Open Source Everywhere (not just for Software)
Thomas Goetz, Wired Mag
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/opensource.html

Review of what the OSS method has started and how it can be used in other contexts.

What is the architecture of Open Source - what are the self-assembling groups that coalesce to take on a task and/or solve a problem.  Building blocks of small teams solving smaller tasks and thus larger tasks.  The 'magic' of OSS (O'Reilly).

What other problems can this tackle?

Three princioles
	Share the Goal
	Share the Work
	Share the Result

The key to these is the community.

Other examples - cooperative dairy farmers (slide of principles)
	Passionate people drive the movement
	Match strategy with structure
	communicate with members

Background:

Farming coops started with european emigrants, took off in early 19thC (East Coast) among dairy farmers.  Because cheese requires more milk than early farmers could produce.  So formed distributed networks of farmers to collect their milk ("cheese Rings").  Worked very well - so well that the Sherman Antitrust Act addressed these coops as well (classified as cartels) - for ~25 years.  Over time this was discerned as a bad economic impact, and exemptions formed for coops.  Some remain - for example, Land o' Lakes is a coop.

Goetz argues that these sort of thinking is inherent to farming.

Another example.  In 2001, various conglomerate CTOs (Cargill, BestBuy, Medtronics, etc) met in discussion of proprietary software could do.  Of five that met, 3 were farming background, and identified this same structure in the concept.  Formed a group, Avalanche.

So formed a set of 
    goals - leverage over vendors reduction in redundancies.  
    Formed a shared workload to replace this.  
    share a repository.
    
Only recently online (http://ibsmmap002.go-integral.net/).  

Are sharing not just code, but procedures and documentation (on, for example, Installation of Oracle).

Avalance operating principles as similar to farming coop principles.  Formally call themselves a coop as an entity (and licensed as such).  In MN, coop formation is made stronger and easier (similar to Delaware and Incs).