also been applied to business, albeit in the modified form of collaborative consumption -- things like Airbnb. These different manifestations of fundamentally similar ideas have sprung up in a largely uncoordinated way, but an interesting question is whether they could be drawn together into a unified approach, applied to a whole country, say. That's what Ecuador's FLOK Society (original in Spanish) has been exploring. "FLOK" is derived from "free", "libre" and "open knowledge"; here's how David Bollier, an expert on the commons, describes the project…

TechDirt

The FLOK Society Project: Making The Good Life Possible Through Good Knowledge

Glynn Moody

Andrew Smith — Linux is the quiet revolution that will leave Microsoft eating dust

Linux, the most widely used open source operating system in the world, has scored a major publicity coup in the revelation that it is used on 94% of the world’s top 500 supercomputers. 

Every operating system has technical issues and Linux has not been faultless. But some key technological milestones have been passed in recent years that have made it possible for Linux to quietly assert dominance in the fight for popularity and custom. 

Apart from the fact that it is free and has been since its creation in 1991 by Linus Torvalds, Linux has many technological advantages that mean other operating systems just can’t beat it.

Open source rules!

The Conversation via Raw Story
Linux is the quiet revolution that will leave Microsoft eating dust
Andrew Smith, The Open University

Nafeez Ahmed — Ex-CIA Spy: The Open Source Revolution Is Coming and It Will Conquer the 1%

This is one of the most revolutionary posts I have ever encountered, especially at this level of military and intelligence credibility. Astonishing, really.

Alternet
Ex-CIA Spy: The Open Source Revolution Is Coming and It Will Conquer the 1%
Nafeez Ahmed

AFP — Tesla Motors turns all its patents over to the open source movement

Electric carmaker Tesla announced Thursday it was giving up its patents to “the open source movement” to help spur electric vehicle technology.

The unusual move comes with Tesla enjoying huge success, but against a backdrop of multiplying legal squabbles among technology firms over patents.

“All our patents belong to you,” Tesla chief executive Elon Musk said in a blog post.

“Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology.”

Musk, an entrepreneur who made a fortune with the PayPal online payment service and also heads the space travel firm Space X, said he does not want patents to halt growth of an important environmental technology.

The Raw Story
Tesla Motors turns all its patents over to the open source movement
Agence France-Presse

Most Common Way To Entice People To Explore Their Own Options .. Is An Opportunity To Destroy Other People's Options?

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)



In email from Warren Mosler, this part was especially entertaining;

"[Auto] Manufacturers are experienced at gaming the [vehicles sold] numbers."

Imagine where we'd be if Gutenberg hadn't made the illegal move of inventing printing. Or what if permanent Copy/Patent-Right had gone back to the original AdaptiveRight and OpenSource of evolution - faster than it already is?

Seeing that much effort to avoid sharing data here in a mature USA industry sector makes one appreciate how mal-adaptive policy adaptive rate remains in less coordinated industries (e.g., Wall St.) and economies.

Plus, it makes you realize how vast the untapped potential of human nation-aggregates already is! Our dynamic Output Gap is always far bigger than the static output gap we already recognize.

And, war remains the most reliable way to recruit return-on-coordination?

Wait a minute. The easiest way to entice people to explore their own options are opportunities to destroy other people's options? Go figure!

BMHOTK!

What happened to "WE came. WE saw. WE made a more perfect union?" :(

The eventual epitaph of the USA may someday feature words from an old folk song, appropriately connected to un-prosecuted fraud. (Shades of banksters with loyal, misguided accomplices!)

Hang down your head dumb electorate,

hand down your head and die,

Hang down your head dumb electorate,

poor souls, you've gone bye-bye. 

Met ourselves in the mirror, there we took our lives,

met ourselves in the mirror, shot ourselves in the foot. 

(repeat Chorus) 

This time next context, reckon we could'a still been here,

'stead of just a past tense, swinging from an old memory; 

Met ourselves in the mirror, shot ourselves in the foot,

hadn't been for orthodox, we'd still be here with even more diversity.

Our old image in the mirror, didn't wanna see no change,

hadn't been for fixation on stasis, we'd still be dynamic and free.

(With apologies to Laura Grandchild)

Brett Scott — LSFA: Building a financial hackerspace in 3 phases

 Note: "Hacking" has acquired the sense of breaking into a cybersystem access data. The actual meaning is to alter the code (rules, structure) of an existing system to make it perform better.

Over the last 5 years I’ve been working on ways to break down the oppressive wall of mystique that shrouds global finance, and to experiment with methods of 'hacking' financial systems. At first this took the form of my own ‘gonzo’ anthropological explorations of the world of derivatives trading. It has since merged into me working with campaign groups like ActionAid, MoveYourMoneyUK and the World Development Movement, and getting involved in the alternative finance community via initiatives like the Finance Innovation Lab.

In 2013, whilst writing The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance, I decided to start developing an experiential workshop series to help London's diverse array of activists, artists and alternative economists grapple with the financial sector in their midst. I decided to call this London School of Financial Activism (LSFA)....

