Xavier, I think this is the second email you are getting from me today, but I just saw the note below and I had to respond - I love your social contract and all its values and principles - that is fantastic.
I'm so glad that you have found Bettermeans, and I'm sorry that it has taken so long to respond, unfortunately Shereef has been sick and I have been working hard to be responsive to everyone, but it has been a wild week. I understand that us not being Open Source is a barrier for you. We struggled a lot with this questions and we settled on this: We're not open source, because we haven't figured out a business model that sustains us and keeps our software open source. The moment we do, we will open source the software. Meanwhile, we are focused on opening up the org structures. If folks are passionate about opening up the bettermeans source, they can join us, and help us figure out how to do it, and pay our bills. We remain, however, huge advocates for transparency. So while our code is not FOSS, it is shared code. Anybody who joins us, and agrees to the open enterprise model, can see the code. On another note, our main product is the Open Enterprise Governance Model. This is where a ton of the innovation and tweaking went, and that's what we're passionate about ultimately, and we've chosen to license that as creative commons because it furthers our mission for everyone to run this way. The software is just one strategy of getting it out there. If you are interested in joining us in our work that would be fantastic! We are always looking for like-minded folks to collaborate with. My understanding (as the not as technical person) is that getting started will take some code orientation, which we may have to wait on Shereef for. However I'd love to speak with you and hear about your interest, and I can tell you a bit more about our team and the direction we are going in. I look forward to being in touch, Adele ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Shereef Bishay <[email protected]> Date: Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 5:33 PM Subject: Fwd: bettermeans and Farsides To: [email protected] ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Xavier Antoviaque <[email protected]> Date: Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 9:37 AM Subject: Re: bettermeans and Farsides To: [email protected] Cc: bar <[email protected]> Hi Shereef, Nice to hear from you ! I have to say I'm really impressed by what I have seen of your work so far, BetterMeans looks really good and very well thought - if I understand correctly, you're eating your own dogfood, and this shows a lot in my first tests. I'm currently evaluating it, and hopefully others from our project will join me in the test - you're really close to the model we have adopted (you can read more about it here <http://farsides.com/wiki/Social_Contract> and there<http://farsides.com/wiki/Portal:Company>), it's very nice to see that you are working so hard on making this model more accessible. If you want, I'll let you know my impressions as I move forward with the tests - I could even contribute some directly on one of your workflows if you want, it would be a nice way to get to know you guys better. Ah - just one thing. The fact that BetterMeans is not free software is the biggest blocker I've seen so far to the adoption of it for our project. I imagine your understand the reasons - it's contradictory for a free software project to base its communication tools on proprietary software... But I've read on opensource.com that you were looking for a way to be able to open the code ? Would be happy to help you if I can there. In any case, nice to meet you - and very glad that you're doing this. Xavier. PS: CC'ing Farsides' mailing-list, as I think you'll understand our need for transparency ;p On Thu, 2010-11-11 at 09:11 -0800, [email protected] wrote: Hey Xavier, I saw that you just signed up for our site. Thanks for trying us out. We've been building bettermeans and the open enterprise model for almost two years now, and we're just beginning to share it with a wider audience. This is more than a business for us, we're pretty serious about making a positive shift in the world, and need all the help we can get. Needless to say, we are psyched to see how you will be using it, and would love your feedback/ideas/suggestions. Please call or write if you have any feedback, or if there's anything that's unclear that you need help with. Thanks! shereef bishay 415.568.5119 p.s. if you run into any bugs, or have a new feature that you think we should implement, you can directly add it on our platform workstream here: http://bettermeans.com/projects/platform/dashboard ------------------------------ Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who are alive. -- bettermeans.com open, democratic, decentralized social enterprise management -- Adele Burnes Core Team, BetterMeans (www.bettermeans.com) Tel: (510) 457- 1670 Email: [email protected] <[email protected]> Skype: adelegb
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