Project development and funding

This page was created to discuss options for funding the work Organic Design does and to clarify investor requirements. Potential investors will know whether we can work together after reading this.

After writing a summary of what we are working on in order to receive funding for our roadmap, potential investors have asked us to explain how the "IP" they would be "investing in" might be protected. This question raises a number of issues and goes to the core of what we believe sustainability is about and therefore deserves a well-considered response.

Our current funding model

First it is important to understand how Organic Design has funded development so far. Organic Design is a group of freelance contractors with skills in IT support, software development and content management with a focus on developing and extending the functionality of MediaWiki software. We have a vision of using Wiki Organisation to completely contain all of the records an organisation needs for operations. Our clients consist of organisations that share that vision and are prepared to pay for the customisation and development of the open source MediaWiki software simply because they see the benefit for their own organisation. This is how a lot of open source software gets developed.

A new approach to funding

Our previous approach got us this far, but we found that we often do not work directly on the kinds of milestones that bring us closer to the vision of a unified organisational system and rather get bogged down with details and client-specific work that has little "reuse value" to us. We are now defining a new roadmap and milestones that we want to find direct funding for, because we think that if we can get excited about it, other people should get excited too and we should be able to find funding to work directly on the big picture stuff. We will need to find some visionary investors who just as committed to sustainability as we are and understand that while there is no direct annual financial return on IP developed, there are a range of other benefits to be reaped from this form of investment.

Barriers to investment

There are two key reasons why investment in the work of Organic Design is not comparable to the classic software investment model. Very loosely summarised, this assumes that the software developed is to be protected intellectual property to be sold at a profit.

• Based on GPL software
• High level concepts not patentable
• In order for the "global aspects" of the system we propose to arise, interoperability is key. This runs counter to certain adopters "locking away" parts of the technology
• Philosophical: We believe that the "high ROI" mentality (e.g. "If I invest in this, I need to see x % return on my investment, the higher the better!") is the key driver of societal problems, is unsustainable, linked to the usury issue and not in alignment with our values as outlined in the manifesto.

Our funding framework and principles

• Invest in quality of life and sustainability, make knowledge available to all
• Organic Design software development costs represent cost of customisation, not investment with % return
• Investment takes place based on shared vision - the client sees value in what is proposed and wishes to see it made - we supply the skills, client supplies funding

Benefits

• What we supply needs to be compared with expensive proprietary software, the savings achieved by getting the unified organisational system developed could be expressed as % return if desired. for instance most SAAS vendors charge a per-seat fee of several hundred US$/month/user. This would need to be modelled as a scenario.
• We are convinced that a web 3.0 environment is the future of business. We offer any investment partner a head start in this environment, allowing them to gain leadership in this emerging market
• Contribute to a level playing field in a more open society
• Cooperation and knowledge sharing as the foundation of a more civilised society

Funding strategies

• Funding is based on shared vision and is done to ensure realisation of that shared vision
• Charitable trust model for tax write-offs
• Make a budget for development costs within overall business investment
• Exploit the benefits of the unified organisational system to maximise growth of the overall business
• Open up new investment opportunities in the emerging web 3.0 economy
• Protect your business model through supplier and licensing agreements, trademarks and brands, not software patents
• Make the most of the scalability and deployment options offered by a unified system rather than having adoption be inhibited by non-open standards

Links

• Why would anyone invest in open source?
• Open Source vs Closed Source -- Its about investing in People