Suitpossum: Post-Crisis Adventures in Financial Subversion

LSFA: Building a financial hackerspace in 3 phases
Brett Scott

The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money

Anarchic Adventures in Arts, Activism, Anthropology and Alternative Economics

INET — Institute for New Economic Thinking Launches Project to Reform Undergraduate Syllabus

In response to widespread discontent among students, employers, and university teachers, a project to create a new core curriculum for economics was launched at a seminar hosted by HM Treasury today. The CORE curriculum project, funded by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, convened the meeting, which was attended by academics, policymakers, business leaders, and students from around the world.
CORE stands for “Curriculum Open-access Resources in Economics”. The project provides a new approach to the design, content and way of teaching the core economics curriculum for undergraduates. The CORE project’s first task will be to deliver a pilot of a new first-year undergraduate “Introduction to Economics” course, to be taught in participating universities during the 2014-2015 academic year. Intermediate level Microeconomics and Macroeconomics courses are also in preparation, and will be piloted from 2015 onwards.

The CORE project will produce open access on-line resources, including e-book course material for students with interactive content including diagrams, data and videos. It is being developed by an international team of academics under the leadership of Professor Wendy Carlin of the Department of Economics, University College London, with technical support from Azim Premji University in Bangalore. The course materials, plus supporting teaching materials, will be available at no cost to participating institutions. Instructors will be free to adapt them to their local needs.

INET
Institute for New Economic Thinking Launches Project to Reform Undergraduate Syllabus

Mark Joffe — Moody's, S&P and other credit rating agencies deserve a failing grade

The traditional credit rating business is broken. Perhaps there is a way to use open source models to fix it.

The Guardian (UK)
Moody's, S&P and other credit rating agencies deserve a failing grade
Mark Joffe

Marcin Jakubowski — The Open Source Economy

Marcin Jakubowski - The Open Source Economy | @marioninstitute

(h/t P2P Foundation)

Connecting for Change: Bioneers by the Bay conference hosted by the Marion Institute is A SOLUTIONS BASED gathering that brings together a diverse audience to create deep and positive change in their communities. The conference connects the dots between food and farming, health and healing, indigenous knowledge, women and youth leadership, green business and restorative living.

MARCIN JAKUBOWSKI - "Growing up in Poland, and having a grandparent in the concentration camps, I was aware even at an early age what happens when materials are scarce, and people fight over opportunity."

"It's what drove me to identify the 50 machines that are necessary to build a modern economy. 50 machines, from cement mixers to 3D printers to moving vehicles that will allow a working society to be created. My goal, and my daily life, is dedicated to open source these tools, so that anyone - from the remote villages in Third World countries to the rural farms of Missouri, can have access to these meaningful tools to create a better life for themselves. EVERYONE needs access to these tools - it's why we're creating them with an open source model, and with the most advanced digital and physical technology known to us today. Let's be clear...this isn't about mere survival, it's about THRIVING. The intended outcome for these tools is for 12 people working for a mere 2 hours per day, are able to sustain themselves, and take advantage of a modern economy. The goal is to build cities from the ground up, allowing for normal thriving life, while living in harmony with each other, and in harmony with the very nature of the planet we inhabit. With these tools, and with this outcome, I hope to decrease the barriers to human potential - freeing up human capital to achieve their higher goals of awareness and actualization, with an ultimate benefit of freedom for all humanity - for themselves, and for the continued growth of their spirit. And hopefully, the very planet itself."

Marcin came to the U.S. from Poland as a child. He graduated with honors from Princeton and earned his PhD in fusion physics from the University of Wisconsin before shifting direction and starting a hydroponic vegetable farm in Madison, WI. Lacking real experience in practical matters, he then began his education from scratch, and in 2003 he founded Open Source Ecology in order to make closed-loop manufacturing a reality. He began development on the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS), an open source DIY tool set of 50 different industrial machines necessary to create modern civilization from scrap metal. OSE has prototyped 8 machines and intends to build everything from an induction furnace for melting metals to an open source combine.

The Economist — Remembering Aaron Swartz: Commons man

Hounded to death.

TO CALL Aaron Swartz gifted would be to miss the point. As far as the internet was concerned, he was the gift. In 2001, aged just 14, he helped develop a new version of RSS feeds, which enable blog posts, articles and videos to be distributed easily across the web. A year later he was working with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the world wide web, and others on enhancing the internet through the Semantic Web, in which web-page contents would be structured so that the underlying data could be shared and reused across different online applications and endeavours. At the same time he was part of a team, composed of programmers like himself (albeit none quite as youthful), lawyers and policy wonks, that launchedCreative Commons, a project that simplified information-sharing through free, easy-to-use copyright licences.

Most of this he did for little or no compensation. One exception was Reddit, though he later sounded almost contrite about the riches showered on him and his colleagues by Condé Nast, the publisher of Vogue and over a dozen other prominent lifestyle magazines, which bought the popular social news site in 2006. In any case, he wasn't a good fit for corporate life, he said, and left a few months later—or, depending on whom you talk to, was asked to leave. But the cash did let him focus on his relentless struggle to liberate data for online masses to enjoy for free....

