Welcome to the FLO Movement

NOTE: This is a guest post from Devin Balkind, director of the Sarapis Foundation. Connect with him on Twitter @devinbalkind to discuss gift economies and the FLO movement.

The free/libre/open source (FLO) movement has created all the technologies local communities need to rebuild the world from the grassroots outward. These technologies include entire operating systems with complete suites of free software (Linux, OpenOffice, etc), web applications to construct enterprise grade inter/extra nets and website (Drupal, Joomla, Django), cloud computing server platforms (OpenStack), designs for local manufacturing of industrial equipment including tractors (Open Source Ecology), 3D printers (RepRap), and even automobiles (Local Motors).

The scale and scope of FLO technologies is not discussed by the mainstream media because FLO projects don't have marketing/pr/communications campaigns anywhere close to the scale of Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other suppliers of proprietary solutions. The lack of knowledge about FLO provides innovative nonprofit organizations with unique opportunities to leverage FLO to their advantage by (1) improving the quality and reducing the cost of their technology solutions with FLO tools, (2) increasing their organization's capacity to collaborate with stakeholders with FLO techniques, and (3) promoting their use of FLO tools and techniques within a unique social justice framework.

FLO tools and techniques will be discussed in my future blog posts, but right now here's a small glimpse of the social justice aspect of FLO.

Imagine if educators could download a complete technology system to operate a K-12 school and customize it to meet their needs with clicks of the mouse.

Imagine if farmers could access designs and build procedures for all the tools they need to manage their land.

Imagine if medical researchers could share all their data data and knowledge with each other.

Only FLO technologies can provide everyone with access to the tools and techniques they needed to create wealth and wellness for themselves and their communities. We view universal access to basic technologies as a human right and the key to empowering people to escape poverty and secure their own liberty.

Participating in the FLO movement is easy. It begins with using FLO tools like Firefox, Media Wiki (Wikipedia), Wordpress and Linux and publishing useful information about your experiences. It continues when you use FLO techniques to help FLO projects identify bugs, evaluate interest in new features and field questions in forums. Going deeper, you can contribute to project documentation, build your own extensions, and publish code to communities like Github.

As more people participate in the FLO movement, more people will be empowered by technology, enabling more people to participate in the movement, and more FLO production to take place. This cycle construct an ecosystem of FLO technologies that we can all use to produce what we want, when we want, and how we want.

A bright future is possible if we all go with the FLO. :)

--- The Sarapis Foundation is a public charity that facilitates the emergence of gift economies by supporting the development and deployment of free, libre and open source (FLO) solutions and the participatory production practices that make them possible. We believe that access to the technologies people need to create their own wealth and secure their own wellness is a human right, and that each of us can exercise this right by using and improving FLO solutions.