Difference between revisions of "About"

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Organic Design is an organisation set up by Aran Dunkley ([[User:Nad]]) as an infrastructure in which to run a number of projects involving a small group of [[people]] with some common ideals regarding open source software and decentralised solutions. There are many common needs amongst even very diverse projects, such as financials, contact management, invoicing, stock and suppliers, document and knowledge management, code development, web sites, LAN's and servers to name a few.
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Organic Design is an organisation set up by [[User:Nad|Aran Dunkley]] as an infrastructure in which to run a number of projects involving a small group of [[people]] with some common ideals regarding open source software and decentralised solutions. There are many common needs amongst even very diverse projects, such as financials, contact management, invoicing, stock and suppliers, document and knowledge management, code development, web sites, LAN's and servers to name a few.
  
 
The Organic Design site has for the last few years focussed mainly on MediaWiki extensions and has a reasonable community built up around MediaWiki related knowledge. The site has also built up a number of [[procedures]] as a result of documenting the organisation's own administration requirements and from involvement in other projects.
 
The Organic Design site has for the last few years focussed mainly on MediaWiki extensions and has a reasonable community built up around MediaWiki related knowledge. The site has also built up a number of [[procedures]] as a result of documenting the organisation's own administration requirements and from involvement in other projects.

Revision as of 23:18, 5 August 2008

Template:Webpage Organic Design is an organisation set up by Aran Dunkley as an infrastructure in which to run a number of projects involving a small group of people with some common ideals regarding open source software and decentralised solutions. There are many common needs amongst even very diverse projects, such as financials, contact management, invoicing, stock and suppliers, document and knowledge management, code development, web sites, LAN's and servers to name a few.

The Organic Design site has for the last few years focussed mainly on MediaWiki extensions and has a reasonable community built up around MediaWiki related knowledge. The site has also built up a number of procedures as a result of documenting the organisation's own administration requirements and from involvement in other projects.

Working on projects together

The people working together on projects are using the freely available system of procedures, extensions, best practices etc and the site has no ownership or relationship directly with those projects. Each project is an agreement purely amongst the client and those working together to achieve the solution. Any excess profits or losses generated by the projects are the responsibility of those working on them to distribute. The site procedures, templates and structure offers advice on what aspects should be discussed and agreed upon before moving to each phase. This way of working is very similar to using sites like RentACoder and eLance, except that the infrastructure is not taking a cut and is more casual and therefore reliant on a certain level of trust amongst members working together.

Work done improving Organic Design

Some of the people working together on projects within the site have put significant time into developing software and content solutions used by the site and its organisational system. All the software and content is GPL and LGPL and most work done on it is done voluntarily, because those developing it realise that working on good freely available software brings opportunity, for example the ability to offer consultation, installation or administration services. The content that the members and public are spending time refining and improving is freely available to be set up on any of their own servers, and the method of doing that is documented clearly as procedures, so all such work is beneficial to all contributors.

Some of the work on open source software in the site has been funded by clients requiring various functionality, their incentive to allow it to be open source is that we usually offer a lower price to work on open source projects, and often refuse to work on closed software regardless of price. And some of the work required by the site may require financial incentive before any roles commit to working on it. These situations are handled as projects in the system for the members to discuss the resource requirements and allocation as they would for any normal client project.

Organic Design revenue

The organisation may generate revenue from hosting other sites, or selling products for clients through some of the sites running on its servers. These revenue streams are independent of the members working together on projects within the site, and some such projects may be completely unknown to the members - i.e. the Organic Design organisation was set up specifically to support a number of open source projects and goals, but is also a business entity representing one member who is entitled to work on private business operations. All the other current members also have one or more of their own businesses and sites and are free to use the resources and knowledge learned on this site to carry out their own private business ventures in addition to those carried out together in the site.