Then the tale descends into darkness as government wields its coercive power to advance and protect enclosure.

The irony is that JSTOR has decided to open its archives to free online access (but not download) through Register & Read.

The Economist
Remembering Aaron Swartz: Commons man
G.F. | Seattle And M.G. | San Francisco

Izabella Kaminska — Why a “free” market changes everything

On the evolution of capitalism beyond capitalism. One of Izzy's best yet.

The Financial Times | FT Alphaville
Why a “free” market changes everything
Izabella Kaminska
(h/t Andy Blatchford via FB)

See also:

OuiShare — Creative Community For The Collaborative Economy
Yes, the collaborative economy is destroying jobs. So what’s next?
Stanislas Jourdan

Solidarity Economics

Defining Solidarity Economics

But what exactly is this "solidarity economy approach"? For some theorists of the movement, it begins with a redefinition of economic space itself. The dominant neoclassical story paints the economy as a singular space in which market actors (firms or individuals) seek to maximize their gain in a context of scarce resources. These actors play out their profit-seeking dramas on a stage wholly defined by the dynamics of the market and the state. Countering this narrow approach, solidarity economics embraces a plural and cultural view of the economy as a complex space of social relationship in which individuals, communities, and organizations generate livelihoods through many different means and with many different motivations and aspirations—not just the maximization of individual gain. The economic activity validated by neoclassical economists represents, in this view, only a tiny fraction of human efforts to meet needs and fulfill desires.

What really sustains us when the factories shut down, when the floodwaters rise, or when the paycheck is not enough? In the face of failures of market and state, we often survive by self-organized relationships of care, cooperation, and community. Despite the ways in which capitalist culture generates and mobilizes a drive toward competition and selfishness, basic practices of human solidarity remain the foundation upon which society and community are built. Capitalism's dominance may, in fact, derive in no small part from its ability to co-opt and colonize these relationships of cooperation and mutual aid....

At its core, solidarity economics rejects one-size-fits-all solutions and singular economic blueprints, embracing instead a view that economic and social development should occur from the bottom up, diversely and creatively crafted by those who are most affected. As Marcos Arruda of the Brazilian Solidarity Economy Network stated at the World Social Forum in 2004, "a solidarity economy does not arise from thinkers or ideas; it is the outcome of the concrete historical struggle of the human being to live and to develop him/herself as an individual and a collective. 

Similarly, contrasting the solidarity economy approach to historical visions of the "cooperative commonwealth," Henri de Roche noted that "the old cooperativism was a utopia in search of its practice and the new cooperativism is a practice in search of its utopia." Unlike many alternative economic projects that have come before, solidarity economics does not seek to build a singular model of how the economy should be structured, but rather pursues a dynamic process of economic organizing in which organizations, communities, and social movements work to identify, strengthen, connect, and create democratic and liberatory means of meeting their needs.

Success will only emerge as a product of organization and struggle. "Innovative practices at the micro level can only be viable and structurally effective for social change," said Arruda, "if they interweave with one another to form always-broader collaborative networks and solidarity chains of production-finance-distribution-consumption-education-communication."

This is, perhaps, the heart of solidarity economics—the process of networking diverse structures that share common values in ways that strengthen each. Mapping out the economic terrain in terms of "chains of solidarity production," organizers can build relationships of mutual aid and exchange between initiatives that increase their collective viability. At the same time, building relationships between solidarity-based enterprises and larger social movements builds increased support for the solidarity economy while allowing the movements to meet some of the basic needs of their participants, demonstrate viable alternatives, and thus increase the power and scope of their transformative work.

Dollars & Sense — Real World Economics
Other Economies are Possible!

Organizing toward an economy of cooperation and solidarity

Ethan Miller

Joel Dietz — How to Build a Vibrant Open Source Community

One of the important principles when considering open source projects and related communities is there needs to be an ecosystem around the project for the community to thrive. This is to recognize the fact that sharing is hard work, and that to share things well requires an additional degree of discipline that is often not present in other contexts. Although most of these guidelines are derived from experience in the software world, they're applicable in many other places.

Shareable — Community
How to Build a Vibrant Open Source Community
Joel Dietz

Cat Johnson — The Rise of the Sharing Communities

“To me, the question is not so much about whether access is better than ownership,” says Ouishare co-founder Antonon Leonard. “It's about people. It's a change in culture. People have just started to realize that they have amazing opportunities to express themselves, be their own bosses, and start a new life.”

Leonard stresses that community “is everything” and that Ouishare is built around people who do things, not those who say they will do things.

“We need complex solutions to solve complex world issues,” he says. “We bet that it's only by connecting people with different perspectives that we'll be able to bring sustainable change. Sharing is an amazing opportunity to build a community and you need to build a community in order to make sharing work.”

Shareable
The Rise of the Sharing Communities
Cat Johnson

Creativity is enhanced by creating information, emotion, and tool-rich  communities and environments.